Man with sick wife, overdue rent, returns $17,000

My husband once left over 10,000 dollars in a pair of shorts in a hotel room in Agadir, Morocco. The cleaning lady found the money and turned it in. We had to drive all the way back from Marakech to get it, but he went and found the lady and personally thanked her and gave her $100. It was a lot for her -- not as much as 10 grand, though. She explained that when she saw the money she almost had a heart attack and scared to death.

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The most I ever found to return was $100. But, that's quite a bit to most of us.

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Dumb bastard.

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She gave him $32??!

Jesus. Makes you wish he'd just kept it.

How the rich treat the poor...

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Double tips for every waitress this week, two folded ones instead of one for every panhandler on the train, triple tips to any cabbie who doesn't raise my blood pressure more than 15 points.

Joe(and the Gatorade vendor gets to keep the change)Nation

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what a retard, who finds money and turns it in? seriously, your doing a bad thing by not teaching them to keep track of their things.

If your stupid enough to lose 10 g's, believe ima be smart enough to keep that ****.

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Yeah, and if someone is too stupid to close their garage door when they are working in their backyard, why should they care if I take that 1/2 drill and that Skilsaw?

Joe(they should have been more careful with their things)Nation

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nimh wrote:

She gave him $32??!

Jesus. Makes you wish he'd just kept it.

How the rich treat the poor...

If something does not belong to you, it is not yours, whether you are rich or poor. Being poor does not entitle you to more consideration for simply doing the right thing.

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The most remarkable thing about the story is that we find the man's action remarkable.

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I think that a lot of times what we perceive as "honesty" may actually be fear. Fear that if someone finds out that they found and have the money they'll be punished by the rightful owner.
I know that if I found a big bag o' money I'd be wary of keeping it....because what kind of person carries around a huge wad of cash in this age of ATM's and debit cards?
If this kind of thing happened in the US or other large city of the world, there's a pretty good chance that it would be on one or more surveillance cameras. It difficult to do anything lately without being on someone's radar.

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This issue really got to me. Thinking about it, I realized why. The idea of being rewarded for being moral is a religious attitude. You do right, and god rewards you. As most people here know, I am not religious. To me, doing the right thing is its own reward. Anything extra is "gravy".

When I was a kid, I found a wallet with money in it. I found the person's address, called him, told him that I found the wallet, and arranged to mail it to him. He told me to keep the money. (There was not a lot, as I remembered, probably enough to cover my mailing expense, and a little more.) I recall the intense pleasure that I received when I realized that I had somehow solved a vexing problem for another person.

That pleasure that I received was more important than any other "reward" that I could have gotten.

I am also wondering. When people say that a poor person should have gotten a substantial reward, is there a hidden meaning? Are they really saying that they would NOT expect that person to do the right thing, and that somehow acting morally was "special", and should be rewarded? Is that a "noblesse oblige" attitude? I think that is something to think about.

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Phoenix32890 wrote:

If something does not belong to you, it is not yours, whether you are rich or poor. Being poor does not entitle you to more consideration for simply doing the right thing.

I'm sorry, but if a woman who's just losing 17 grand in a cab responds to the impoverished, indebted, life crisis-facing cabbie driver being honest enough to return it by rewarding him with thirty-two measly dollars, she's one hell of a stingy b!tch. With apparently not a hint of a clue of what kind of lives people harder up than her lead.

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nimh- So what are your criteria? If she were poor, I suppose you would want to give a big reward. What if the finder were middle class? Rich himself? Why would the financial state of the finder of the money make any difference at all?

Would you ask for a financial statement before you decided on the reward?

Personally, I probably would have been a bit more generous. I would have probably given the person a couple of hundred bucks. But that would have had nothing to do with the person's financial status.

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Phoenix32890 wrote:

nimh- So what are your criteria? If she were poor, I suppose you would want to give a big reward. What if the finder were middle class? Rich himself? Why would the financial state of the finder of the money make any difference at all?

Would you ask for a financial statement before you decided on the reward?

Your statement is counterintuitive and belies a startling self-righteousness and insensitivity. Simply put: most people with a heart and a coffer that could bear it would have to consider being more generous to someone in more obvious need.

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nimh wrote:

Phoenix32890 wrote:
If something does not belong to you, it is not yours, whether you are rich or poor. Being poor does not entitle you to more consideration for simply doing the right thing.

I'm sorry, but if a woman who's just losing 17 grand in a cab responds to the impoverished, indebted, life crisis-facing cabbie driver being honest enough to return it by rewarding him with thirty-two measly dollars, she's one hell of a stingy b!tch. With apparently not a hint of a clue of what kind of lives people harder up than her lead.

It was 7 times his normal daily wages. It's not how much the reward is worth to the giver, it's how much it's worth to the recipient.

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Phoenix32890 wrote:

I am also wondering. When people say that a poor person should have gotten a substantial reward, is there a hidden meaning? Are they really saying that they would NOT expect that person to do the right thing, and that somehow acting morally was "special", and should be rewarded? Is that a "noblesse oblige" attitude? I think that is something to think about.

Hell yeah. If you live in a country where a small sliver of a ruling class elite wallows in seas of money, often inherited money they didnt do any work for, while an overwhelming majority of the population suffers in abject poverty no matter how hard they work their ass of, for one of the latter to freely return such a find IS bloody special.

If I had worked my ass off in the rotten, dangerous work of a motorcycle cab driver and still lived in utter poverty, and that very day faced the panic of my wife going to hospital when we had no money to pay for it, I certainly wouldnt feel like bringing 17 grand back that some apparently mega-rich woman just was carrying around with her.

Yeah, no. Especially in the light of the obliviously arrogant response of the woman leaving him with a baffling thirtytwo dollar finders reward (now there's gratitude for you..), I for one would not have blamed him for keeping it. Except that it might have just gotten him into even bigger trouble.

I swear, people with enough money to live well can sometimes be completely oblivious to what life's like when you're barely able to survive. Preaching on about what's morally right..

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snood wrote:

Phoenix32890 wrote:
nimh- So what are your criteria? If she were poor, I suppose you would want to give a big reward. What if the finder were middle class? Rich himself? Why would the financial state of the finder of the money make any difference at all?

Would you ask for a financial statement before you decided on the reward?

Your statement is counterintuitive and belies a startling self-righteousness and insensitivity. Simply put: most people with a heart and a coffer that could bear it would have to consider being more generous to someone in more obvious need.

Exactly.

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nimh wrote:

Phoenix32890 wrote:
If something does not belong to you, it is not yours, whether you are rich or poor. Being poor does not entitle you to more consideration for simply doing the right thing.

I'm sorry, but if a woman who's just losing 17 grand in a cab responds to the impoverished, indebted, life crisis-facing cabbie driver being honest enough to return it by rewarding him with thirty-two measly dollars, she's one hell of a stingy b!tch. With apparently not a hint of a clue of what kind of lives people harder up than her lead.

I was struck by the amount too. However, I'm not going to assume that the woman was rich because she had 17000 in cash. We don't know what it was for. And the article did say that the measly 32 dollars was several times what the cabbie makes in a day.

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A nod to happycat re: fear. I think that's on the nose.

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Man with sick wife, overdue rent, returns $17,000

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