[HN Gopher] Honesty Boxes in Scotland (2024)
___________________________________________________________________
Honesty Boxes in Scotland (2024)
Author : NaOH
Score : 25 points
Date : 2025-08-07 14:11 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (awayfromtheordinary.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (awayfromtheordinary.com)
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| Oh look, a beautiful, unspoiled place on earth full of kind,
| honest people and innocent, happy animals! Cue the overtourism in
| 3, 2, 1...
| showerst wrote:
| Scotland is not some undiscovered place that nobody ever talks
| about visiting.
| graemep wrote:
| Depends where you are. it is known in the US, and its popular
| with people from the rest of the UK.
|
| It does not seem to be much known in Asia, apart from as the
| source of whiskey.
|
| I do not about the rest of Europe, but my feeling is that it
| is not well known.
|
| I have been quite surprised how many people (from Asia and
| Europe) can visit, or even live in, the UK and not go out of
| London.
|
| While Scotland is not unknown, there are certainly a lot of
| people who might visit who have a low awareness of what is
| there, and articles like this show some very attractive
| aspects of Scotland.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Keep it that way. The last thing you want is the locust
| plague turning your beautiful countryside into a theme park
| where the locals can no longer live.
| gbuk2013 wrote:
| Oh don't worry - the midges are doing a great job of
| keeping it that way! :)
| jacquesm wrote:
| The Scottish Air Force :)
| DonHopkins wrote:
| https://www.tiktok.com/@dailymail/video/75325404192640238
| 21?...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Let's not turn every thread into an anti-Trump thread. On
| second thought, Let's.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Or going on Glaswegian Chocolate Bar Safaris hoping to
| spot Sad Oompa Loompas in their natural habitat.
|
| https://x.com/KalhanR/status/1762703755462468045
|
| We went viral as Oompa Loompas but we're just normal
| people:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv2y59r89vjo
|
| If not a theme park or safari, then at least a movie:
|
| >A petition to to bring back the experience has been
| launched, while Scottish actress Karen Gillan has said
| she wants to star in a film adaptation of the event.
|
| https://www.tiktok.com/@movieweb/video/734889224698239719
| 0
|
| >I would be a cheeky Oompa Looma!
| rkachowski wrote:
| it's all good, we already have plagues of midges to
| protect the countryside from humanity.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This is already something of a problem in places due to
| AirBnB, especially on the islands.
|
| Mind you, I live in Edinburgh and the Festival has
| arrived, so I have an extra 100k people to walk past or
| through everytime I want to get anywhere this month.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| The coachloads of Chinese tourists that I see every summer
| make me doubt this.
| raesene9 wrote:
| Weirdly Scotland is more popular with European tourists
| than you might think. Until recently I lived in a
| relatively tourist heavy part of the country, near Loch
| Lomond, and every summer we'd get a _lot_ of cars from
| European countries on the roads.
| ghaff wrote:
| I suspect that outside of maybe one main destination city
| (Edinburgh--maybe two with Glasgow), Scotland probably
| feels somewhat hard to get around to someone from a very
| different culture and they may not be wrong.
| tinix wrote:
| This definitely isn't just a Scotland thing... I grew up in
| Alabama and this was common there, and honestly I've seen this
| all over rural America. It's very common for farm stands during
| the harvesting season.
|
| Still, cool website, I enjoyed a few articles there even if this
| one was very short.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| I've seen this in rural North Carolina. Eggs were available on-
| your-honor in the countryside back when the cities were out of
| eggs.
| js2 wrote:
| Was going to mention NC. I've seen it in western NC: honor
| markets with honey, jam, chow chow, late season vegetables.
| vondur wrote:
| Yes, I've seen this in rural America. Purchased some firewood
| at a random stand on the highway. Pick some up, leave $5 in the
| box. Really nice to see this sort of thing in action.
| jonah wrote:
| Yup, there are quite a few little self-serve farm stands around
| here in Northern California.
|
| And some firewood places like the ones the sibling commenter
| mentioned as well.
| technothrasher wrote:
| When I was a preteen kid many years ago in Massachusetts
| enjoying the rural summer life, we used to go around to the
| local farms and beg produce off the farmers. We'd then set up a
| card table and a cash box at the side of the road somewhere and
| then go off to play for the day. While we were gone, the kindly
| wives of the farmers we'd gotten the produce from would come
| and buy back the produce from us for whatever minimal price
| we'd set on it. So as the afternoon wore on, we'd head back and
| excitedly collect our change and then head to the local general
| store to buy penny candy.
|
| We didn't know at the time that it was the wives buying the
| produced back. We just thought we were amazingly successful
| shop keepers.
| subscribed wrote:
| This is such a sweet story Thanks for sharing!
| comrade1234 wrote:
| We have these too in Switzerland, ranging from simple like in the
| article to full farm stores like this:
| https://www.leimbihof.ch/bio-laden
|
| Last time I was there they had a milk cow full fillet/tenderloin
| (among many other things) for around $280 (converted from chf).
| The store is completely unmanned and you pay electronically. If
| there are cameras they're not obvious.
| beardyw wrote:
| I was in Cyprus many many years ago. Driving along we saw a sign
| for a bar and stopped. Under a canopy of vines were tables and
| chairs, a fridge full of beer, a price list, and a plastic tub
| with some money in it.
|
| A delightful moment among many.
| jjgreen wrote:
| A friend and I took a trip from Sheffield to Glasgow just before
| an election, and on a grim and dark winter evening we went out
| into the barely-lit backstreets looking for a particular pub. A
| group of 6 or so well-built young men approached us, ..."Hey
| lads, are you proud to be Scottish?", "Er, I suppose we would be
| if we were Scottish, but we're from Yorkshire ...". This being
| not long after "Trainspotting" was released, I was half-expecting
| a knife to be pulled, but no "Oh sorry lads, we're just canvasing
| for the Scottish independence, ... you having a good night? ..."
|
| Nice place.
| jMyles wrote:
| ...and one of the best music cities in the world at the moment.
| Levitz wrote:
| I found several things like these last year while doing a
| pilgrimage through Camino de Santiago[1] in northern Spain. The
| idea that people, after days or even weeks of walking stayed, at
| the very least, honest enough to keep it happening, moved me to a
| large degree.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_de_Santiago
| kypro wrote:
| We have chickens and I'd love to do an honesty box. Problem is we
| live in an English city and it's extremely low-trust like most
| English cities these days.
|
| It's not even that I worry someone would steal the eggs that
| concerns me most, it's that a lot of people would probably think
| it's funny to throw them at cars or house/shop windows.
|
| I'd love to live some where where this is possible... I heard
| that Lee Kuan Yew on visiting England in the 50s saw an honesty
| box and was inspired by how civilised the English were.
|
| Not sure what's happened to us since then... You definitely
| couldn't do that now. We're like a completely different people.
| Although it's nice to see that this practise does still live on
| in some rural communities.
|
| Also - the honesty "box" in that lead picture is absolutely
| beautiful...
| PJDK wrote:
| Can I push you to give it a try - places with honesty boxes
| feel like places with honesty boxes if that makes sense.
|
| Obviously you might get your car egged once - but you can get
| eggs anywhere.
|
| If it's any help, my (admittedly very nice) corner of Bristol
| has a couple of honesty boxes for eggs and things about the
| place and I've never seen any trouble from it.
| specproc wrote:
| Not quite honesty boxes, but Bristol has a good culture of
| "tat".
|
| It used to be quite common to see usable household goods left
| outside a house for others to take.
| Ichthypresbyter wrote:
| As opposed to the story about the person who leaves their
| unwanted furniture outside with a sign reading "Free-
| Please Take". It sits there undisturbed for a week.
|
| Then they replace the sign with one that reads "$10- put
| cash in letterbox"
|
| Within an hour, the furniture is gone, though of course
| there's no cash!
| ghaff wrote:
| I guess it's very location-dependent. I live a ways off a
| pretty busy exurban road in MA and if I leave somewhat
| useable stuff at the end of my driveway with a free sign it
| will probably be gone withing a few hours.
| kypro wrote:
| I'm considering placing a sign on the wall saying to knock
| for eggs next time we want to get rid of some. I think that's
| a fair compromise.
|
| We get a lot of crime around here... The issue with an eggs
| honesty box is that it's likely to be a nuisance to the
| neighbourhood. If people are willing to smash windows, I
| doubt they'd think twice about throw some eggs around. In
| fact we got egged ourselves a couple of halloween's ago...
| ralferoo wrote:
| > Problem is we live in an English city and it's extremely low-
| trust like most English cities these days.
|
| If you go hiking in the countryside, you encounter honesty
| boxes in small villages fairly often. I guess the fact that
| every knows everyone else tends to make smaller communities
| more trusting and trustworthy.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Lived in rural Australia with this as commonplace. Fwiw the
| neighbour did have someone take the whole box one day. He did run
| after it and get a numberplate since he was close to the box at
| the time.
|
| That's one thing about these, it's not that no one would ever
| steal them as if there's some magic in these areas that leads to
| zero theft. After all anyone can drive out there. They exist
| because there's little choice but to accept some losses since you
| can't staff a store selling small amounts of produce.
|
| For all the comments along the lines of "society has gone to
| shit, look how nice it once was" just remember that theft still
| happens and these honesty boxes were always done out of raw
| necessity.
| freeopinion wrote:
| Hiring onsite security forces doesn't seem to be the answer.
| Inventory loss at big box stores is reportedly quite high. If
| you stocked a drop box with 20-dozen eggs and somebody stole a
| dozen, you might still be doing better than Walmart.
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-california-stores-closed-...
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| That's exactly how it works. You accept the losses. Since the
| honesty box stores are very low volume and the box is emptied
| regularly you just accept that there will be losses but at
| least they'll be relatively small. The reason honesty boxes
| don't work in the city is that the equation leans to staffing
| being worthwhile to counter the losses.
|
| I feel self-checkouts these days lean back towards the
| honesty box system but no one see's those as quaint at all :p
| ghaff wrote:
| Self-checkout does have some checks in place in general but
| my sense is that most stores have ratcheted back on how
| carefully they check on things.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| You could always scan the organic green beans as the
| cheaper non-organic variety if you wanted to but it's
| such minor theft (saves a few cents per dollar) that it's
| neither worth doing nor worth policing which is pretty
| similar to how honesty boxes work in reality.
| ghaff wrote:
| The obvious thing to me is that weight checks used to be
| annoyingly stringent--e.g. weigh your reusable bags.
| Aside from some employee keeping an eye on things I don't
| see anything like that around where I live any longer.
| account42 wrote:
| You are ignoring that theft still has to be rare for the boxes
| to make sense for the owner. Much rare than it would be if you
| put something like this in a big city.
| croisillon wrote:
| Austria here: some villages have this, and some have the
| dystopian unattended vending machines stores
| wonderwonder wrote:
| They have these in the rural parts of Kansas and Missouri. My mom
| has a country vet that she gets medication for her animals from
| and the vet just has a box in front of his farm where he puts the
| medication for his various patients after doing a phone consult.
| Patients take the medication and leave cash. I was stunned when I
| saw it the first time and realized that there really is another
| way to live.
| pipes wrote:
| I know a guy who is from Brazil, he was utterly shocked that
| honesty boxes existed. I doubt they are universal. And they
| probably require a high trust society.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Hi from Argentina! Is that close enough?
|
| If you put one of these here in Buenos Aires, I expect it to
| dissapear in an hour.
|
| But a long time ago I went with my wife for a few weeks to a
| small town in the mountais in the Cordoba(AR) province. We left
| the bikes unchained an unatended for hours. I expect a honesty
| box to be possible there. Except during weekends, when it get's
| full of turists.
| throawaywpg wrote:
| Brazilians are shocked that if can leave your bag on the table
| while you go to the bathroom
| alistairSH wrote:
| I've seen this outside DC, in Loudoun County, for eggs and other
| easily packaged farm goods. Lots of smaller (and large) farms in
| the area.
|
| I also have a friend who keeps chickens in Seattle (inside the
| city). He tried an honesty box for excess eggs, but they just got
| stolen.
| ghaff wrote:
| Very common in New England to have honesty system for various
| farm goods especially in exurban/rural locations. Often there
| are, stands that usually high school kids are looking after, but
| having just something with a payment box by the side of the road
| is pretty common. In fact, near where my brother has a house in
| Maine, there's a cheesecake store that doesn't routinely have
| someone there.
| pumplekin wrote:
| I live in Scotland, have two former racing greyhounds, and I'm
| very grateful for a local farmer who has a dog run / playpark
| with an honesty box we can drop something in to help with upkeep
| when we give our two a nice run.
| FiatLuxDave wrote:
| I once stayed at an honesty box motel near Hell's Backbone (a
| road through rough country in rural Utah). There was a basket of
| keys on the porch and a sign that said, "We're out. Please take a
| key and leave $20." The place hadn't been cleaned in a while, but
| I was very happy to stay there as there was nowhere else nearby
| and I had fallen ill.
|
| There was a dog with heterochromia and a llama nearby, watching
| us as we left the money and chose a key. It was quite the
| memorable place. For years afterwards my wife referred to it as
| "the hotel run by a dog and a llama".
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-08-07 23:02 UTC)