Yeah, I must admit, it would be awfully tempting to keep that money for myself. Hats off to the guy, and I feel bad for him that they didn’t give him a better tip. Much less than what he got would have been plain insulting. Had it been about a thousand or less, I think I honestly would have told them where they could put their “reward.” I would honestly feel better to receive no reward at all than a tiny one. There was a local story late last year where a woman returned $65,000 that had fallen off a truck and got a bigger reward than this guy, plus she got a free stay at Disney to top it all off! Now I’m not saying that a reward should be mandatory or even expected, but I do think that you should either reward the person with a decent percentage, or not at all. It’s better to be left with nothing but the feeling of knowing you did the right thing, than it is to be left with the feeling that your reward was given for public image purposes rather than gratitude.
Monetary rewards are SOOOO not-the-point of such an action.