Who Can You Trust Nowadays?

In the fall of 2008, one of our clients at the veterinary clinic was deported to Germany and had to leave without her three cats. Despite severe economic hardship, she wanted to reunite her family with the cats by boarding them at our clinic for the requisite month after vaccination, and then flying them to Frankfurt. This involved a lot of logistical issues and significant cost. We agreed to do this, but with strict guidelines as to payment deadlines. As time went on, her finances became more and more strapped, but we were already committed, so we ended up sending the cats to Germany with a large balance still on her account.

Emails were exchanged and gradually some payments came in. But the final installment kept getting delayed. It would have been easy for her to simply ignore the bill as we had little recourse to collections. Although I harbored no resentment, I had significant doubts that this veterinary bill would be paid, especially since there were many other important demands on her assets.

Today I went to Western Union down the street and collected a large final payment of her bill. While I was standing at the counter a woman came in close to hysterics to see if someone had turned in her handbag which was missing. She was in tears as the service desk clerk pulled out her bag and told her a young woman had turned it in. She pulled out $20 and was yearning to give it to this young woman, but she had already left the store and no one knew her identity. The owner of the purse then asked if there was a charity fund at the store, but the clerk just patted her hand and told her to keep the $20, saying "there are good people out there."

When I got back to the clinic, our manager told me that the $300 check that had bounced from one of our other clients had done so not because the client wrote us a bad check, but because her identity had been stolen, necessitating the closing of her accounts.

I think I'll give people the benefit of the doubt today.