As it turns out, he was one of the managers. He said that he really appreciated my honesty. He gave me his card and told me that from now on, anytime I wanted to buy anything in the store — even computers — I would get a 10% discount, beginning with the $80 bag I had brought back.

That’s not often going to happen of course, but that one incident drove home for me that sometimes doing the right thing also turns out to be better than you think.

But on the other side I have heard from people that had the opposite issue happen where they notified the bank and the bank then took the money. Or even the bank was never notified but eventually realised the issue and took it.

So with banks it can be in your favor or it might not. Depending on the bank and their mood I guess.

I had been tempted to just walk out victoriously. But I did what I always do in these situations which is to remind myself that my soul cannot be bought (certainly not for such a low price!).

In a movie I just watched, a mother asked her son, “What do I always tell you?” He said something like “Stand up for myself.” She replied, “No, fight for what is right.” Sometimes it’s so easy.

Just today, my wife went to the grocery store. The cashier rang up one produce item as Cucumbers. My wife pointed out that they were actually Zucchini. She didn’t know the prices and had no idea if that would save her money or cost her more money. The point was just that the cashier had made a mistake and my wife corrected her. She would have done so even if she knew the correction would cost her money.

We all like to save money, but we shouldn’t do it by taking advantage of mistakes made by others. That isn’t being a good person.

When I lived in Michigan I bought some soda at the store one time, and noticed they hadn’t applied the appropriate discount.

I took it up to the customer service people, and they refunded me 3x the mistake. Apparently there is a law in some states that if an automatically scanned item scans too high, they have to refund you a multiple of the difference.

I guess the theory being that it’s so easy to overcharge so many people, that they want to give stores a real incentive not to make hte mistake..

I actually wonder how you managed to be paying attention for overcharges, but missed the cashier putting two items in your bags that were not scanned.

I also would have the bank error corrected rather than assume that money was mine and then have the account overdrafted because the bank itself discovered the error and rectified it without your knowledge.