Leaving court this morning, I noticed a piece of paper — neat and trifolded — under the wheels of my car. I looked at it again, and it was some guy’s pay stub. There are lots of reasons why a pay stub might be in court — it might be evidence, it might be for a debtor’s exam, it might be for a child support hearing, who knows?
But I remembered that there are certain kinds of people you will find in a courthouse, every day. Lawyers, judges, clerks, and cops. Oh, and criminals. Lots of criminals. Identity theft is a pretty bad thing to have happen to you and there’s a lot of information on a pay stub which an unscrupulous thief could use to his advantage.
So I took it back to the office (yes, I ran a conflict check on it and he wasn’t in our database at all) and I mailed it back to the address on the stub. Whether the guy was a debtor, an upstanding citizen, or a third party, he shouldn’t have his personal information out on the parking lot where criminals could have easy access to it. Seemed like the right thing to do.
