A Bad Read On A Good Deed

I run a charitable event at my work (interior design firm). We usually put on a carnival to raise money for charity and raise awareness of our company/establish ourselves in the community/attract customers (but all the money goes to charity).

I stood up at the carnival and gave a big speech about the importance of the charity and how the cause was personal to me and my family (it funded cerebral palsy research that particular year, and my father lives with it).

I was very visible throughout the whole event, sharing my story, raising money, and running carnival booths, etc.

Fast forward a couple of months. I bumped into someone while in line to get coffee who said they’d met me at that event last year. We ended up starting a pleasant conversation, so we sat outside to drink our coffees together.

In hindsight, she seemed a little… “off”, a little tightly wound, but it didn’t register over such a brief encounter.

She mentioned how she had been so glad to see a large-scale cerebral palsy charity event and hadn’t seen us do any events since.

I had started to explain the yearly nature of the carnival and how we pick different charities, but she (unintentionally) cut me off, caught up in her own emotions, as she began to recount a moving story about a sibling who suffered from the condition.

I was telling her how terrible that was and how I completely understood, (in reference to my own experiences).

Before I could really get into talking about my own story, she checked the clock and said she didn’t realize how much time had passed, and she needed to go, but she appreciated the work I did and my support in listening to her, etc.

She began fumbling in her purse for her keys. Then, as she was leaving, she said, “And here’s a little something to support your work,” producing something folded in a napkin from her purse and leaving it at my side.

I’m an interior designer, so I had no idea what she could be talking about in terms of supporting my work, but we were seated just by the street parking, so she was gone too quickly for me to ask.

I unfolded the napkin, and to my shock, she had slipped $100 into the napkin. I was dumbfounded with confusion as to why this perfect stranger would give me any money to “support my work” in commercial interior design, without getting anything designed in exchange.

It took me a while to figure it out, but I eventually realized she must’ve come to the carnival and assumed the charity itself had put on the event, so she thought I worked for them, not an interior design firm.

It took me ten to fifteen minutes to realize, so it was far too late to try and catch up to her, and all we’d exchanged were first names. I didn’t even know where she worked.

So, without any hopes of tracking her down, I figured the best thing to do would be to just donate the money to the charity. I did, and that was that.

Fast forward a few more months. Somehow or another this woman came to realize I don’t work for the charity but am in fact in the for-profit sector (I think it is because I was featured in an online ad that the firm’s been running).

She left a message on my work phone, half angry, half embarrassed, saying she was “willing to forgo holding me accountable” if I paid her back in full.

The problem is, I didn’t have the money anymore; I donated it! I explained this to her, but she wanted proof.

I left her a message (she didn’t pick up when I called) explaining that the company ran a carnival event to raise money for the charity, but that we aren’t the charity ourselves, and that I absolutely did donate her money to the charity so she could rest assured.

I didn’t hear anything back for about three days.

On the fourth day after I’d left the message, the police showed up at our firm’s headquarters. We’re almost all working remotely because by this time, COVID was in full swing, so they unduly terrified our teenage receptionist.

I was also scared half to death, because I had to have a serious meeting with my boss in which she asked if I had misrepresented myself as a charitable worker and collected donations in a personal capacity, because of the claims this woman made to our business.

When I explained, my boss blew her off, and that’s when she got the police involved.

This woman called and said we were masquerading as a charity, scamming people out of money, so the police came to confirm we were operating a legitimate business. They saw nothing out of the ordinary, obviously, and that was that.

Or so we thought.

Fast forward to a week later. My boss got a letter from a lawyer (I don’t know exactly what it said), but it accused us of scamming this woman and demanded that her money be returned.

I wish I could have just provided proof of the donation, but I have thousands of emails, I delete most of them, and I could not for the life of me find the confirmation email that reflected my donation.

So, instead, my boss made another $100 donation to the charity, took a screenshot, and sent it to the lawyer. We haven’t heard from her (the lawyer) since, so I don’t think she was wild about representing this woman in the first place.

We have still gotten a couple wild phone calls from the woman saying since the date on the $100 donation is so recent, it means we still had the money, and we should’ve returned it to her when she asked (why, if she wanted to donate it to charity anyways?).

Anyways, my boss explaining we donated it the first time, and this was a second donation to assuage her concerns, has not helped.

Eventually, we just blocked her number.