Honesty poll

luckat · 22-09-2004 07:23PM

Interesting that when people *talk* about what they'd do, they mostly say "I'd give it back", but when they *vote*, they tend to vote "No"!

Yeah, when I was really skint I was always finding money on the road, and I never gave it back. But now that I'm not so skint I hand it in.

*However*, this is the way I do it: I go into the copshop and say "I've found €XX on X Street. I'm handing it up, and I'll need a receipt." Then if the copper doesn't seem enthusiastic, I murmur something about perhaps being able to talk to the OC of the station...?

My favourite experience like this was finding a fat wallet outside a house as I was cycling to a party. I picked it up, looked around and thought, hmm, it'd be stupid to shout "Anyone own this?"

So I got back on my bike and cycled on. When I got to the party I found a lot of senior bank cards and £400 or so. I looked the name up in the phone book and found someone of that name at the street where I'd found it. So I phoned him and gave him my name and address, said I was at a party but would only be there an hour or so and would drop it back.

1am I shycled up to hish houshe and knocked on the doorsh. Him and his wife *sprang* to answer it and I exshplained that I'd been held up a bit and handed him hish wallet.

Next day when I got back from work I found a gift - or at least part of one. The stems of a bouquet of flowers were sticking out of my letterbox, with a thank-you card from yer man. I never had the heart to go down and say thanks and tell him!

Waltons · 22-09-2004 07:25PM

I'd have to agree. As regards small sums, I wouldn't bother handing over to the Gardai if I found it on the street, as it would probably just end up in their pocket. As suggested, charity's the best option for this really. I'd hand money over though if I found it in a shop or something. Probably the same situation, but the person who lost it may go up to the information desk hopefully.
I was in the opposite situation a few weeks back. My girlfriend left her purse in the bathroom in the UGC cinema in town. We got the purse back..... With no cash OR cards left in it. Nothing except a bloody receipt. It annoys me that someone would take the money and cards out of a purse, when there ARE names on the cards, and the purse is going to be missed eventually. Pissed me off, cause whenever she finds something she hands it in...

mike65 · 22-09-2004 07:34PM

Years ago I was parked on the Quay in Waterford on the riverside (double yellows!) I nipped across the road to the photo shop and when I got back I spotted two crisp £20s. I looked around and I was the only person in sight (early Saturday morning) I picked them up, pondered for a moment, looked around again just to be sure, and er pocketed them!

On the other hand my sister found a wallet one day and went to the guys addy and she got a big thankyou and I'm sure felt good for the rest of the day!

Mike.

Zukustious · 22-09-2004 07:56PM

I'd keep the tenner, I'd hand in the ipod. I've lost my fair share of tenners and fivers and wouldn't really feel the need to go to the gardaí on the off chance someone handed it in. If it was something like 100 euro I'd bring it to the station. Maybe anything above 50.

luckat · 22-09-2004 08:00PM

*Why* should honesty demand that the valuable item be handed up, but not the smaller item or amount?

What if it was the tenner belonging to a refugee family who get €15 a week for their whole spending money? What if it was the fare for a cancer patient to get to hospital?

And just generally, why would a small amount be "yours", and a larger amount or more valuable item, but "still its owner's"?

I'm just curious here; just trying to tease out some moral questions. Don't necessarily have the answers myself.

Waltons · 22-09-2004 08:12PM

^^
Personally, tbh, I wouldn't think that it was someone's spending money for the week or anything like that, but that's probably just the way I think. If I found €15 on the street though, I'd be afraid that someone in the office would just take it if I handed it over to the Gardai I guess, or that the person wouldn't come looking for it.
Interesting questions though..

luckat · 22-09-2004 08:57PM

Soo... is there a cut-off line for honesty? At what value do you start to be a thief, and at what value is it not theft?

And do you have the right to keep something based on the assumption that someone responsible for keeping it for its owner would instead steal it if you put it into their care?

ando · 22-09-2004 09:03PM

Verdammt wrote:

I found a handbag with a couple of thousand pounds in 20's in it when I was about 12 , to this day I'm sorry I handed it up

I was wondering where my brother (garda) got that 30" TV monitor from a few years back

Waltons · 22-09-2004 09:14PM

I wouldn't really call it theft unless it was, say, a wallet with identification in it. It's more dishonesty than being a downright criminal. That said, I do find something wrong about keeping a wallet with no identification, but stuffed full of bills, that someone will obviously be looking for. It's probably not illegal, per se, but it's a horrible thing to do.

And I wouldn't say you have the right to keep something you find on the street at all, just on the basis that it isn't yours. I said I wouldn't hand it in to the police, because I wouldn't think that people would go looking for a small amount, but I would give it to charity.

Kalina · 22-09-2004 09:40PM

I recently found a wallet in the bar I work in, it had about €250 in it and loads of bank cards, ID etc. We found the owner easily enough as he was a regular and it never even crossed my mind to keep the money. But if I found money where there was no way of identifying the owner I'd definitely keep it. Not very honest maybe!

therecklessone · 23-09-2004 12:02AM

luckat wrote:

*Why* should honesty demand that the valuable item be handed up, but not the smaller item or amount?

What if it was the tenner belonging to a refugee family who get €15 a week for their whole spending money? What if it was the fare for a cancer patient to get to hospital?

Well, personally, my thinking is that most people won't bother looking for a smallish amount of money, even if it is their last €10. Say you dropped a tenner in Dublin some day, and didn't notice it missing until you got home. Where do you start looking? Phone a load of Garda stations? Check all the shops you were in? Phone Dublin Bus? If I lost €10/20 I'd try to retrace my steps for the last few minutes, but after that I'd usually give up.

Anything over €50 I'd consider sizeable enough to make at least some effort to get back to an owner. I'd head to a local cop shop, hand it in and demand a receipt. As far as I know, the legal position is that after 3 months and a day its yours if it hasn't been claimed.

All that is based on there being no hint as to who wons the cash. If I could easily identify the person, no matter the amount, I'd get it to them.

Victor · 23-09-2004 12:40AM

If I can identify it's owner it goes back to the person. I've found €10 and €20 in the last year and kept them. Last year, I lost my wallet (ironicly on the same day I warned a woman at a bus stop to be not so obvious when she was putting her purse in her shopping bag). It was handed into a Garda station sans €20, but otherwise intact.

Legally any amount over £5 (€6.35) found should be handed to a Garda station. You are entitled to a reward of 5% for cash amounts. You can keep anything you want that you found in the sea (assuming it doesn't have a preservations status).

the_syco · 23-09-2004 12:49AM

Righto. I've worked in a nightclub, and I've found £1's, £20's, etc on the floor (and euro's when it came in), and i kept them. Same with bull box's of cigs. If they weren't my brand, I gave it to some staff that did. As for mobile's, wallets, coats, etc, they were handed into the cloakroom. Same with cloakroom tickets.

If I found an iPod, I'd hand it in. Same with camra's, etc. Loose money, I'd keep. Money in an envelope, I'd proberly hand in, as it couold be indentified (by the envelope).

robbie1876 · 23-09-2004 02:22AM

Victor wrote:

You can keep anything you want that you found in the sea (assuming it doesn't have a preservations status).

That's cool. I'm off to Dun Laoghaire to claim my Stena HSS.

Victor · 23-09-2004 03:06AM

robbie1876 wrote:

That's cool. I'm off to Dun Laoghaire to claim my Stena HSS.

I think you'll find the captain claiming he found it first

luckat · 23-09-2004 01:08PM

It seems to me (though I'm open to correction) that this kind of sliding-scale honesty is actually the basis of a society that allows other, bigger kinds of dishonesty.

Again, Japan - if you left the key in your door, no one would walk in and steal your stuff. If you leave your bike at the train station, you don't bother to lock it. Because they have the attitude that *all* goods belonging to other people are none of their business, no matter how small.

Discuss prease?

seamus · 23-09-2004 01:16PM

luckat wrote:

It seems to me (though I'm open to correction) that this kind of sliding-scale honesty is actually the basis of a society that allows other, bigger kinds of dishonesty.

Again, Japan - if you left the key in your door, no one would walk in and steal your stuff. If you leave your bike at the train station, you don't bother to lock it. Because they have the attitude that *all* goods belonging to other people are none of their business, no matter how small.

Discuss prease?

There's not really a sliding scale though. Most people have agreed that small sums of money, on its own, is fair game, mainly because its rightful owner would be untraceable, 99% of the time. Most have also agreed that if they can track down the owner of something, they will.

The issue of theft, which is what you're talking about above, is something completely different. Dishonesty and crime aren't one and the same.

luckat · 23-09-2004 01:19PM

Isn't "stealing by finding" against the law, Seamus?

therecklessone · 23-09-2004 01:20PM

luckat wrote:

Again, Japan - if you left the key in your door, no one would walk in and steal your stuff. If you leave your bike at the train station, you don't bother to lock it. Because they have the attitude that *all* goods belonging to other people are none of their business, no matter how small.

Discuss prease?

I agree with Seamus.

Your examples above aren't exactly the same as someone losing something. Me finding €20 on the street isn't the same as me putting my hand in someone's pocket and stealing their wallet.

seamus · 23-09-2004 01:45PM

luckat wrote:

Isn't "stealing by finding" against the law, Seamus?

Not exactly. As I said above, if you find property and make a reasonable attempt to reunite it with its owner, you will eventually be legally entitled to keep it.

One could contend that a person "found" a bicycle lying against a railing, exactly the same as one finds a tenner on the ground.

Stealing is taking something without the owner's permission. So essentially picking up anything that doesn't belong to you is theft, plain and simple. But it also makes common sense that money on the ground is lost, and not placed there intentionally. Therefore by taking it, you are not stealing it, because ownership has been lost.

SantaHoe · 23-09-2004 09:14PM

luckat wrote:

Interesting that when people *talk* about what they'd do, they mostly say "I'd give it back", but when they *vote*, they tend to vote "No"!

Well I voted no, because the poll question was very specific... I wouldn't bother handing everything I find into the Garda station... certainly not a small amount of cash which would be next to impossible to return to someone... which is really what I had in my head while reading this thread.
Although thinking over it, I'd say there are certain things that I would hand into a Garda station, like if I found a passport, drivers license, medical card or handbag with no forms of address inside... a set of car keys, etc.
Generally, I don't pick up and take away with me things that I know aren't mine, no matter how lost they look... so the items above would probably be still sitting there in a puddle where I stepped over them

I haven't found very much money in my time, only the odd manky folded-up £5 note that a hundred people have walked on and didn't notice.
Things like that I count as luck and accept it without guilt.
I think the same would apply for amounts up to ~€100, anything more and I'd start thinking about the owner.
Anyone else have these moral lost-cash limits?

I dropped a tenner out of my pocket at the ATM a few months ago and the woman behind me was nice enough to bring my attention to it... I'm sure countless others would simply have stood on it until I left

I guess these things are easier to do when you feel that the person you're doing it for would do the same for you.
In that case I'd have done the same for her or anyone else... and tbh I don't think it would have mattered how much money it was, since I think seeing someone dropping it is a far cry from suddenly finding it several hours after the unknown person has left... theft as far as I'm concerned.
It's nice to see the decent side of people innit?

luckat · 24-09-2004 07:45PM

New question: if you saw a tenner on the street and picked it up and pocketed it, and then discovered that you were on TV, on a Candid Camera type show, would you feel comfortable about it?

therecklessone · 24-09-2004 10:58PM

Can I ask you a question?

You find a €1 coin on the street. Do you hand it in to the Gardai?

What if it was a 10c coin?

Pet · 24-09-2004 11:34PM

If I found cash lying on the street, say a tenner or 20 or something, and I didn't know who owned it, I might keep it. The last time it happened, I found a tenner, but it probably would have brought me no luck so I gave it to the first box shaking charity collector I saw.

Anything else, like walkmans or cameras, I would hand into the garda station. If it was a laptop or a phone I'd try and find the person first.

I don't think I'm special for doing this, but I wish more people would do the same. Things work so much better when everyone is honest.

impr0v · 25-09-2004 11:24AM

As a counterpoint to the heart-warming stories of unbridled honesty, myself and a mate found a wallet on the street while students, i.e. perpetually broke. The wallet had about 40 quid in it and a host of cards, particularly student cards, the guy that owned it went to the same college as us. Our intention was to take the 40 as a finders fee and hand the wallet in anonymously so that he wouldn't have to replace the cards. However, on further inspection, the guy had kindly included a pin number for his atm card in the wallet. Coincidentally, it was the week the grants had come through.....

..I mean if someone is stupid enough to keep a pin code in their wallet despite all the warnings to the contrary that they receive with the code, then surely it's the responsibility of society at large to educate him as to the error of his ways?

He obviously, like us, didn't get the grant, but there was 90 quid in the account, which we took and split, along with the forty. He didn't get his cards back either, as the risk of getting caught was not something we wished to take, so they ended up sleeping with the fishes.

I'm not overly proud of it. If I found a wallet today, with a pin, I'd probably check in case it was Denis O'Briens or Michael O'Leary's, but I'd give it back, cash and all, as I don't need it. The guy who owned the wallet, he was down 130 or so, and his cards, which i'm sure he got over after a brief period of kicking himself. However, any time he gets a pin number in the post now, I'm sure he memorises it immediately and incinerates the slip.

lodgepole · 25-09-2004 11:57AM

impr0v wrote:

..I mean if someone is stupid enough to keep a pin code in their wallet despite all the warnings to the contrary that they receive with the code, then surely it's the responsibility of society at large to educate him as to the error of his ways?

That's one of the most knackery things i've ever heard. I'd probably do just as you did, pocket the forty and leave in the wallet. But emptying a bank account and then passing it off as being some kind of lesson for him to learn is just bad form.

impr0v · 25-09-2004 12:01PM

Well that statement was meant to be kinda tongue in cheek. It was obviously bad form to empty the bank account.

Honesty poll

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