Are you responsible for returning something you never asked for in the first place?

As a side hustle a reader we’re calling Frida started to pick up some work through one of the many companies online that hire people on a job-by-job basis to do tasks. Whether it was serving as a mathematics tutor or mental health counselor or delivering a restaurant’s food orders or fulfilling a handyperson’s task is not critical to the story. What’s important is that Frida took on the work and after several months of doing it was enjoying both the work and the steady income from it.

After about six months of working with the company and receiving regular direct deposits into her checking account for the work done, Frida got a message from the company management that a bonus of $1,000 was being deposited into her account because she had referred several new employees to the company. Frida checked and the money had indeed been deposited into her checking account.

Frida was thrilled to receive the cash, but she was puzzled. She hadn’t recommended to any of her friends that they sign up to work with the company. She figured maybe she was being rewarded for some other milestone and continue to do the work as it came her way.

“About two weeks later I got an email telling me it was an error,” wrote Frida. Apparently, the bonus had been wrongly assigned to several workers. “They apologized and asked me to email them $900, but to keep the remaining $100 as a sign of how sorry they were about the error.”

Frida plans to return the $900 because she wants to continue working with the company, she wrote. But she wonders if she really ought to be expected to return something she didn’t ask for in the first place. “Wouldn’t it have been OK for me to keep the full thousand and suggest they be more careful next time?” she asked. “Shouldn’t they let me keep it as a sign of how much they value me as an employee? After all, it wasn’t my error.”

I’ve received similar questions before. A reader receives too much money from an ATM or a bank erroneously deposits too much in his account. A checker at a grocery store returns too much change to a shopper. A large online retailer sends a reader a box of books and garden tools she never ordered. “What’s the right thing to do?” is always the question.

The right thing when you get something to which you are not entitled or you didn’t earn or didn’t purchase is to try to correct the errors. I’m not a legal expert so I don’t know the penalty for keeping money banks may have erroneously given, but regardless of the law, the right thing is to point out the error and return it. Same goes at the grocery store and the online retailer. In some cases, the online retailer may tell the customer to keep the goods since the cost of shipping and returns doesn’t make it worth their while to have them sent back.

Frida made a good choice by returning the money when she was alerted to the error. That she’s $100 richer in the process is a pleasant side benefit of doing the right thing.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.

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