Blogging By Proxy

I was chatting with my handsome man friend this morning and he told me an interesting story. After he finished, he actually said "If I had a blog, I'd totally blog this!" So I laughed and told him I'd blog it by proxy... (even though - AHEM - blogs are free and you could totally sign up for one yourself, you know :)

Anyway, a few weeks ago, the HMF was taking the red line home from Union Station. A gaggle of girls got on and off, and he noticed that after they'd left, one of the girls had accidentally left behind her newly purchased IPOD NANO. Like, with the sales receipt and everything.

Now, my HMF being who he is, he picked up the nano, felt bad for the girl, and tried everything he could to locate her. Thanks to the receipt, he had her name and the last four digits of her credit card. From this, he was able to track down her parents phone number in Florida. He called, left a message explaining who he was, what had happened and asked that they have their daughter contact him to get her nano back.

They never called.

Ok, well, maybe he had the wrong number or they were on vacation, or estranged from their daughter. No big deal.

So he goes back to the store and returns the nano to her credit card, seeing as he couldn't physically give it back to her, the least he could do was give the money back to her, right?

(Are you all starting to see why I date this man?)

But then, one of his more techno-savvy colleagues, who was also privvy to this adventure, says to him "Why don't you try looking her up on Facebook?"

A- HA! Yet another good use for this sight.

So he goes on Facebook, signs up, easily locates her (he's got her full name after all, and remembers what she looks like, vaguely) and writes her an email with the subject line: IPOD NANO.

"Hi. You don't know me, but I found your new ipod nano on the metro last week. I've been trying to contact you, but didn't think about facebook until it was too late. I've already returned the nano to the store and your credit card got the full refund."

It's been a few days now, and he's gotten absolutely nothing back. No confirmation, no THANK YOU FOR SAVING ME $200, NO NOTHING.

..and I mean, niceness is it's own reward, right? If you're doing something considerate just for the sake of acknowledgement, maybe your heart isn't in the right place exactly. BUT STILL - he didn't have to do any of this. He could've sold it on craigslist (in fact, he posted it in the lost and found - and even tho it wasn't anyone's there, the folks that replied to him were genuinely surprised and thankful to see such honesty).

So I don't know what to think. Maybe this girl doesn't check her facebook page all that much. Maybe $200 is nothing to her. She's German, and 18 (according to her facebook page) so maybe her English isn't all that great.

But still, if she DID get it and WAS grateful, in the age of instant communication, the least she could do is spend 30 seconds writing a "hey thanks alot; you're a decent person" email.

What do YOU think?