Rewards for Honesty

So, what is the world coming to when people are rewarded for doing what they should do anyway? Or maybe I'm alone in thinking that. I was scanning the CNN Web site when I came across a teensy little blurb. Headline: Thrift store worker finds, returns $30,000. I don't exactly know what compelled me to click on it, but I did.

And, the story was insane, no lie. It was teensy as I said before, but it packed a punch. A woman who worked at a thrift store found $30,000 in a box donated to the store. She thought it was fake (who has fake $30,000 lying around, I don't know), but she decided to turn it into the store manager anyway (luckily he/she wasn't crooked).

Turned out the money was real and upon it being returned to the family, the original worker received a monetary reward for returning the money instead of keeping it!! I think this says something sad about our society. That people are rewarded for returning theings that are not theirs. I mean, maybe this isn't that weird, I don't know. I guess when thigns are stolen, they have rewards, but that's more of an incentive for it to show up again. But, no, this is a reward for someone bringing back something she found that wasn't hers.

I don't know why that strikes me as so bad, but it does. Anyway, the woman plans to help out her mother back home in Mexico by sending her some of the money to get eye surgey.

You can read the story at http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/09/money.found.ap/index.html if you so desire.

What do you think, about this? Do you think it says anything about us as people, a country, a world? Or do you just think its business as usual?