I asked if you ever misplaced anything valuable or anything that mattered to you. A wallet could be something valuable, or your keys. Most valuable, however, would be your sense of compassion, which right now you have clearly misplaced.
This engineer had an obligation to his company that he disregarded and his only excuse is "I was drunk and thoughtless" (which really isn't an excuse at all).
Again, I'm not advocating he be fired because I think people should have the right to make mistakes but I find it appalling that the attitude in this comment thread has been that being drunk makes it ok to be derelict in your duties.
What a responsible human being you are. You probably don't have kids though :)
People lose their kids in places like supermarkets all the time ... I haven't (yet) but it's a possibility (because kids by definition don't stay put) and I'd appreciate that if you found my child instead of stealing it from me to sell it to the highest bidder, you'd return it to me, because otherwise I might just burn down your house with you in it :)
Yeah, it's a bad analogy because for most people a phone is not equal to a child, but for passionate engineers the line is kind of blurry, isn't it?
> the attitude in this comment thread has been that being drunk makes it ok to be derelict in your duties
No, the attitude is that it's not OK to steal property, even if that person you're stealing from is drunk ... and to make matters worse the buyer also made the story public, for no public good whatsoever.
Please, let's not compare our children with iPhones. Maybe choose a better analogy?
> Yeah, it's a bad analogy because for most people a phone is not equal to a child, but for passionate engineers the line is kind of blurry, isn't it?
Yes, it is a bad analogy, so why did you use it? If you are going to claim that passionate engineers equate products to living humans, at least qualify that by saying "a small proportion".
> No, the attitude is that it's not OK to steal property, even if that person you're stealing from is drunk ... and to make matters worse the buyer also made the story public, for no public good whatsoever.
The guy who had the phone tried to return it. He did more than most people would. On top of that, he was unable to get any contact information off the phone because they wiped it.
Yes he could have returned it to the bar but who knows how trustworthy those bar owners are?