A couple months back I was in a Verizon Wireless store. My phone had committed suicide during the middle of the night, I was at a convention and I absolutely had to have my phone in case my boys had an emergency (which by their definition includes needing cash in their accounts). As I'm waiting for a Verizon specialist to get my new expensive friggin' phone programmed and download all my back-up numbers from their imaginary cloud on some server in Timbuktu, a guy walks up to the counter. He has a phone that he would like to turn on. The girl behind the counter tells him no problem and takes the phone for verification. We, as in he, I and a couple other random customers, stand around for a couple of minutes and the girl tells him she'll be right back. She walks over to another guy--a manager presumably--and comes back following behind the guy.
"Sorry sir," the guy says. "But we cannot activate this phone. It is on the lost or stolen list."
"That's my phone!" The would-be customer exclaims.
"Where did you get it sir?" The manager keeps a calm tone.
"I found it!"
The girl and the manager exchanged a look. "Sorry sir, but just because you find a phone doesn't make it yours. This phone belongs to the insurance company that replaced the phone for whoever it actually belonged to."
"Give it back to me. It's mine. Finders, keepers. I'll take it somewhere else."
"No, I'm sorry sir. I cannot do that. It isn't yours."
There's about 5 customers besides myself and this clown and of course there are at least 5 Verizon employees present at this point. The guy gets really huffy and storms out of the store. The manager apologizes to the rest of us, as if he would even need to, and goes back to the customer he was originally dealing with. The girl had looked a bit pensive but her expression returned to its normal customer serving smile. I mentioned that both she and the manager had handled that well. She informs me and the couple of customers still standing around that this happens all the time. All the time?!? ALL the TIME?!?! Seriously. Just so non-chalantly.
What in the hell is wrong with people nowadays? Last night I dropped some cash. It was a good bit, it being my birthday. A guy comes up to me and asks me if I left some cash on a table next to my purse while I was shooting pool. No, I hadn't; I hadn't even opened my purse there. I saw it there when I grabbed my purse, but since I hadn't put it there assumed that it belonged to the guy who put his pool stick next to my pocketbook. Then I looked into my purse and realized all the cash I had in the one pocket was gone. I went back over to the guy after realizing that it had to be mine and told him how much should be there. He told me that there were only two $20s. It was definately mine, but that wasn't the right amount. I couldn't figure out how the guy got the money out of my purse. I had turned my back while shooting pool, but I didn't remember him near that corner for long. He spent the rest of the night blowing my money and I was not going to let the weasel ruin my birthday. At least I still had some spending cash. But by the end of the evening I was pretty pissed. I couldn't figure out how he had gotten the money out of my purse. Then this morning, I remember another lady dropped some cash and someone handed it back to her. This little weasel had seen the money fall out of my purse when I had gotten some quarters for the pool table, picked it up after I walked away, and then realizing how much it was, felt a little guilty and returned part of it!! He even tried to give friends of mine some dispenser 1/3 full of that Apple Orchard crap. That was kind of the last straw for me. I told him I knew it was my money. Everyone could tell it was mine by the expression on his face. No proving it though.
What do these two idiots have in common? They're thieves, technically. Yes. It's illegal to traffic in stolen goods. It's also illegal to take something that isn't yours. If you find a wallet full of cash, is the cash yours? No, it belongs to whomever the wallet belongs to. If there's identification in it, technically, you should return the wallet and ALL of its contents to the rightful owner. If you see someone drop cash on the ground, like the one guy did, you should point it out to the person that dropped it. Now, what if it's cash on the ground and you genuinely have no idea who it belongs to? OK, but at that point, how are you returning it to its rightful owner? That is not the same thing as seeing someone drop it and taking it for yourself.
Let's put it another way for some of you that think it's ok. You see someone drop their keys. Does that mean that their car, their home, and their belongings in that home are now yours? Can you take their keys and start roaming the parking lot until you find their vehicle and drive off it in? Well, yes, technically you could, but it would be called stealing. You could go to jail for it. It's NOT yours. You go to their house and decide to sit there and watch their television and sleep in their bed. This isn't the Three Bears and you are definately NOT Goldilocks!! You're going to jail for breaking and entering, even though you have a key. You decide to take their belongings out of their home and relocate them to a location that suits you better. Now it's called breaking and entering AND theft. In most states, that will get you prison time, even as a first time offender.
So, I suppose someone would say, at least the guy gave you back some of it. He could've absconded with all of it. Yup. He could've, but if he had a real conscience, he wouldn't have taken any of it. Now, I'm pretty sympathetic for someone that might be down and out, and if he had given it all back to me, I'd have probably bought him a couple of drinks being that I was celebrating and all. And honestly if he had kept $20 and lied about how much I dropped, that probably wouldn't have phased me. But to keep most of it and then be buying drinks for others on my dime in front of me, holy crap Batman. Really? Really? F*cking really?!?! If he had left with the money after he had lied to me and he had figured that now he could pay some bills, well, yes, I'm a bit of a bleeding heart and it might be different in my eyes somehow. It would still be stealing, but mitigating circumstances and all. I could be far more sympathetic. I guess I should be glad he felt a little guilty, but in all honesty, I wanted to jerk him up by the collar and take my money back.
My earlier question, what in the hell is wrong with people nowadays? Maybe we just don't teach our kids like past generations did. When I was a little girl, I don't know 3 years old maybe--it's one of my earliest memories, my Grandpa smoked Lucky Strikes. Back then, instead of candy along the checkout lanes, there were cigarettes. (Yes, I'm actually old enough to remember when you didn't have to be 18 to buy a pack of cigarettes. Shush.) He would wait outside in the car for my Grams whenever she went shopping, and on this particular outing to KMart, I was in tow. At the checkout counter, Grams paid for her purchases and we went out to the front door. My grandfather pulled the car around and loaded Grams' purchases into the trunk. After he was done, I handed him a pack of Lucky Strikes. He gave me a funny look--never will forget that look.
"Martha, did you buy these?" He asked my grandmother with an emphasis on the word buy as he held the pack up for her to see.
"No. Where did those come from?" They both looked at me with that funny look. Not so funny. I thought they were going to, as my Grams would put it, "crown" me. (Being "crowned" in my family was a fancy way of saying you were going to take a spanking but good.)
"Young lady, where did you get these?" Grandpa inquired.
I didn't say a word but pointed into the store to the line that my grandmother and I had been in. (Remember when all the lines were visible through glass windows?)
My grandfather jerked my hand into his. "Come with me." Walked me to the doors. "Now you go back in there and take these back to the clerk you took thoee from. You never take anything that isn't yours and that you didn't pay for, do you understand me? And you make sure that you hand these to her and you apologize for stealing them, do you understand me?"
Hell, even though I really didn't understand him, I knew I did wrong. I got the message that stealing was DEFINATELY bad and I was just hoping that I was still getting some of that apple pie that Grams' had baked earlier that morning. Ugh. I walked back into the store; my grandfather watching me through those big windows like a hawk about to pounce on a tiny mouse. I went up to the line Grams and I had been in and looked back at him. He waved the back of his hand at me to continue. I tugged on the clerk's pant leg. She looked down at me a bit surprised. I looked back at my grandfather and she glanced at him too. He waved his hand again. My grandfather was not a small man--6'5", full German. I was the runt of the litter. At this time, I wasn't even to his knee. Hell, I wasn't even to her knee. This was a very, very scary moment for me. The clerk looked back down on me. I handed up the pack of Lucky Strikes and looked back at my grandfather again. I knew his expectations.
I looked her in the eyes and said, "I'm sorry but I took these without paying for them. I'm sorry." Then I glanced at my grandfather. He nodded slightly.
The clerk looked at him and then looked back at me taking the pack of cigarettes. She thanked me for being honest and everyone in her line smiled at me. How cute. Yea, whatever, I was going to hear about this 'til the perverbial cows came home. I looked at my grandfather for approval to walk back and he waved his hand in the opposite direction. I walked back out with my head down. When we got to the car, Grandpa told me to get in and I climbed up into the car and sat in the middle of the front seat. He got in next to me. Sandwiched there between them, I waited.
Grandpa got in and said, "When you take something that isn't yours, someone is going to have to pay for it. Nothing is free."
That idiot may have been having a great time with my money, but truth is right now I probably need it more than he did. He got to have a good time, guilty feelings obviously still overridden by his false generosity with my cash. Truth is he didn't pay for it, but I will. Nothing is free.
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