Oh yeah, wanted to pass along a story, for real this time.
So my wife and I went to a CART race earlier this year. The souvenir booths were being run by the Police Athletic League as part of their fundraising efforts. At the end of the race I decided to pick up a shirt or two on the way out, and apparently half the fans there decided to do that also.
As we're bustling in the crowd around the folding table yelling our orders, the boy tossing the merchandise throws me my shirt and I give the man collecting the money my cash. My wife barks her order and the boy throws her a shirt and we turn to leave.
Once we're outside the mob circle, my wife realizes that she hadn't given the cashier her money. She's thinking "Cool! A free shirt!". I look at her and tell her "Hey, its charity. We're not that hard up for money." We wade back into the mob scene and give the man our money. He looks at us and says "What size?" and my wife explains what happened.
I would've forgotten about the incident by now but my wife recently brought it back up as part of a childhood memory about her dad and his attitude about money. Seems he had instilled in them the notion that if a merchant forgets to charge for a good or a service, then its ok to keep the free item/service, the opinion being that hey, it was the merchant's fault so they should eat the cost of their mistake.
I, on the other hand, believe that its wrong to take advantage of another person's error, particularly when the money is for charity.
So fess up, have you ever used an expired coupon, or taken advantage of a mis-priced item, or any of the other little "errors" in buying something?
