Honesty Boxes in Scotland (2024) | Hacker News Reader

Honesty Boxes in Scotland (2024)

awayfromtheordinary.com

37 pointsNaOH59 comments

We have these too in Switzerland, ranging from simple like in the article to full farm stores like this: https://www.leimbihof.ch/bio-laden

Last time I was there they had a milk cow full fillet/tenderloin (among many other things) for around $280 (converted from chf). The store is completely unmanned and you pay electronically. If there are cameras they're not obvious.

This definitely isn't just a Scotland thing... I grew up in Alabama and this was common there, and honestly I've seen this all over rural America. It's very common for farm stands during the harvesting season.

Still, cool website, I enjoyed a few articles there even if this one was very short.

I've seen this in rural North Carolina. Eggs were available on-your-honor in the countryside back when the cities were out of eggs.

Was going to mention NC. I've seen it in western NC: honor markets with honey, jam, chow chow, late season vegetables.

Yes, I've seen this in rural America. Purchased some firewood at a random stand on the highway. Pick some up, leave $5 in the box. Really nice to see this sort of thing in action.

It’s more common than you think - because in many areas transporting firewood into parks, etc from more than 5/10/15 miles away is prohibited- to prevent the spread of tree pests.

Firewood is one of those things that should always be local.

Yup, there are quite a few little self-serve farm stands around here in Northern California.

And some firewood places like the ones the sibling commenter mentioned as well.

When I was a preteen kid many years ago in Massachusetts enjoying the rural summer life, we used to go around to the local farms and beg produce off the farmers. We'd then set up a card table and a cash box at the side of the road somewhere and then go off to play for the day. While we were gone, the kindly wives of the farmers we'd gotten the produce from would come and buy back the produce from us for whatever minimal price we'd set on it. So as the afternoon wore on, we'd head back and excitedly collect our change and then head to the local general store to buy penny candy.

We didn't know at the time that it was the wives buying the produced back. We just thought we were amazingly successful shop keepers.

This is such a sweet story Thanks for sharing!

I once stayed at an honesty box motel near Hell's Backbone (a road through rough country in rural Utah). There was a basket of keys on the porch and a sign that said, "We're out. Please take a key and leave $20." The place hadn't been cleaned in a while, but I was very happy to stay there as there was nowhere else nearby and I had fallen ill.

There was a dog with heterochromia and a llama nearby, watching us as we left the money and chose a key. It was quite the memorable place. For years afterwards my wife referred to it as "the hotel run by a dog and a llama".

Good thing you paid. The dog hates watching what the llama has to do to those who don’t pay.

We have chickens and I'd love to do an honesty box. Problem is we live in an English city and it's extremely low-trust like most English cities these days.

It's not even that I worry someone would steal the eggs that concerns me most, it's that a lot of people would probably think it's funny to throw them at cars or house/shop windows.

I'd love to live some where where this is possible... I heard that Lee Kuan Yew on visiting England in the 50s saw an honesty box and was inspired by how civilised the English were.

Not sure what's happened to us since then... You definitely couldn't do that now. We're like a completely different people. Although it's nice to see that this practise does still live on in some rural communities.

Also – the honesty "box" in that lead picture is absolutely beautiful...

Can I push you to give it a try - places with honesty boxes feel like places with honesty boxes if that makes sense.

Obviously you might get your car egged once - but you can get eggs anywhere.

If it's any help, my (admittedly very nice) corner of Bristol has a couple of honesty boxes for eggs and things about the place and I've never seen any trouble from it.

Not quite honesty boxes, but Bristol has a good culture of "tat".

It used to be quite common to see usable household goods left outside a house for others to take.

As opposed to the story about the person who leaves their unwanted furniture outside with a sign reading "Free- Please Take". It sits there undisturbed for a week.

Then they replace the sign with one that reads "$10- put cash in letterbox"

Within an hour, the furniture is gone, though of course there's no cash!

I guess it's very location-dependent. I live a ways off a pretty busy exurban road in MA and if I leave somewhat useable stuff at the end of my driveway with a free sign it will probably be gone withing a few hours.

I'm considering placing a sign on the wall saying to knock for eggs next time we want to get rid of some. I think that's a fair compromise.

We get a lot of crime around here... The issue with an eggs honesty box is that it's likely to be a nuisance to the neighbourhood. If people are willing to smash windows, I doubt they'd think twice about throw some eggs around. In fact we got egged ourselves a couple of halloween's ago...

> Problem is we live in an English city and it's extremely low-trust like most English cities these days.

If you go hiking in the countryside, you encounter honesty boxes in small villages fairly often. I guess the fact that every knows everyone else tends to make smaller communities more trusting and trustworthy.

Lived in rural Australia with this as commonplace. Fwiw the neighbour did have someone take the whole box one day. He did run after it and get a numberplate since he was close to the box at the time.

That's one thing about these, it's not that no one would ever steal them as if there's some magic in these areas that leads to zero theft. After all anyone can drive out there. They exist because there's little choice but to accept some losses since you can't staff a store selling small amounts of produce.

For all the comments along the lines of "society has gone to shit, look how nice it once was" just remember that theft still happens and these honesty boxes were always done out of raw necessity.

Hiring onsite security forces doesn't seem to be the answer. Inventory loss at big box stores is reportedly quite high. If you stocked a drop box with 20-dozen eggs and somebody stole a dozen, you might still be doing better than Walmart.

https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-california-stores-closed-...

That's exactly how it works. You accept the losses. Since the honesty box stores are very low volume and the box is emptied regularly you just accept that there will be losses but at least they'll be relatively small. The reason honesty boxes don't work in the city is that the equation leans to staffing being worthwhile to counter the losses.

I feel self-checkouts these days lean back towards the honesty box system but no one see's those as quaint at all :p

Self-checkout does have some checks in place in general but my sense is that most stores have ratcheted back on how carefully they check on things.

You could always scan the organic green beans as the cheaper non-organic variety if you wanted to but it's such minor theft (saves a few cents per dollar) that it's neither worth doing nor worth policing which is pretty similar to how honesty boxes work in reality.

The obvious thing to me is that weight checks used to be annoyingly stringent--e.g. weigh your reusable bags. Aside from some employee keeping an eye on things I don't see anything like that around where I live any longer.

You are ignoring that theft still has to be rare for the boxes to make sense for the owner. Much rare than it would be if you put something like this in a big city.

Also Australian and can confirm once you get on main-ish roads a certain distance from major population areas these were a thing (at least quite a few years ago, don't drive so haven't recent data on this stuff).

It's nice to think there is some trust/faith in humanity once you get a certain distance away from the frenetic pace of life in cities.

On a related note, have recently finished (with my wife) a bottle of Adnamurchan whisky - highly recommended, although I'm more of an Islay guy.

Also spent 2.5 years living in Scotland - those blue sky photos are the exception, not the norm.

I know a guy who is from Brazil, he was utterly shocked that honesty boxes existed. I doubt they are universal. And they probably require a high trust society.

Hi from Argentina! Is that close enough?

If you put one of these here in Buenos Aires, I expect it to dissapear in an hour.

But a long time ago I went with my wife for a few weeks to a small town in the mountais in the Cordoba(AR) province. We left the bikes unchained an unatended for hours. I expect a honesty box to be possible there. Except during weekends, when it get's full of turists.

Depends on the tourists...

Brazilians are shocked that if can leave your bag on the table while you go to the bathroom

I was in Cyprus many many years ago. Driving along we saw a sign for a bar and stopped. Under a canopy of vines were tables and chairs, a fridge full of beer, a price list, and a plastic tub with some money in it.

A delightful moment among many.

A friend and I took a trip from Sheffield to Glasgow just before an election, and on a grim and dark winter evening we went out into the barely-lit backstreets looking for a particular pub. A group of 6 or so well-built young men approached us, ..."Hey lads, are you proud to be Scottish?", "Er, I suppose we would be if we were Scottish, but we're from Yorkshire ...". This being not long after "Trainspotting" was released, I was half-expecting a knife to be pulled, but no "Oh sorry lads, we're just canvasing for the Scottish independence, ... you having a good night? ..."

Nice place.

...and one of the best music cities in the world at the moment.

I found several things like these last year while doing a pilgrimage through Camino de Santiago[1] in northern Spain. The idea that people, after days or even weeks of walking stayed, at the very least, honest enough to keep it happening, moved me to a large degree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_de_Santiago

Very common in New England to have honesty system for various farm goods especially in exurban/rural locations. Often there are, stands that usually high school kids are looking after, but having just something with a payment box by the side of the road is pretty common. In fact, near where my brother has a house in Maine, there's a cheesecake store that doesn't routinely have someone there.

We also have them in Germany and not just in the countryside, but also in big cities. This very common especially in the current weeks in summer when all the fruits are ripe. But it is not so formal as in the picture, it is mostly just a plastic bag, or a cartoon box on a table with the price on the cardboard. Child toys, furniture and honey is of course available the full year. In the alps milk and cheese is very common. I don't think we have a special name for this, it's just somebody selling something.

This concept also exists in some smaller hotels, there it's called "Kasse des Vertrauens".

I think people who would steal something from them fail to understand that everything in society is based on trust. Stealing erodes that, and I can't comprehend living in a society were this concept can't exist. It seams to me that this is the meaning of society and civilization.

Edit: And yes of course that is all with cash.

They have these in the rural parts of Kansas and Missouri. My mom has a country vet that she gets medication for her animals from and the vet just has a box in front of his farm where he puts the medication for his various patients after doing a phone consult. Patients take the medication and leave cash. I was stunned when I saw it the first time and realized that there really is another way to live.

The farm store honesty boxes are less common here in Canada, but we absolutely have a lot of them for campsites -- unstaffed camping areas that might get cleaned weekly (yet have basic facilities, such as a pit toilet/benches/fire rings), and just have a cash dropbox for camping fees.

Austria here: some villages have this, and some have the dystopian unattended vending machines stores

Automats?

yes automat, but a shop full of only automats, looks dreadful to me

I've seen this outside DC, in Loudoun County, for eggs and other easily packaged farm goods. Lots of smaller (and large) farms in the area.

I also have a friend who keeps chickens in Seattle (inside the city). He tried an honesty box for excess eggs, but they just got stolen.

I live in Scotland, have two former racing greyhounds, and I'm very grateful for a local farmer who has a dog run / playpark with an honesty box we can drop something in to help with upkeep when we give our two a nice run.

Why doesn't the council have community parks?

We don't have leash laws like in the US, so it is common for dogs to just be allowed to run around in most community parks.

The problem with sighthounds is they will lock on to squirrels, rabbits or other things, and running at 40mph will be out of sight and lost VERY quickly.

So we don't let ours off lead except in controlled places (like this one).

Oh look, a beautiful, unspoiled place on earth full of kind, honest people and innocent, happy animals! Cue the overtourism in 3, 2, 1...

Scotland is not some undiscovered place that nobody ever talks about visiting.

Depends where you are. it is known in the US, and its popular with people from the rest of the UK.

It does not seem to be much known in Asia, apart from as the source of whiskey.

I do not about the rest of Europe, but my feeling is that it is not well known.

I have been quite surprised how many people (from Asia and Europe) can visit, or even live in, the UK and not go out of London.

While Scotland is not unknown, there are certainly a lot of people who might visit who have a low awareness of what is there, and articles like this show some very attractive aspects of Scotland.

Keep it that way. The last thing you want is the locust plague turning your beautiful countryside into a theme park where the locals can no longer live.

Oh don’t worry - the midges are doing a great job of keeping it that way! :)

The Scottish Air Force :)

https://www.tiktok.com/@dailymail/video/7532540419264023821?...

Let's not turn every thread into an anti-Trump thread. On second thought, Let's.

Or going on Glaswegian Chocolate Bar Safaris hoping to spot Sad Oompa Loompas in their natural habitat.

https://x.com/KalhanR/status/1762703755462468045

We went viral as Oompa Loompas but we're just normal people:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv2y59r89vjo

If not a theme park or safari, then at least a movie:

>A petition to to bring back the experience has been launched, while Scottish actress Karen Gillan has said she wants to star in a film adaptation of the event.

https://www.tiktok.com/@movieweb/video/7348892246982397190

>I would be a cheeky Oompa Looma!

it's all good, we already have plagues of midges to protect the countryside from humanity.

This is already something of a problem in places due to AirBnB, especially on the islands.

Mind you, I live in Edinburgh and the Festival has arrived, so I have an extra 100k people to walk past or through everytime I want to get anywhere this month.

The coachloads of Chinese tourists that I see every summer make me doubt this.

Weirdly Scotland is more popular with European tourists than you might think. Until recently I lived in a relatively tourist heavy part of the country, near Loch Lomond, and every summer we'd get a lot of cars from European countries on the roads.

I suspect that outside of maybe one main destination city (Edinburgh--maybe two with Glasgow), Scotland probably feels somewhat hard to get around to someone from a very different culture and they may not be wrong.

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