Virtue as reward pays well enough

Originally published: Friday, October 16, 1992
Web-posted: Monday, April 21, 1997

etty had gone to her suburban bank to get some family letters from a safe-deposit box. She went into one of those private booths that are provided to examine one`s possessions.

She noticed something on the floor. It was a coin in a cardboard holder that coin collectors use.

Although she isn`t a coin collector, she could tell that it was very old and had unusual markings. It appeared to be a Roman coin. The writing on the card indicated that it was more than 2,000 years old.

Betty examined the coin and thought about what she should do. She assumed the coin was valuable. Why else would the owner have kept it in a safe-deposit box? And obviously the owner had accidentally dropped it on the floor.

"So I started thinking maybe . . . maybe . . ."

Maybe you would keep it?

"Yes. When you are lower middle class, and you see something like this, you think about it. But I don`t know how I could do that. My mother taught me to do the right thing. And I wouldn`t have known what to do with it."

So Betty went to a bank employee and turned the coin in. She was thanked and she went on her way.

But then she thought about it some more. How did she know the bank would return it to the owner? Maybe they couldn`t find him. If so, she reasoned, the coin should belong to her.

She contacted a lawyer and they drafted a letter to the bank saying: "I wish to inform you that I am putting a formal claim on that coin if the owner cannot be located. I also wish to know what manner does the bank plan on taking to discover this owner. If the owner is found, how will you verify that the coin belongs to them?"

A bank officer called her and said that the owner had been located, the coin returned, so she had no claim.

"Sure," the bank officer said later, "we knew who it belonged to. He`s a regular customer and he has a number of coins. He dropped several of them and when he picked them up, he overlooked that one. We asked him to come in and identify it and he did. That`s the end of it."

Not entirely the end. Betty remains indignant, so she told me her story. She believes that she deserves something more than a "thank you" from a bank employee.

"When I came back to my office and told the people I work with about it, everyone said I should have kept it and taken it with me and then called the bank. Then they would have contacted the owner and he would have gotten in touch with me and I would have received a reward."

You believe you should be compensated for turning it in?

"I know if I lost a 2,000-year-old coin, I`d want to contact the person who found it and show my gratitude in some way."

Maybe. But let us consider the bare-boned facts.

Betty found the coin. It required only that she bend over and pick it up. Then she had to walk a few feet to a bank employee and say: "I found this on the floor in the booth."

This didn`t require much exertion or inconvenience.

It is not as if she had seen someone leap from a bridge into the Chicago River, kicked off her shoes, jumped in and rescued the person. Then she would deserve a medal, civic acclaim, and-the ultimate honor-praise from drive-time disk jockeys.

As you probably suspect, by contacting me, Betty complained to the wrong person.

I`ve never understood why people believe that they have done something remarkable, virtuous or noble when they find a lost object and try to return it to its rightful owner. If you don`t at least try to return it, you`re a thief. So should we hold parades for people because they aren`t thieves?

Before stores put in computers, sales people made mistakes adding up purchases. More than once, I told a clerk that they had missed an item or given me too much change. It didn`t occur to me to seek out the manager and ask for a reward.

My wife is occasionally absent-minded, which is as kind as I can put it.

One day she loaded some stuff into the car, strapped the son into his car seat, and drove away. She forgot that she had put her purse on the ground.

A woman came out of her house, saw the purse, looked inside, recognized the name, and phoned my office to say that she had my wife`s purse. I thanked her and told my wife.

My wife went back, got the purse, and thanked the woman.

A few days later, I received an indignant letter from the woman, saying that she was shocked at what cheapskates my wife and I were for not having given her a reward.

My wife isn`t a cheapo. She`s a soft touch and gives to many charities. But it hadn`t occurred to her that someone living in an expensive Lincoln Park house would expect to be rewarded for the act of picking up a purse, looking inside, and dialing a telephone. That`s not quite the same as running into traffic to snatch a child from the path of a speeding truck.

So, no, Betty, what you did wasn`t that big a deal. If you left your gloves or sunglasses on a table in a restaurant and the waitress or busboy ran after you to return them, would you say: "Oh, how fine of you. Here, let me give you a reward." Or if you dropped a scarf and someone picked it up and called out, would you whip out your checkbook?

Besides, if you had kept that coin, what would you have done with it? If you took it to a coin dealer, you would have the gnawing fear that he might know it had been lost. And he would know you were a dishonest person. Then you would have to live with the fear that he might call the cops and the fear that you would be found out.

Honesty. That's another way of saying you'll never have to worry about getting caught.

© 1997 Chicago Tribune