When I was in graduate school at Cornell, I lived in a co-op with thirteen other students. Some were undergrads and some were grad students. We were dedicated to cheap housing and consensus living and it might have been appropriate to call us updated hippies who composted, recycled and cooked with lots of spices and natural ingredients.
I had one roommate who was an undergraduate, but was mature enough to get along well with those of us in our mid-20s (yes, that’s a joke). For the sake of his anonymity, I’ll call him Todd. Everyone did their laundry using the coin-operated machines in the basement and I kept my change in a leather coin purse from Mexico. It was a distinctive purse and I felt very disappointed when I lost it one day. I really liked that leather purse, plus it had several dollars worth of quarters and dimes in it.
Weeks went by and the purse didn’t turn up. I was bewildered because I never took that purse out of the house. It was specifically for laundry so I only took it out of my room to go downstairs. Finally one day I was in the kitchen with others, having lunch. Todd took out my purse and began digging in it for a coin.
“Hey!” I said. “That’s my coin purse!”
“It is?” Todd said.
“Yes! I lost it weeks ago. Where did you get it?”
“Uh, I think I found it.”
“You found my coin purse and you just kept it? Where was it?”
“Uh, I don’t remember.” Todd held my coin purse loosely and indeed looked completely perplexed by the circumstances.
“Give it to me! Hey, wait a minute. Did you spend it?” My coin purse was less than half full and I knew it had had much more than that.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Todd! You found a purse full of money in the house and you just spent it without even asking if anyone had lost it?”
I couldn’t believe it. I don’t remember how the rest of the conversation went, but Todd had no defense for his actions and our roommates were surprised at him, too. I thought Todd considered his roommate his friends, not people who deserved whatever they got if they lost some money.
Years later, guess where Todd was working? Goldman Sachs. He’s not there anymore, but to this day, whenever I hear about some Goldman Sachs assholery, I think of Todd.
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