I can't say what I'dve done in that situaiton, though I'd like to say my response would be the same...A while back, CBid sent me an extra fiver, and when I shot them an email, they said to keep it on the house, not quite as much money involved, but similar.
I've always tried to do the right thing in life, though sometimes, I'm ashamed to admit I don't. My biggest 'did the right thing' moment was out at the paintball field. I used to work with a group of guys and put on 24 hour scenario paintball games. At one of the games, I saw what i thought was just a buck laying out on the field, and picked it up. Honestly, if it was just a buck, I'da pocketed it, and bought a soda with it later, but when I picked it up, it turned out to be a roll of cash, about $700 if I remember correctly. I put it in my pocket and went back to the company directors RV, explained to him what I had found. He asked me what I wanted to do about, and I said, well, there's no choice really (by this I meant that I felt the only choice was to try and find the person who dropped it), and said there were several. I could pocket the money (though both of us knew that was absolutely not an option. I'm not sure if he actually would've let me do it, but I don't even want to know how he would've felt about me [or how I would've felt about myself for that matter] if I had), I could announce that I found it, or I could just hold on to it and see if anybody came looking. At this game, there were about 1000 people, so announcing that I had found $700 on the field would probably have not gotten me the result I was looking for, so I opted to put the cash, as it was, in the safe in the RV and wait to see if somebody came looking. About an hour later, a father and teenaged son came up to the RV, the son had obviously been crying and was very upset. The father said the son had lost something on the field, which he then explained was the money from his last two paychecks at work. He had cashed them before the game to pay for his entrance and to buy a new paintball gun from a guy at the field. He asked if anybody had mentioned finding any money, so we retrieved it from the safe and gave it to him. He thanked me profusely, offerred me a hundred dollars for finding and returning it, which I refused, and then the father found me later, took me aside, and gave it to me anyways, saying it was from him, not his son, and he really wanted me to take it as a reward for honesty.
drew