Lessons taught, lessons learned

Woman loses camera on vacation. Woman gets call the camera was found. Woman calls the people who found the camera.

Nearly-unbelievable incivility ensues:

We discussed the specifics of the camera, the brown pouch it was in, the spare battery and memory card, the yellow rubberband around the camera. It was clear it was my camera, and I was thrilled.

“Well,” she said, “we have a bit of a situation. You see, my nine year old son found your camera, and we wanted to show him to do the right thing, so we called, but now he’s been using it for a week and he really loves it and we can’t bear to take it from him.”

I listened, not sure where she was going with this.

“And he was recently diagnosed with diabetes, and he’s now convinced he has bad luck, and finding the camera was good luck, and so we can’t tell him that he has to give it up. Also we had to spend a lot of money to get a charger and a memory card.”

It started to dawn on me that she had no intention of returning the camera.

“We’d be happy to return your photographs…”

And, unbelievably, it goes downhill from there.

Pity the boy who got showed how “to do the right thing” in this case. And a pox on the parents who decided to steal an expensive camera (and use the boy as an excuse).

(via kottke)