An Italian Story of Creative Revenge
When I was seventeen and my cousin Yoav was eighteen, we spent the summer backpacking in Europe, having a wonderful time. We met lots of people, saw beautiful cities and places, spent time in museums—it was a perfect European jaunt for two restless teenagers.
Our travel itinerary went from Rome up through Italy and France and finally to England. When we originally bought our youth train passes, the nice fellow at the Rome Eurail office gave us a photocopy of a map of the European train system, carefully marking the train path that we were going to take with a black ballpoint pen. He told us that we could use our passes anytime we wanted within the two-month window but that we could travel only along the particular route he had drawn. He stapled the flimsy photocopied map to a more official printed receipt and handed us the package. Initially, we were certain that no conductor would respect this rather unsophisticated-looking map and ticket combo, but the ticket seller assured us that it was all we needed, and in fact that proved to be the case.
After enjoying the sights in Rome, Florence, Venice, and a few smaller Italian towns, we spent a few nights on the shore of a lake outside Verona. On our last night by the lake, we woke up to find that someone had been through our backpacks and strewn our stuff all over the place. After taking a careful inventory of our belongings, we saw that all of our clothes and even my camera were still there. The only thing missing was Yoav’s extra pair of sneakers. We would have considered it a minor loss, except for the fact that Yoav’s mother (my aunt Nava), in her infinite wisdom, had wanted to make sure that we had some emergency cash in case someone stole our money. So she had tucked a few hundred dollars in Yoav’s extra pair of sneakers. The irony of the situation was painful.
We decided to look around the town to see if we could spot someone wearing Yoav’s sneakers and went to the police as well. Given the fact that the local policemen understood little English, it was rather difficult to convey the nature of the crime—that a pair of sneakers had been stolen and that it was important because there was cash hidden in the sole of the right shoe. Not surprisingly, we never recovered Yoav’s sneakers, and that left us somewhat embittered. In our minds it was an unfair turn of events, and Europe owed us one.
ABOUT A WEEK after the sneaker-theft incident, we decided that in addition to the other places on our route we also wanted to visit Switzerland and the Netherlands. We could have purchased new train tickets for the detour, but remembering the stolen shoes and the lack of help from the Italian police, we decided instead to expand our options with a bit of creativity. Using a black ballpoint pen just like the ticket seller’s, we drew another path on our photocopied map. This one passed through Switzerland on the way to France and from there to England. Now the map showed two possible routes for our journey: the original route and our modified one. When we showed the maps to the next few conductors, they did not comment on our artwork, so we continued sketching extra routes on our maps for a few weeks.
Our scam worked until we were en route to Basel. The Swiss conductor examined our passes, scowled, shook his head, and handed them back to us.
“You are going to have to buy a ticket for this part of your trip,” he informed us.
“Oh, but you see, sir,” we said ever so politely, “Basel is indeed on our route.” We pointed to the modified path on our map.
The conductor was unconvinced. “I am sorry, but you will have to pay for your ticket to Basel, or I will have to ask you to leave the train.”
“But, sir,” we argued, “all the other conductors have accepted our tickets with no problem.”
The conductor shrugged and shook his head again.
“Please, sir,” pleaded Yoav, “if you allow us to get to Basel, we will give you this tape of the Doors. They’re a great American rock band.”
The conductor did not seem amused or particularly interested in the Doors. “Okay,” he said. “You can go to Basel.”
We weren’t sure whether he finally agreed with us, appreciated the gesture, or had just given up. After that incident we stopped adding lines to our map, and soon we returned to our original planned path.
LOOKING BACK ON our dishonest behavior, I am tempted to chalk it up to the stupidity of youth. But I know that’s not the whole picture. In fact, I suspect that there are a number of aspects of the situation that enabled us to behave that way and justify our actions as perfectly acceptable.
First, I’m sure that being in a foreign country by ourselves for the first time helped us feel more comfortable with the new rules we were creating.* If we had stopped to give our actions more thought, we would have certainly recognized their seriousness, but somehow without thinking much, we imagined that our creative route enhancements were part of the regular Eurail procedure. Second, losing a few hundred dollars and Yoav’s sneakers made us feel that it was okay for us to take some revenge and get Europe to pay us back. Third, since we were on an adventure, maybe we felt more morally adventurous too. Fourth, we justified our actions by convincing ourselves that we weren’t really hurting anything or anyone. After all, we were just drawing a few extra lines on a piece of paper. The train was going on its track anyway; and besides, the trains were never full, so we weren’t displacing anyone. It was also the case that we very easily justified our actions to ourselves because when we originally purchased the tickets, we could have picked a different route for the same price. And since the different paths were the same to the Eurail office when we originally purchased the tickets, why would it matter at what point in time we decided to choose a different path? (Maybe that’s how people who back-date stock options justify their actions to themselves.) A final source of justification had to do with the physical nature of the ticket itself.
