Excuse Me, Is This Your Phone? (page 3 of 3)

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I was hoping it wasn't a bomb

Doing the Right Thing

On the low end of the spectrum, Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur, and Hong Kong tied for the worst performance.

In each city, just 13 of the 30 phones were returned.

In one particularly egregious Hong Kong incident, a security guard along the city's Causeway Bay picked up a ringing phone, asked a group of smokers if it was theirs, then wrapped it in a piece of paper. Confronted by the reporter, the guard stammered, "What phone? I didn't see any phone. If you've mislaid something, report it to Lost and Found." The phone was plainly visible in his hand.

Happily, an incident in New York's Harlem section was more representative. (New York, which topped the magazine's 2006 global courtesy test, tied for fifth place with Mumbai, India, and Manila, Philippines, this time around. The return rate for all three was 80 percent.)

Scooping a ringing phone off the pavement, 16-year-old Johnnie Sparrow arranged to meet a reporter that evening. Arriving at the scheduled time, flanked by a group of younger neighborhood boys who clearly looked up to him, Johnnie was surprised to learn that the lost phone wasn't lost at all. But he was proud, too, of how he reacted when he found it.

"I did the right thing," he said with a smile.

• See a chart of the phones we got back, city by city
  
  
• Watch exclusive video of our social experiment in New York, NY

• Special Report: How Polite Are We?
• Are good manners dead? We checked in 35 cities around the globe -- and got some surprising answers.
• 
• More Uncommon Courtesy
• We keep hearing about the death of civility -- but it's alive and well in a place you'd least expect.
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• Chart: Phones Returned, City by City
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