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I knew a person once.

He was fairly poor, earning only just enough to get by every month.

One day he was paying for his car parking. His bill was $2, and he inserted a $20 bill in the automated machine to pay for it. The machine rumbled and whirred and gave him his change.

$38.

He and I were both confused as to what happened. An ordinary person would have just kept it. After all, it was a computer error in his favour – who was losing out? Some big corporation somewhere?

He instead pressed the assistance buzzer on the machine and explained to the operator on the other end what had happened. The man on the other side commended him on his honesty and permitted the machine to accept the difference back.

I asked him later why he did that. I told him that that money could have seriously helped him out with his day to day expenses.

He smiled to me. He said, “Why should I keep something that isn’t mine? Something that I have not used my own hands to earn?”

I guess the moral of the story is that we should always work hard for what we get, because what is more important than the work we do or the money we earn is the lesson it provides us. There will be those who have more and those who have less, but at the day, our integrity and morality is all we have.