I was running late for work yesterday, so instead of walking, I jumped on the L2. I made up for it walking home, though — 17th Street north to U Street west, and then home through Adams Morgan.

In any case, as always when I pick it up, the L2 was pretty full. People started getting off at the Metro stop, and in Adams Morgan. It was in Adams Morgan that two passengers, both departing, waved to me as they passed and pointed at the floor. In retrospect, I wish I’d kept my self in my seat, but I was curious, so I looked over the seat to see a black wallet on the floor of the bus.

Inside the wallet: a Maryland ID, a Chevy Chase bank card, a few member cards (Safeway, CVS), a SmarTrip, and some cash. I thought to myself: no big deal! I’d get to work, call Chevy Chase, and ask them to call the customer and inform him of where he could pick up the wallet. This plan lasted about as long as it took to get a representative from Chevy Chase on the phone: “Well, we’ll cancel the card, but we can’t contact the customer.”

What do you mean you can’t contact the customer?

It’s against our policy.

Well, what the hell am I supposed to do with this wallet?

I mean, it’s a nice wallet, I could dump all his stuff into the trash and replace my old, worn wallet. On the other hand, what do you mean you can’t contact the customer? You’ve got his phone number and his address, is it really so difficult to pick up the phone? “Sir, a gentleman found your wallet and it’s being held for you at the Bookstore at this address.”

Rationally, I expect there’s a reason — and a good reason — why they can’t contact the customer in a case such as this — perhaps I’m staging an ambush against him when he shows up, or maybe I’m just fishing for information, or something.

As I saw it, I had two options:

1. I could take the wallet to a Chevy Chase location and trust that, when they have the wallet in their possession, they are more lenient about the whole “contact the customer” thing.

2. I could mail it to him.

Since I don’t want to take the chance that I’ll walk into a Chevy Chase to be told, “Oh, sorry, we can’t contact him for you” and hand me the wallet back, it’s currently in my messenger bag, in a sealed puffy envelope, with the address from his ID written on it. I hope he still lives there — directory assistance was useless in identifying a phone number for him. Everything is intact, although not necessarily where he’d had it — I took everything out looking for an e-mail address or a phone number.

Meanwhile, I’m still a little pissed at Chevy Chase. I can only imagine how upset I would be if I’d lost my wallet — forget whatever money I had in it, I’d be more concerned about my check card being used fraudulently, and replacing my driver’s license. Not fun, I can imagine. I hope that when he realized he lost his wallet, he called Chevy Chase — hopefully, they told him, at the very least, that a third party (me!) had called to report the wallet found, but I imagine there’s a pit in his stomach right now.

It’ll be in the mail to him tonight. I kind of wish I’d put a card with my e-mail address on it so that I would know when he received it.