Honestly

There was a time in my life when I held a part-time second job taking care of a string of vending machines.  Some of them had candy bars, while others had cold drinks, and still others held hot soup and hot beverages.  Most, but not all, were in enlisted military living quarter areas.  Once a day I made the rounds with my personal vehicle supplying the machines, extracting the coins, and insuring their proper working order.  If they had minor problems I might fix them on the spot, but if it was a larger malfunction I reported it to higher-ups that sent in repairmen.

On occasions a machine might malfunction in such a manner as to yet accept coins but not give forth the desired product.  It was possible for several dollars to accumulate before some caring individual might place an out-of-order sign on it.  When I arrived on the scene under these conditions I would make an attempt to understand the problem and repair it if I was able.  Often it was caused by some person attempting to get something from the machine under dubious circumstances.  In other words a false object of some sort was inserted in the coin slot in an attempt to gain a free product.  In most cases this was a dishonest attempt to steal the product, but one could not state that as always true.  Given the benefit of the doubt, it was possible the object was inadvertently inserted, such as a coin-like object might have been in a person’s pocket, and without looking at it could have been placed in the coin slot.  So, was this an honest mistake, or a dishonest attempt at minor theft?

By taking a quick inventory of the machine I, of course, knew how much money should have been in the coin box.  If there were several dollars extra, who did the money belong to?  It, of course, belonged to whoever had placed it in the coin slot and received no product in return, but that would have been nearly impossible to determine.  In actuality, if a person walked up to me while I was there, and stated he lost a quarter in the machine, I merely handed him a quarter with no questions asked, but I yet walked away with more money than was necessary to account for lost inventory.

Sticking with my honesty point of view who then owned that excess money?  It was not my money merely because it was in my possession, yet had I kept it no one except me would know.  It did not belong to the organization I worked for as they had done nothing to earn it.  There was no practical way to determine the rightful owners and return it to them. 

In reality I turned in the total amount of money in any machine whether it was over, or under, the required amount to offset inventory.  I bring up the question to illustrate that under some circumstances it is nearly impossible to be entirely honest, no matter how much it be desired.