December 9, 2008: Bank Error In Your Favor - Collect $200.

In his book The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten, Julian Baggini writes up and comments on "100 experiments for the armchair philosopher." Many of the thought experiments involve ethical quandaries. For example:

Richard went to an ATM to withdraw 100 (British) pounds from his account and received 10,000 pounds by mistake. Certain that the bank would catch the error, he put the loot away and waited. But after a couple months and no word from the bank, he took the money and went to put a hefty down-payment on a new luxury car. "On the way, however, he did feel a twinge of guilt. Wasn't this stealing? He quickly managed to convince himself it was no such thing. He had not deliberately taken the money, it had just been given to him...No, this wasn't theft. It was just the biggest stroke of luck he had ever had."

Baggini invites the reader to do some moral reasoning about Richard's actions. He notes, "In real life..., we might expect an honest person [to notify the bank]. But how many people would? Not that many, I'd guess."

Some would. I know someone who did. About 30 years ago, Baggini's hypothetical scenario actually happened to my parents. Even the numbers were the same, though the amount was in dollars rather than pounds. My mother deposited $100 in the family checking account and later found out that the bank had recorded it as $10,000. They had apparently left out the decimal point between dollars and cents.

So mom immediately notified them of the error. (In her letter she playfully suggested, "Of course, if it is too much trouble for you to adjust your records, we will gladly adjust ours!") The bank quickly corrected the mistake - though without thanking my mother for bringing it to their attention - and $9,900 that my parents could have made prudent use of was carried away by that steady-blowing wind of moral integrity that characterized their lives.

As I look back on it now, one of the early signs that I was marrying into a family of very different moral outlook was when my father-in-law-to-be told me about the time a teller made a huge error in his favor when he was cashing in some bonds - and boy did he walk away with a chunk of change! I hardly knew what to say. I didn't tell him my mother's story. Some years later, though, it made sense when my (now ex-) wife came home with a pair of jeans that a checkout clerk neglected to ring up, and I was the one who trudged back to the mall to pay for them.

Be scrupulously honest all the time. It is wrong to take advantage of correctable mistakes made in your favor. Any follower of Christ should know this instinctively, live accordingly, and train his children to do the same.