Sam’s Weekly Water Cooler Musings: On Thievery

If you found a $20 bill on the ground, would you keep it? Around the water cooler, we agreed that, depending on the circumstances, we would probably keep it. Unless it happened to be inside of a public building, or a building where the public goes for various activities. For example, a library, a store, a restaurant, etc. In that case, we would leave the money with someone in charge and hope someone gets their money back. However, if the money was lying on the street, in a parking lot, in a park, or anywhere else outside, we wouldn’t hesitate to keep it. I mean, whose to say who dropped it (unless we saw who dropped it)? To us, that wouldn’t constitute thievery because there was nothing we could honestly do to get the money back to its (previous) owner. But then it got trickier.

You’re checking out at Sears and you pay for your $40 purchase with a $50 bill. The clerk hands you back $60 instead of the $10 you deserve, but you don’t notice until after you’ve left the store. Do you

A) head back into the store to return the over-fundage?

B) spend it like you just got rich?

C) give half of it to goodwill to assuage your conscience, then spend the rest like you just got rich?

I would like to say that the majority of water drinkers chose choice A, but I would be lying if I said so. Instead, all but two said they would rock out to B, and not even give it a second thought. And the two who didn’t choose it, they hedged their bets and went with C. Not a single soul said they would head back into the store to return the money, because — and this is the kicker — they didn’t consider it stealing.

Now, I’m not judging them. It’s an individual decision they’re making to keep that money, and they’re the ones living with it, but how isn’t that stealing? It makes me think of the drug deal that somehow went wrong while I was waiting for the trolley, and the sheaf of money that blew down the street on the gusting wind. Yes, I admit, I stuffed a few of those bills in my pants pocket with the other people who were also waiting for the trolley. Then we all pretended we didn’t stuff those bills into our pants. I think human nature leans us towards making those decisions. We see money, we grab money, we keep money. But what if it’s not money, but something that could be worth money?

Stealing. What you do when you can’t get what you want legitimately.

That whole Napster thing from over a decade ago — crazy to think — was definitely an eye-opener, you know? To think that people could illegally obtain music was incredible to consider, especially when you grew up in the age of audiotapes and Walkmans, like I did. But most of the others around the water cooler are of the digital age, so to them it was pretty natural to illegally download. And they came up with some cool reasonings for it too, why it’s okay. Enough people buy the CDs and the MP3s, so what’s a little downloading on the DL? They make enough money, so what’s the point? Musicians really get their money from concerts these days, so who cares if we download some of their albums or songs for free? Regardless of the explanations, one thing was clear — they didn’t consider it stealing.

So, what is stealing? Stealing, according to the water drinkers, is taking something on purpose that doesn’t belong to you. Which left me confused, but then I had to go. What is your definition of stealing? What would you consider the above scenarios? Would you consider them episodes of stealing or something else? When is it okay to keep something that isn’t yours?

Sam

Sam’s Weekly Water Cooler Musings: The Archive