...and it was then discovered that the bank had written in an error which definitely worked in your favor, do they have the right to demand that you go in and re-sign so they can correct their mistake? If a jewelry store put a $50,000 piece of jewelry in the discount case by accident, and sold it, does it then have the right to demand it back? If a drunken customer egregiously overtips, and the waitress questions it, but he insists she keep it, can he come back the following day, sober, and demand she return the money? (This last one actually happened, sometime in the last 5 years. It made the also-rans column in my newspaper. No citation -- sorry. :( )

The answer to all of these questions is "no".

The bank is responsible for keeping track of its own equipment. These people didn't pick something up and sneak off with it. They followed the business procedure established by the bank. This was a business error.

The bank can appeal to people's higher nature and ask them to bring the money back, but it has no right to demand that people do so. Nobody broke into that bank. It was the bank's error.

If this happened at my bank, I couldn't keep the money, but it has much, much more to do with being able to place human faces with the business. We are treated like marks and given machines to interact with. No one should be surprised that there is no human feeling of guilt when there is no human at the other end of the transaction. To get a greater response from the people to whom their machine dispensed the money, the bank must put a human face on their loss.

When individuals sign unwise agreements with businesses, "Let the buyer beware" is the byword. If they make a mistake, oh, well! -- as long as the business stayed within the letter of the law. Who sticks up for people when they make a mistake and businesses profit? As people are screwed, so shall they screw others when they get the chance. We forget the value of sympathy when we cease to receive it.

This is called "the cost of doing business" in a dog-eat-dog world. If we would stop eating dogs and being eaten by dogs, we must stop treating each other like dogs.

Get off your high horses, all of you, and go do something good for someone. Today. Quietly. Get up tomorrow. Repeat.

Let civility be woven back into the fabric of society by the work of many hands working single threads, and not as the trumpet of superior philosophy or self-aggrandizement. People will respond -- slowly -- according to their treatment. Instead of berating others for their behavior, whose actions you can't affect, find someone whose actions you can affect, every day. Do you know who that might be?

Regards--
Mary Anne