Should I Keep This Thing I Got By Mistake?

Maybe.

A friend and reader presented me with an interesting conundrum about guilt and boots and doing the right thing.

I got a pair of boots sent to me in the mail that I didn’t order. They were addressed to me, but they’re not my size. As I recently got married and have been fielding boxes of wedding presents, I asked around to see if someone had sent me these boots as a wedding present for some reason. No one had. They’re very nice boots, expensive and from a company that I would very much like to buy something from, perhaps using the credit I will get in exchange if I return these erroneous boots. I want to return the boots, but I’m afraid I’ll get caught. If I get caught, I feel like I’ll be losing money, even though I didn’t buy the boots. Should I sell the boots on eBay or something? Should I keep them? Should I risk it and return them? Why do I feel guilty for potentially losing money that I never had in the first place?

A little while ago, when shopping with my sister, the cashier rung up the sweater I bought at $7 — a bargain. Knowing that she had the very same sweater in her hand and because I’m a good sibling who looks out for the finances of my relatives, I told her out loud that the sweater was on sale. he person ringing up her sweater looked at the tag, frowned and said, “No, actually, it isn’t.”

She paid whatever price the sweater actually was and I had to get back line and dig the money out of my wallet to pay the actual price. The difference wasn’t drastic, but it was just enough for me to feel slightly irritated. “I’ll pay you back,” she said, though there was no reason. The cashier made a mistake; I said something thinking I was helping and effectively played myself. If I had stayed quiet, the person ringing me up would’ve probably gotten in trouble at the end of his shift for his till being off. But because I spoke up, I ended up doing the right thing without thinking that I was doing the wrong thing in the first place.

This tangentially relates to the boots in question. If you’re absolutely sure you did not purchase the boots and they were truly sent in error, then return the boots. Return the boots like you ordered the boots and then see what they say. The fear of getting caught in this tiny white lie feels illogical but makes sense because once a thing is ours, a peculiar attachment forms — regardless of how you came about that thing.

You didn’t spend the money on the boots, but now you know how much the boots cost. And, you know what you could do with the money from the boots (buy other ones, maybe. Or something else. Whatever!). The boots are in your house, sitting in a corner of the living room. You walk past them on your way out and quizzically stare at them for a second before you leave. They’re a part of your house like the vacuum cleaner or the edge of the coffee table you bang your knee on every time. Technically, they’re yours now. What you want to do with them is up to you.

You could keep the boots and look at them in frustration and be mad at yourself for not sending them back for the next four months. Or, you could rummage around in the box they came in, find the return label and send those puppies back.

If I were the Ethicist, I would tut and tell you to send the boots back with a note saying that they sent them to you in error. Thankfully, I am not. If you didn’t order the boots, they won’t have your credit card information to properly credit you, so you could tell them that they were a gift, which, technically, they still might be! Some well-wisher could have ignored everything on your registry and sent you a pair of boots instead.

You have the boots; you don’t want the boots. Return the boots. Just send them back from whence they came. The worst that’ll happen is they’ll take them back and not give you any credit. Maybe they won’t! Or, maybe they will. The boots aren’t doing any good sitting in your house anyway, so give it a shot and see what happens.

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