A Conundrum

[gnomi]

I got home from the grocery store to find a jar of dried rosemary leaves in my bag that I did not purchase. It *is* hechshered (certified kosher) and it is the brand I buy. But I didn't pull it from the shelf, and it does not appear on my receipt.

Do I:

1. Return it to the store and explain that it was in my bag and I didn't pay for it (running the risk that they will think I shoplifted it and am now feeling remorse)?

2. Go back to the store and give them money for the jar of rosemary?

3. Keep and use the rosemary (I put it in tomato sauces and other tasty food)?


I like rosemary, and I use it, but I wasn't due to buy more for a while yet. Thus my conundrum.

Thoughts?

ETA: I called this morning, and they said I *could* come in and pay for it or return it, but it was fine with them if I just kept it.

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I'd return the jar saying that you found it in your bag and you didn't buy it.

Nobody would shoplift a jar of rosemary. While a jar of rosemary is exactly the sort of thing that would fall into a shopping bag accidentally.

[taffimai.livejournal.com]

In the past in a similar situation I called the store, explained and they told me to keep it. No guilt that way.

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

I would return it, assuming this is a store you go to regularly. The whole shoplifting/remorse thing wouldn't have even occurred to me.

[madknits.livejournal.com]

Easily returned. The person before you probably bought it and the bagger didn't see it. Alas.

Bring it back. They'll probably tell you to keep it.

[madfilkentist]

(1) would be my choice. Very likely some other customer is missing a jar of rosemary which was paid for. Unless there's something really weird about this store, I wouldn't worry about their claiming you shoplifted it.

[stormsdotter.livejournal.com]

I also agree with the first choice.

[tapuz.livejournal.com]

Perhaps a good middle ground is: Call the store and ask if anyone called to say that they are missing it. If so, bring it over there. If not, ask if you can bring either the rosemary or the receipt and rosemary payment next time you are there.

YMMV, etc.

If it is a personal bag, and not a store bag, maybe also ask any friends who you have seen when you had the bag whether they might have left it there/for you?

(yum, rosemary!)

[jonbaker.livejournal.com]

This happened to Debbie last year. She took the cheese back to the store, and offered to pay for it. They were very confused, and took some time to understand what she was saying, but they eventually took the money.

[cathshaffer.livejournal.com]

You're a mom of twins. Do the thing that takes the least time. I would hold onto the receipt, and the next time I am at the store, offer to pay for the rosemary.

[jadelennox]

I did this with a store that accidentally credited me $1.80 (paid them back next time I was there anyway) and they were pleased by it.

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

It's not on her receipt. What I did the one time I accidentally didn't pay for something was the next time I was at the store, I picked up some more, and told them to ring it through twice because of what I had done.

[moonpuppy61.livejournal.com]

My thought was 4 Muffin or Squeaker had started to pull items into the grocery cart when you weren't looking. But that should happen when they are older and have longer reach.

My second thought was like so many above me, contact the store and let them know that it was put into your bag in error. You can offer to bring it back the next time you go shopping there. The other customer will soon be letting the store know that they were shorted the spice.

[sethg]

This falls under the heading of hashavat aveidah, right?

I vote for “call the store”. Even if you knew for sure that the store will say “what the hell, keep the jar, don’t bother coming back to pay for it”, the store manager should have the opportunity to correct the store’s inventory records.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

If you have use for the rosemary, go back to the store and pay for it. If you don't need rosemary right now, go back to the store and return it. In other words, treat it like something which you presently have the option to purchase or not, as you please.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

I'd return it to the store, or offer to pay for it. There is no urgency: it has a long shelf-life. You can deal with it on your next trip.

I have no idea what YOU should do. I merely know what I would do.

[arfur]

I'd consider the price of the item versus the cost in staff time it would take them to understand and correct the situation. If it's worth less than $5 or so, I figure you'd be doing them a disservice as a company by trying to return it.

If I were feeling particularly fastidious, I'd set aside the value of the item for charity.

m'yayesh makes hefker

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

You should keep the jar of rosemary and not fret about it.

In all probability it ended up in your bag because it was paid for by a previous customer and not put in his/her bag. Unless it's a tremendously expensive jar of rosemary, the customer got home, didn't find the rosemary, and either wondered if (s)he had indeed bought it, or simply cussed and let it go. Very few people will return to the store to try to insist that their item wasn't in their bag when they got home, because they're arguing from a weak and potentially embarrassing position. They cannot prove that they didn't get their item. In all likelihood the person will not return to the store especially for the rosemary (unless they needed it desperately for a specific recipe in the next few days), and will forget about it passively even if they do not decide to give up hope of recovering the rosemary. In any case, it is improbable that it is the store that has suffered the loss, therefore you have no obligation to return it to the store. If you are considering hashavas aveida, you are doing something incorrect by returning it to the store, unless you believe the store will attempt to make whole the proper owner of the rosemary. Your obligation is to return it to the owner (or a proper agent who will return it), not to some random third party, which is the store's status if my scenario above is correct.

Now, thinking about the hapless, or at least rosemaryless, customer: the probability is that s/he has lost hope of recovering it. It's a commodity, identical to every other jar of rosemary on the shelf. It is not very expensive, so the customer is likely to think "aw, forget it." (Or that even if s/he doesn't think that, s/he will forget about it passively.) IIRC (cylor), once the owner of a lost object is m'yayesh it, it's hefker. You, in picking it up, made a kinyan on it and now own it. End of story.

Shall we do duelling halachikists and ask R"B next time we're all in shul? :->

Re: m'yayesh makes hefker

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

Oh, and iirc you are permitted to recover from the owner of the lost object fair compensation for efforts you expend in trying to identify him/her. (You're obligated to return it but not to expend money for doing so. I am unclear whether that counts for value-of-time-spent and what the compensation rate is, presumably that of a guardian of a cucumber field, as it often is for this sort of thing.) That may exceed the value of the jar of rosemary.

Again, CYLOR before you try to recover those funds.

A final thought: hashavas aveida only counts for certain populations (ha-meivin yaavin); other populations are assumed to always be m'yayesh due to their culture-determined expectations regarding others' behavior. Not that operating beyond the law and causing a kiddush haShem is at all a bad thing, mind. I'm just thinking minimal standards of halachic behavior.

Re: m'yayesh makes hefker

[madfilkentist]

This line of argumentation puts a hypothetical -- that the store was compensated by someone else's paying for rosemary they didn't get -- over a fact -- that N. received something from the store which she didn't pay for. Arguing that the store probably didn't really lose anything is a dangerous line of thinking which can excuse all kinds of evasions. I'm reminded of a character in a Dave Berg cartoon who said that pilfering from work is a victimless crime because the employer is insured against it.

I don't know what any of the Hebrew words mean, so I'm not addressing that part of your argument.

Re: m'yayesh makes hefker

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

I'm making an argument from Jewish legal principals based on a specific commandment in the Torah (roughly, our Bible) as elucidated by our rabbis over two millenia according to tradition. The bottle of rosemary is not stolen within that or indeed ANY legal framework: it falls under a different category, that of lost objects. Theft requires intent. The Torah law in question puts specific requirements on Jews with respect to lost objects, one of which is to return it to the CORRECT owner. In doing so, the question of probability is appropriate to bring in to the argument. Someone lost something; I merely insist that it probably wasn't the store. If you assume as I do that it wasn't the store that suffered the loss, either directly or by replacing the missing rosemary when the customer complains, then returning the bottle to the store improperly benefits the store and implicitly steals the customer. If it was not the store that suffered the loss, gnomi would no more discharge her duty to G-d and man by returning it there, than she would by "returning" the bottle of rosemary to me. (Of course if you assume that the store was indeed the entity that suffered the loss, you should return it there. But the fact that gnomi is (1) an observant Jew who knows that already and yet (2) is posting this question, means to me that she does not assume that it was indeed the store that suffered the loss.)

IIUC, Jewish law provides a framework for knowing when a found object is liable to having efforts made for its return: it needs to have identifying characteristics, and it needs to be within a period of time that the owner will have not given up hope of having it returned. Again, the law permits discussion of probability, of the average person. I am averring that the customer is likely to have despaired of his/her rosemary within a brief time of his/her discovery that it was missing. In such a case, the rosemary becomes ownerless in Jewish law and need not be returned.

Now, you can look at this and point, as many people throughout the millenia have done, and say "[Orthodox] Jews don't obey the spirit of the law, it's all letter and pettifogging." You're entitled to your opinion on that matter; you (and anyone else reading my response) are entitled to have a system of willy-nilly morals that responds to individual feelings of guilt about keeping the rosemary. However, the OP, and I, are Orthodox Jews who believe that Torah provides us with a G-d-given system for thinking about such questions. We are entitled to, indeed encouraged to and praised for, behavior beyond the letter of the law -- but only when that behavior actually results in making whole the loss of the ACTUAL person (or corporate entity) that suffered the loss.

If in Jewish law she is entitled to keep the rosemary but does not, instead returning it to the WRONG person, she is guilty of having deprived herself (stealing from herself) of a legitimate benefit, which is problematic in Jewish law as well. If despite pointing to legal principals she feels guilty about keeping the rosemary she could "return" the bottle by donating its value to a community-oriented cause within the community she believes the customer comes from.

I of course may be wrong in my understanding of the law, which is why I use the abbreviation CYLOR (consult your local orthodox rabbi) to remind her (well, she knows) and anyone lurking and reading, that I am not qualified to rule as an expert on such matters, but do so only from my understanding of the law as a reasonably educated layperson.

[batyatoon]

I would say call the store and ask.

Also I feel obliged to point out that if you are feeling remorse about this, it would be accurate to say that you now have rosemary and rue.



:D?