And so the bastard was a liar, and I decided to protect my interests and put a lock-out cover on their door knob. This device prevents a guest from getting their key to open the door. When the couple returned to their room, the guy comes rushing into the office, saying to me: “You told me we could stay until I received my check.” I replied, “I’ve decided you should make other arrangements and pay for the room now.” He said, “You know the check is coming in.” “There’s no guarantee,” I said, and I went on to tell him I would retain his belongings until he pays for the room in full.
He angrily left. I waited for a half-hour and then changed the locks on his door and moved their belongings into our storage room.
Conclusion: Thousands of unhappy, discontented people are moving to Colorado in order to fulfill that deep yearning in their soul, hoping to improve their way of life, and arrive here without any money and discover only despair. . . . Society has taught us to lie, steal, and cheat, and deception is the paramount prerequisite in man’s makeup. . . . As my observation of people approaches the fifth year, I am beginning to become pessimistic as to the direction our society is heading, and feel myself becoming more depressed as I determine the futility of it all.
In fact, I have recently created an honesty test, one in which I’ve placed some of our guests in a tempting situation. The first guest I tested was a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel in his mid-50s, who was just assigned to an administrative position at the Fitzsimons Army Hospital, and for a while he stayed in our motel’s Room 10.
Foos explained the test briefly:
I begin by placing a small suitcase in the closet of Room 10. The suitcase is secured with a small inexpensive padlock that can easily be broken off, or pried loose, by almost any individual. Guests are always leaving behind small suitcases, and I use these for my experiment.
Whenever a guest that I want to test for honesty arrives at the motel, I book them in Room 10. Then, while they’re filling out the registration form, I’ll have my wife Donna telephone me from our living quarters, pretending she had been a guest and had left her suitcase in the room with $1,000 deposited inside.
“You say you left a suitcase containing $1,000?” I’ll repeat to Donna aloud on the phone, assuming that the newly-arrived guest at the desk is listening. Then I put down the phone and call back to my wife in the apartment: “Donna, did the maid turn in a small suitcase that somebody left with money inside?”
And Donna yells back: “No, she didn’t. Nothing was found.”
I would then pick up the phone and say to Donna on the line: “I’m sorry, sir, nothing has been found, but if it is, since we have your address, we’ll send it to you promptly.”
On this particular day, I conducted this fictitious exchange while the Army colonel is checking in. After he had filled out the form, I assign him to Room 10, and then I go up to the observation platform to watch what he does.
The first thing he does after entering the room is to place his luggage on the bed and he goes to the bathroom. When he comes out, he turns on the TV and quickly scouts the room. He reads the room-rate chart on the door. He opens and closes the bureau drawers. He removes his military jacket and hangs it in the closet. That’s when he sees, resting on the closet shelf, the small suitcase. He takes it down and places it on the bed. He touches its small lock but doesn’t try to open it. Like all the other guests in this situation, he momentarily ponders the situation.
This is the moment that I love to witness. The moment of truth or dishonesty is flashing through the person’s mind. There is the question: Should I break open the lock and take the $1,000? Or should I be a Good Samaritan and turn it into the office? You can almost hear each person thinking to themselves: Nobody knows this suitcase is in this room, and there’s $1,000 inside, and Lord knows I can use the money.
This particular Army colonel took ten minutes in coming to a decision. Finally, evil ultimately triumphed. He tried to twist off the lock with his fingers, but was unsuccessful. He departed the room, carefully closing the door, and returned with a screwdriver from his car. When he returned he was hesitant to use it. He left the room again and wandered into the office, where Donna saw him and said hello. He idled there for a few moments, as if considering whether anybody was on to the fact that he’d found the suitcase.
Then he returned to Room 10. He chain-locked the door, sat on the bed, and, with one motion with the screwdriver, he snapped open the suitcase. He began shuffling through the clothes packed in there, searching every crevice and every pocket. Suddenly, it dawned on him that there was no money in the suitcase, only clothing. He shook his head, indicating confusion and concern. Now what? He was probably thinking: I can’t carry this suitcase to the office with the lock broken, and I can’t just leave it in the room, either.
After another few minutes of pacing the room, the colonel reached for his raincoat, wrapped it around the suitcase, and departed from Room 10. I heard him start up his car, and then he apparently drove away to find a place where he could dispose of the suitcase.