Moral quandary of today - when you realise, too late that a shopkeeper has surreptitiously given you a foreign coin that resembles a UK coin in your change, should you then surreptitiously try and pay for something with that coin at another shop. Just to pass the problem on to someone else. Or should you accept that you have been duped and either throw the coin away, use it to give to a busker or tramp and let them deal with the problem or arrange a foreign holiday to the country that the coin originates from so you are able to spend the money legally?
Today I was about to buy some marmite from a local shop and I reached into my pocket for money. I had quite a lot of change. I would be able to pay the requisite amount exactly. Then I noticed that one of my 10ps was not a 10p. It was the same size as a 10p and had 10 written on it, but it was not a 10p. I don't even know where it was from, so I couldn't arrange the holiday option.
Now my immediate reaction was to be pissed off. Someone at a place I'd been to earlier today had managed to "accidentally" sneak this coin into my change. I had been hoodwinked and made to look a fool. As I placed the rogue coin in my pocket the person at the till must have been laughing at me. They are probably still laughing at me now. What's worse for me is that I don't even know who they are. God damn them.
Anyway, although I had enough change to pay for my purchase legally, my instictive response was to hide this false 10p amongst the rest of my correct change, give it to the shopkeeper in exchange for my marmite and then nonchalently walk out of the shop, whistling, as if I had not just pulled off the crime of the century.
And it is in a way the perfect crime, because even if the shopkeeper spotted it, I could have just acted all surprised and gone "What?! A foreign coin, you say?! My goodness. I had no idea. I thought it was a genuine 10p. I am terribly sorry. Here have a real 10p." He would have then given me my false 10p back, but I would have been safe in the knowledge that eventually I would be able to pass it on, to someone as stupid and unobservant as me.
I went ahead with the plan and as I turned away with my purchase and heard al the coins clink into their respective drawers, I smiled to myself. I had got away with it. I had passed the problem on to someone else. I have never felt more alive.
But as I walked away from the shop (it's a local one, but I usually use the one across the road, but they didn't have any Marmite - lucky for them on this occasion) I thought about the moral implications. I had given the man who ran that shop an illegal piece of tender. I had stolen 10p off him and possibly therefore robbed him of any profit that he might have made from this small jar of Marmite. Admittedly someone had pulled the same trick on me, and you might argue, well it was only 10p, it doesn't really matter. But you might equally argue that it was only 10p and I should have taken the loss on the chin and maybe put the coin in a jar and when I had enough I could have sent all the rogue coins off to one of those charities that takes all the holiday change and uses it to help the poor children.
Of course, I reasoned that the shopkeeper would probably accidentally or deliberately give the coin to someone else in their change, that it would become their problem. That in a sense that 10 whatevers coin had become a kind of legal tender now. It would go from person to person, acting as a 10p, occasionally be spotted to be not a 10p, but then the next time that was tried turning out to be a 10p again. Until it reached someone like my dad, who would be too honest to behave in such an underhand manor and would take the loss of the 10p on the chin and remove the false coin from circulation.
I suppose what interests me here is that it was second nature to me, to, without question, pass on this minor inconvenience to another person. And that it delighted me to do so.
I suppose it is unlikely to ever some to the police's attention, though if I ran the police I would try and track down the original person who used the coin illegally (using DNA or something) and then shit them up about it.
Then as they were crying and saying sorry, I'd just say "Ah, don't worry, everyone does it. I was just messing with you."
It's a good job I don't run the police.
