Lost and found

It depends on what it is. If it's a wallet or a phone, I'd look for an ID card or wait for the owner to call, and failing that I'd hand it in to a security guard or the local police station. These days people also post in neighbourhood Facebook groups, which works surprisingly well. I've been on the other side of this, unfortunately. Last year my student card and about three hundred thousand dong slipped out of my pocket somewhere between the parking lot and the lecture hall. The money was gone for good, but a cleaner found the card and left it at the front desk, so my faith in humanity is roughly half intact. As a child I was hopeless. I lost so many raincoats and water bottles that my mother started writing my name and class on everything in permanent marker, including, to my horror, my hat. And yes, I do think we've become more careless. When things are cheap and easy to replace, we simply don't look after them the way our grandparents did.