Russian Drunk Forgets Small Fortune on Train : Six reasons why the attendant should have kept it

Many Canadian children will recall having their mittens sewn onto the sleeves of their jackets in the winter. This was a practical measure on the part of parents, as mittens would otherwise be lost when a youngster drops them in a rushed attempt to fire a snowball at a moving target – like, say, a school bus or a police car – the kind of throw that requires nimble fingers unencumbered by mittens. We sometimes wish there were something similar for drunk adults, but we have yet to come up with a way of tying one’s mobile phone, wallet and house keys to one’s person without looking like the guy who gets the rubber hook at the institution’s yearly fishing trip.

What most of us lose while we’re out on the piss though rarely amounts to more than can fall out of a person’s pocket while horizontal in the back of a taxi. A drunk passenger on a train in Volgograd, Russia, however, forgot more than just a box of Chiclets and his membership card to the meat of the month club when he disembarked.

An attendant inspecting the train after he left found a bag containing eight million roubles, or about US$340,000, in one of the train’s expensive cabins. The attendant remembered that a cheerful passenger had been in there sucking back the vodka – three bottles (!) – and figured that he must have forgotten it when he left.

Here is where she made her terrible mistake. To quote the source: “While many would have been tempted to hang on to the money, Alla had no such ideas. She says other people’s money can’t bring you happiness, so she called the police.”

Six Reasons why she should have kept the money:

1) Other people’s money can bring you happiness. First, all money was probably at some point or another someone else’s money. Secondly, when money comes without you having had to toil and sacrifice leisure time in order to attain it, the pleasure of having it just goes right off the charts. This is why they have lotteries.

2) It would have taught this idiot a lesson. As mentioned earlier, every drunk misplaces things from time to time, but $340,000? If you lose that, it’s time for a wakeup call, and what better way to give somebody a valuable life lesson than doing it in a way that enriches you significantly.

3) It could have been drug money. While the original report specifically rules this possibility out by saying that the man in question did produce documents to show how he legally obtained such a small fortune, perhaps he was just a really good forger and he got this money after having some poor slob traffic drugs in a body cavity. Do you really want to reward that sort of behavior? Neither do we. Keep the money and buy your own drugs.

4) If he drank three bottles of vodka, he’s probably dead. The story does not mention the size of the bottles, but assuming that the man was drinking regular-sized bottles of vodka, three might be enough to have induced fatal alcohol poisoning. This didn’t happen, but the stewardess could have comforted herself with believing that it did and that she was just sparing his family a lot of painful bickering over his funds.

5) By returning the money you are implicitly encouraging other rich drunks to repeat this sort of behavior. Now that rich people know they can party on the train and be reckless with their money, they are sure to abuse this knowledge and become a public nuisance. Thanks, on behalf of the union.

6) You might not get a reward. We can understand that one’s moral compunction might result in giving back the money with the implicit understanding that a nice fat slice will later be cut out and given as a reward for honesty. What’s alarming in this case though is that according to the source story, there was no mention of the attendant receiving a reward for her honesty from the drunkard. Giving the money back and not getting a reward for doing so would result in such unspeakable bitterness that you would likely lose 10 years of your life due to the stress of it.