It all started when I was about 16. After school I occasionally went to the nearby Woodward's Food Floor (the grocery area of a major department store, back then) to buy myself a chicken croquette from the deli. I handed the cashier a dollar for the .25 delicacy and she gave four quarters back in change. I took a step away before I realized what had happened so I turned back to the cashier and holding out the extra quarter said, "Excuse me but you've given" at that point she cut me off with, "I didn't make any mistake!" So I tried again, "But you've given me too much change." She belligerently accepted the offending quarter without so much as a thank you. As I walked away I could hear the women in the line, behind me, commenting on my honesty and I hoped the cashier was turning a nice bright shade of red. I said I was honest. I didn't say I wasn't vindictive.
Over the years I always counted my change and whenever there was an error whether it was in my favour or not I rectified it asap and almost always receive a grateful thank you from the cashier. Nowadays I rarely use cash. I have a wallet full of credit cards and moths reside in my coin purse.
Yesterday I went grocery shopping at Safeway and my purchases totalled $111.58. I stuck my card into the machine, chip first and waited for the instructions to appear. First the machine identified which credit card I was using. Then it said my purchase amounted to $11.58 and to press OK if this was correct. I told the cashier, she corrected the amount and I finished the transaction. That was the second largest amount I could have stolen. (Don't you try to tell me it's not stealing because the store made the mistake.)
The largest amount was about $350.00. It happened many years ago when I volunteered to wash the pocketed aprons worn by a group, who shall remain nameless. They were selling things and used the apron pockets to store the monies paid to them. I had washed all of the aprons and had tossed most of them in the drier when I noticed something in the bottom of the machine. It was a $20.00 bill. I checked the machine carefully, examined the pockets of the aprons and came up with about $350.00 the last sales shift forgot to remove from the pockets. Surprisingly, none of it was torn or destroyed so I laid the money out to dry and handed it to my horrified husband (who was in charge of these sales) when he came home.