A Test Of Honesty?

If you have been reading my blog lately, you would notice that two of my latest blog entry speaks about the human quality of communicating and acting truthfully related to truth as a value. That's Wikipedia's definition of honesty for you. Two people I really don't have a personal connection to gave me a lesson or two about honesty which is of course Jun Lozada and a service crew in Chowking by the name of Lester. I didn't know I was going to be tested by God about the same value. Being honest. I know deep inside me and my friends know that I am an honest person. But this time, I am having second thoughts about that statement.

Last week, Friday morning to be exact, I went to the ATM to withdraw my salary for the past 10 days and saw the available balance in my ATM: twenty-five thousand pesos! Yes, you read it right. 25,000 pesos. I may be working in a call center and very well paid but I would never get a salary of 25,000 pesos for ten days even if I worked 14 days straight without any rest days. You might be asking, "what happened?"

Our company's bank (I will be not be mentioning the specifics for obvious reason) changed our old ATM's for new ones for standardization. After we received our new ATM's, we were advised to wait for 24 hours for activation. When payday came which was Friday, I heard that some of my colleagues had more than their expected salary. Fifty-thousand, thirty-thousand, twenty-thousand plus. The numbers were too unreal. Some, or most of my colleagues to be exact, withdrew the extra cash. They bought stuff and spent the money as if they won the lotto. Some of my colleagues, however, didn't get their expected salary. It was short of their expected salary which was the other side of the coin.

When it was my time to withdraw, I didn't expect that I would get more of my expected salary. To my surprise (actually delight is the more appropriate word), the available balance is 25,000 pesos. The moment I saw the amount there was no hesitation on my part that I would only get the exact pay that I got. So I withdraw the exact amount. Not the exact amount actually because I left the ATM with 15,100 as my available balance. I left 100 pesos for myself. There you go, you know how much I got and how much I get paid (it includes a lot of overtime by the way). Since this blog is about honesty, I decided to be honest about the circumstances surrounding this event and this blog will be my accountability partner (you would know why later). My plan was to wait for the word from the bank on Monday on what happened and see what would happen next.

The next day, my colleagues told me that everything is okay. Which means the balance they see on their ATM is stating the right pay amount they got. They again withdrew the amount which is their right pay. This is where I felt envious of them. They were buying stuff (cellphones), ordering pizza and spending the exceeded amount they got like there's no tomorrow. That was the time I decided to go back to the ATM to withdrew the one hundred peso that I left in my ATM. I was excited to withdraw not the 100 pesos that I left but with the excess that I would be getting.

True enough, the available balance registered 10,100 which is the right pay I would be receiving. I withdrew the whole amount.

I still have the excess 10,000 pesos with me and I still haven't touched it. I planned to buy a cell phone for my mom and a capital for her Autoload Max business but I decided not to. My mom is also pestering me to let her borrow some of it and she would just pay it later if the bank will say so. I didn't give in. I knew the money was not for me and I didn't work for it. It was really hard for me to do that with all the debts that we are in and the financial problems that we have right now.

But I am no saint. I wanted the money. All the time I was asking a lot of people like my friends and my mom for advise and almost all of them were saying the same thing. It is the bank's fault. If it shows that amount is in your ATM, it is yours and you can withdraw it. It's like this scenario: If you walk out of a bank and the bank teller gave you a change then you suddenly found out that it was short, you can't go to the bank teller to say "Your change was short" and expect to give the exact change because there is a sign on the bank teller's post that says "Count your change before leaving."

That is also my position.

The last advise that I had and I think is the most reasonable one came from my best friend. The bank can go after the money but they can't force us to give back the money. It would be upon your conscience to return it.

As of today, while I am writing this blog, there is still no word from the bank when I checked my email. The reason why I am blogging about this is because I want to be accountable for what I will be doing with the excess 10,000 pesos I have with me. Whatever I will do, I will post it here and I will be responsible and accountable to myself and to God whatever I will do with the money.

How about you? What would you do?

Comments

[fAtImAh]

Bogart, what do we have here? A conscience-stricken guy? You know i've read a news about a guy in the US who accidentally had 5 million USD deposited to his account. He withdrew 2M of the money to buy his GF diamonds and the rest of it he did bad investments. And you know what happened? He is now facing a 5M lawsuit for taking something that isn't his. I'm not saying that it goes the same for Philippine banks, but what I'm trying to say is that an individual is given the power of rationalization to think things over. Since I guess you've withdrawn the money, they can't take it from you... Bogz, I know that you know what to do - you just need reassurance that you're doing the right thing. Basta, if ever you get caught i'll try to visit you in the jail once in a while....lolz...take it easy....

[Rolly]

Nice one Fat, nice one...hehe...I already made a decision on my latest bog entry but since I just resigned, there's still no closure to this subject...

Anyways, thank you in advance for your visits in case I get jailed but I don't want to spend a single day of my life in prison...hehehe...and we're not talking of multi-million pesos here either...thanks for the comment...I really appreciate it...ciao! =)