Gifts and OtherTransactions

Last month, maybe ten days before Christmas, we had a big power outage here in Point Roberts.  Big, well, in the sense that it was cold and the power was off for hours...about 6-8, depending upon where you were.  No power is always an inconvenience, if not worse, but this one was a particular problem because it was the very height of the Christmas mailing traffic, and the local post office has no independent generator.

It was daylight, so the post office people could see what they were doing, but none of the electronics worked: the scales that calculated weight and postage simultaneously and also printed out postage mailing stamps were not happening; nor were the credit card machines: it was a cash only business.  Now this last wouldn't be the worst thing in most post offices, but up here on the border, it's a very different matter.  Easily half or more of the people who are mailing packages are Canadian and they are not regular carrier of quantities of U.S. cash.  Nor, since they were coming down from the neighboring Canadian town where the power was flowing freely, did they appear at the post office knowing about the outage.

By contrast, this was a good time for an American with U.S. cash to show up to do some Christmas mailing because the line was seriously shortened.  I arrived with my packages and my cash shortly after 1 p.m. and was immediately No. 2 in line.  Phenomenal!  The man ahead of me me was describing to the postal person his struggle to get his packet mailed.  He had been there an hour previously and discovered that his credit card was not going to be useful.  He had then roamed around somewhere and found some kind of ATM or business that had sold him US$20 for a $3 surcharge.  But now, as I waited for him to complete his mailing business--which was a small package heading for Europe--he discovered that the postage cost was $21.86.  We all of us winced for him as we heard this news. 

He checked his pockets, his wallet, looking for loose change, and turned up something like 20 cents.  My wallet was already opened, so I took out $1.86, exactly, and laid it on the counter in front of him.  He refused; I insisted; he refused; he offered to consider it as a loan; I insisted upon it as a gift, pointing out to him that it was Christmas and that it was a very small amount of money, in any case, so it wasn't a big sacrifice on my part, that I was happy to give it to him, that I was almost willing to leave it on the counter in front of him and drive away.  He offered to mail it to me; I refused on the grounds that he would then have to pay 44 cents to mail $1.86 to me, and that was just silly.  He offered to return it the next day to the post office and leave it at the counter for me.  I would have none of it and insisted he just take the money, and finally he did.

I have never had so much trouble doing a good deed, and especially such a small one.

Then, yesterday, when I went to the post office to pick up the mail, there in the box was a plain, white envelope with 'Judy. . . Thank You. $2' written on it in ink and, in a different handwriting, 'This from the man you lent to."  Inside the envelope, two dollar bills.  So I made 7% on a month's 'loan,' which would be, I guess, a 125% annual interest rate.  It left me feeling like one of the usurious credit card companies.  It also left me saddened all over again as to how difficult it can be in this culture to accept a gift from a stranger, apparently because to be a recipient of an undeserved gift establishes some moral hierarchy in which the recipient is shamed.

It is also, remarkably so, a Point Roberts kind of thing.  The man I offered the money to wasn't from here, but from cross the border.  If he had been a local, I think he could have accepted it, knowing that he would, sooner or later and probably sooner, be offering help to some other local with one thing or another.  Because we have such limited options in a lot of areas, we learn regularly to help one another: to give and to receive.  You know that you are as likely to be a recipient of a gift as you are to be a provider of a gift.  There's no hierarchy and no shame and not any particular credit, either.

It's a particularly Point Roberts kind of thing in another way, too.  What other place have I ever lived where a guy could come into the post office a month after I/someone had given him some postage money, and the post office people would know who/what he was talking about and would deliver the envelope unto that patron? Amazing!

Nevertheless, there may be some other kind of lesson lurking here.  I read today that Goldman, Sachs is going to require its executives to give most of their bonuses to charity. But what if no one will accept it?