Advice please!
Whenever I asked for advice in my Diary-X blog, I was never disappointed. I hope the same happens here!
At the end of second period as my kids were getting ready to go, one of them stood up from the table and I noticed a cell phone in her pocket. Now, I know this girl well and I know about her family, and I know that they're too poor to afford a land line, let alone a cell phone for their daughter. So I asked her where she got it.
"It's a nice cell phone," she said, taking it out of her pocket and looking at it admiringly.
"I'm sure it is," I said, "But where did you get it?"
"The store," she said brightly. I raised an eyebrow. We looked at each other for a few seconds before she burst out, "There were no cameras miss!"
"What do you mean?" I asked, hoping for the best.
"I looked, there were no cameras. And I waited until the lady was looking away from me, and my mom was looking away from me, and I took it out of the lady's pocket and I put it into my pocket and I walked away."
I groaned. "That's stealing, you can't do that!"
"Finders keepers," she said huffily.
"Look, the police can find you," I said, and I began explaining about satellites and tracking, but she didn't understand it. The bell rang and she left.
Somehow it felt wrong to take the phone from her. I guess because it wasn't stolen on school property I felt like I didn't have the authority to take it.
Now I'm not sure what to do. I'm going to talk to her tomorrow morning and make her see that she can't keep it. But what should I tell her to do? If this was a suburb I'd make her march down to the police station and confess because the officer would probably let her off with a lecture. But here, well, they aren't big on lectures. I hate to make her take her punishment since she does have impaired judgement and probably doesn't realize how wrong her actions were. She can't go to the police station and say she found it, or took it from someone else who stole it because the police station is in a bad part of town. I don't particularly want to go there either, or get involved with handling stolen items. I don't want her to lie, so turning it over to me would be the most honest thing so that I can just say, "Hey, I think a kid stole this, will you return it?", but who would I give it to?
I never knew the black-and-white of right and wrong would get so damn grey.
posted by Danulai @ 5:36 PM
4 Comments:
One solution, if she gives it to you, would be to find the telephone number (I find mine under settings) and then call the telephone company to which the phone belongs & see if they can contact the owner. Just tell the person that you found it or something.
"Finder's Keepers" doesnt apply when you "find" something in someone elses purse/pocket/house/car/etc.
I think its completely unacceptable that she keep the phone. Its not her's. Someone else is looking for it. Someone else is PAYING for it. It's full of someones elses information.
I agree with alette. If its possible, try to find an understanding with this girl that there can serious consequences for her taking the phone. Try to reason with her to let you have the phone, and nothing else will ever be said about it. Then, call the phone company or a couple of the numbers in its phonebook and seek out the owner. When asked, say you found it. You work at a school in a rough area and it was abandoned. As long as it is returned, I dont think the issue would be pressed any further.
I definitely think you need to try and get it from her. Then do the right thing to return it, without implicating her.
Its possible that if you called yourself from the phone, you might get a clue to the owner based on the caller ID info.
i agree with the two above. you can make it clear that she didn't find it on the floor, she took it out of someone's purse. let her know that you're willing to be the one to return it to the rightful owner and not get her into trouble about it. ask her to put herself in the same situation as the woman she took it from. maybe a bit of empathy will help.
if she talks about how rich that person was and can afford to replace it, let her know that appearances can be very deceiving. that woman might be struggling to pay her bills and that's her only phone.
Me 4
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