I found a wallet

[tonightceilaimgoingtobe]

Tonight I found a wallet. Lots of cards, and some cash. I was delighted. But still proceeded to see a driving licence, clearly he has dropped the wallet outside his house. I knocked on the door, I ask if Raj lives there. She said yes, I said I found his wallet. She says she's on the phone to him, I see the name on the phone. She seems happy but no offer of a reward.

I go home, knowing I did the right thing. I have money in my bank account, I can pay tomorrow's bills.

Aibu for giving back the wallet?

People say I should have taken the cash.

People go to the police station to hand in or look for lost property. Not sure if it’s still a thing.

If I found a neighbours wallet of course i’d knock on their door with it. You need some new friends if they all think you should have taken the money, but given you said you were delighted to find it and was expecting a cash reward, then I think you are on same waive length. So no, of course it wasn’t unreasonable to hand it back.

I personally think you have the morals of a sewer rat.

I remember finding a watch in the carpark of some distant town I'd visited on one of my drops when I was a delivery driver. I went straight to the police station with it. I got a call a couple of days later from a PC who said it had belonged to an elderly lady who'd been gifted it by her late husband and it had huge sentimental value to her. She asked that I was rang and told how grateful she was. That was reward enough for me.

On another occasion my DH found a Pandora bracelet on the beach in Ryde on holiday. Tried to find a police station before googling and realising that police stations only take lost property which is GDPR sensitive, I.e credit cards, laptop or mobile phones that can trace an owner. So I got home off holiday and put it on Facebook on 'I.O.W lost property' page. Had a number of people claiming it was their's (I'd photographed a third of the charms and placed them on the FB page) but strangely no one who claimed they were the owner could tell me what other charms were on the bracelet to confirm it did actually belong to them which obviously they would have been able to if it was theirs. After 5 months off repeatedly trying to find the owner with repeated attempts on that FB page and two others (with one woman sending me PM'S demanding me to send it to her so she could find the owner - yeah right ....) I took it to cash converters, got £90 for it and gave £50 to Prostate Cancer Research (had lost my beloved Dad to this) and pocketed the rest for myself without feeling guilty, knowing I had done all I could.

Epic fail, OP

Clearly you should have filmed yourself returning the wallet and then posted the recording on social media

Surely everyone knows that in 21st century, it's not enough to quietly do the right thing. There must be external validation

Only read the OP as I suspect your subsequent ones change as you get replies. But it's obvious what you were thinking. Why were you delighted? Why are you even thinking if a reward? No one will say you should have taken the cash 🙄

@tonightceilaimgoingtobe
Just for clarity, I will break it down for you

Giving a wallet & cash back to someone who has dropped it outside their house - Completely normal and what most people would do.

Taking money from the wallet - unacceptable. It's theft.

Having mates that think stealing is acceptable - you need to question their moral compass

Expecting a reward for giving the wallet back - unacceptable. Doing the right thing and this small act of kindness should be enough.

The lady accepting the wallet probably should have been more thankful for you returning the wallet but it sounds like she was preoccupied.

Why were you delighted to find a wallet? Just curious on that reaction? Why did you expect a reward or need more praise/thanks? Maybe you could tell us more so we can understand you better. Taking something as you describe is theft by finding btw there is no such thing as finders keepers, it's not yours and you know it so you don't get to keep it without criminal implications

I found a wallet balanced on the ATM at Tesco recently. Luckily I had just seen the elderly man who had been using the machine. Chased after him and asked if it was his. He glared at me and said ‘That’s mine. Why have you got my wallet?’
I just handed it over and rushed back to my shopping. I guess he was caught by surprise and thought I was in some sort of scam. Not very heartwarming!

Well by that logic, people are dying in war zones in many places, why are you harping on about not getting sufficient reward for returning someone's property to them?

What a bizarre post, OP.
Are you a child?

You don’t do a good deed for a nice reaction. You do it because it’s the right thing to do and you’d want someone to do the same for you.

Imagine it was your wallet that you lost. You had money for bills and some thieving idiot took your cash before they gave it back, how would you feel?? Giving back the wallet and ALL it's contents is the right thing to do, despite the reaction of the wife. You don't know her circumstances, maybe she was stressed out and dealing with something as you dropped it off. Maybe she'd been up all night with a baby/child, maybe a parent is very ill and she's worried. Anyone who thinks it's acceptable to steal to "reward" themselves needs to give their head a wobble

You sound really pleased with yourself but most people wouldn’t even have thought about stealing the money.

I lost my purse on the train and when I told the guard he said I would probably get it back as people in London were really honest. I didn’t believe him but then I was contacted by my library to say that someone had picked up my purse and was keeping it safe for me. The person who found my purse had used my library card to track me down. I called them and arranged to pick up my purse - they didn’t live that far away. It was a student. I didn’t believe give them a reward.

The second time was quite a few years later. I left a bag on the train. It had my AirPods in it and some expensive perfume. I reported it to lost property but didn’t think I would get it back. A few weeks later it was sent back to me with every single item still inside it.

Perhaps I have been lucky. In any case I try to pay more attention to my possessions these days in case I am not so lucky next time and the person who finds it is like the OP.

People are dying in many countries, why mention only one ?

I’ve found a couple of wallets. Always returned them. Not once did I expect a reward and if I’d been offered one I’d have refused it. I’d always return or hand in a purse if I found one because I’m an honest person and I’d like others to do the same for me. I don’t do because I want rewarding.

Who are the people saying you should have stolen the money .

Why? What difference clears that make?

If you are as skint as you make out then I'm sure you'd be very happy to have your intact wallet with your tenner in it returned to you without expectation of reward, no? Just do the right thing because it is the right thing and not because you think there should be something in it for you.

I might have wanted to give it back personally, who was the lady you gave it to? Will she actually give it back? Cynical, me?

You did the right thing, isn’t that enough? And you have the cheek to bring Gaza into someone questioning your questioning you doing the right thing. Would you have felt better if the wife had ‘performed’, or were you after a reward? Why is recognition of something that should always happen, so important to you?

I've been on both sides of this. I've found a wallet, and returned it; and I've lost a wallet, and had it returned. My DH helped an elderly lady to change a tyre, on the spur of the moment. And somebody found our cat after he had been hurt, and saved his life.

Money changed hands on a few of these occasions, but it was never expected. This thread reminds me of the very heated one about a certain expectation to give Christmas tips to every Tom, Dick and Harry.

I think she would like a gesture of it being returned

Too late to edit but I DID give them a reward. Just some money to have a drink on me.

Just a thank you would be nice.

So what is she was unenthusiastic when you returned it, she answered the door to a stranger and may have felt unsettled or perhaps she has other things on her mind.

We don’t return lost items to expect a fanfare and a parse in your owner, we do so because it’s the right thing go do.

Anyone that suggests you kept the cash should be removed from your life as they are not a decent person.