Re-cycling – 304.5

On thinking it over, it should not be surprising that I need to go through things and over things more than once. Just because you learned from an experience one time does not mean you have necessarily learned everything possible. In time you grow as a person, you have more experiences to relate to it, and so it’s reasonable for there to be more. I have already noticed one cycle that comes up every so often for me, but I understand it differently after the last time.

Every now and then I will start getting too much money from stores. That sounds weird, so I will explain. The first time it happened, there were three incidents. I purchased something from the self-service bakery at Fred Meyer, and accidentally got the wrong code, thus being undercharged by fifteen cents. I got two egg rolls at a grocery store deli and was only charged for one. Finally, I was buying several things for an adopted family (this was around Christmas) at K-mart. These all happened within a few days.

For the egg roll, I just went back the next day and had her ring me up, and she was very nice about it, but was also kind of making a big deal about it, and it was complimentary but I was still not entirely comfortable about it. At K-mart, they were really rude. I tried to take care of it over the phone, and couldn’t, and it was like I was just burdening them to make them take care of this shirt issue. The irony here is that the shirt cost about ten times as much as the egg roll did, so there is more value, and scanning a shirt is not even that much work, but what can you do?

Between the two, I just did not want to deal with Fred Meyer, especially for such a small amount, so I taped the coins to a note card and mailed it in with an explanation, but no return address.

Anyway, at other times I will get a bunch of similar incidents occurring in a group. Vending machines will give too much change, and then the checker will miss an item, and it adds up, and then I have to fix it, which is a nuisance and embarrassing, and that is where the new realization came in.

I always thought that my honesty was being tested, but really, the amounts were always so small that the extra money is not a temptation in itself. Of course I would rather have my integrity than an extra dollar. It’s not even a question.

The last time around, I started to see it as more of a trial of pride. Of course I don’t care about the money, but I do care about convenience and embarrassment, and I do get embarrassed about things that should not be embarrassing. The emotions I was fighting did not involve greed as much as they did irritation and (unreasonable) humiliation.

I may get other opportunities. No one seems to know how to make change in their head anymore, so it is probably really easy for them to get confused, and there is a lot of general incompetence flying around, especially in these low-wage jobs. I guess if it strikes again, I will try and remember that honesty is important to me, and I can handle it if someone compliments me and I can handle it if someone is rude to me and thinks I am an idiot for correcting the mistake. Those things don’t really matter, right?

I do have one exception to the honesty rule. If when going through the drive-through of a fast food restaurant you check your order and see that you were given extra items, there is no point in taking them back. Once they have handed the food over they can’t take it back, and it certainly wouldn’t be right for them to charge you, so at that point you are just making their lives harder without accomplishing anything. And yes, you should still go back if they short you. I’ve worked drive-through, and I am comfortable with this.