In September 2013, Rabbi Noah Muroff brought home an ordinary office desk he had bought on Craigslist. Finding the desk an inch too wide to fit through his office doorway, the high school teacher from New Haven, Connecticut, got out his screwdriver, removed the desktop, and discovered a plastic bag stuffed in the space behind the drawers. The bag contained $98,000 in cash.
He knew that the money must belong to the previous owner, an elderly lady who told him she had bought the desk from Staples and put it together herself.
Was he obligated to return the money?
Grapple with the Gray
List two or three reasons for keeping the money.
List two or three reasons for returning it to the previous owner.
Is there another option?
Having weighed the options, what would you do?
Gray Matters
Obviously, the previous owner had forgotten about the $98,000 altogether. This allows for a certain rationale that once a person has forgotten that they ever owned an object or money, they have effectively lost hope of ever getting it back. At that point, the money or property might be justifiably considered ownerless.
This justification, however, is relevant when applied to obligation as a finder to search for an unknown owner. The responsibility a finder has to publicize the discovery of lost property diminishes in proportion to both the impracticality of identifying a legitimate owner and the owner’s likely expectation that the property is gone for good.
However, when you know with certainty the identity of the previous owner, ethics requires you to make every reasonable effort to return it.
And that’s what Rabbi Muroff did, bringing his children along to teach them the lesson of integrity. Needless to say, the former owner of the desk was as grateful as she was astonished.
If the hidden bag had contained a family heirloom, a private letter, or an old photo album, this story never would have made headlines. Having the name and contact information of the owner, most of us would not think twice about returning an object of sentimental value that is worth nothing to us.
That’s exactly the point. There is still some modest accomplishment in acting ethically when the stakes are low. The real challenge comes the moment self-interest kicks in, and the challenge grows stronger the more we can tick off sound reasons to support acting in our own self-interest.
A wise person once said: “You will never have any shortage of legitimate excuses for not doing what you ought to do.” Whether the temptation or the effort is great or small, whether a hundred dollars or a hundred thousand, the principles of ethics remain the same. Acting with moral consistency is the hallmark of a truly ethical person.