Archive note: This text comes from the old archive of Nomika Epilekta and is preserved with care for historical and informational reading.

I maintain that it is difficult to meet honest people in our country. Since I live in Greece and have no experience of life in other countries, I will refer to events as I experienced them, describing recent incidents of theft, indifference, and fraud that plague our country and have been established as modern, inviolable social institutions of general acceptance.

On Tuesday, 30.10.2012, I made a professional trip to Larissa. I had to visit the courts of Larissa with a colleague and then the prisons, which today are euphemistically called, not places of torment and warehouses of souls, but detention facilities. After all, the modern Greek state excels at renaming and disguising things. Examples are the renaming of the Ministry of Public Order as the Ministry for Citizen Protection, and the hateful deprivation of liberty without a judicial decision, the so-called pretrial imprisonment, as temporary detention, and so on.

We set off early in the morning and, after passing through the irritating clashing rocks of the toll stations and paying a considerable total sum, we reached our destination. We went to the first public service, where we enjoyed the inactivity of the numerous employees, their sluggishness, indifference, impressive lack of courtesy, and arrogance. Before moving on to the next public service, we decided to have a quick meal at a nearby ouzeri near the city center.

At around 15:00, we sat on seats that were anything but comfortable and ordered what one usually orders in an ouzeri: ouzo with its rudimentary accompanying dishes.

At the end, we paid 52 euros for the trivial items ordered and were given a legal receipt bearing the printed indication: M... OUZERI K. H. ..., tax number ..., Third Tax Office of Larissa, tel. ..., total 22.00, cash 22.00, items 4, 30-10-12, 13:39, receipt no. 11, machine 1, operator LZ 12004226.

Mechanically I took the cash-register receipt and placed it in my briefcase. Later, looking at it, I realized that instead of a receipt for 52 euros, I had been given an unrelated receipt for 22 euros, with a different time of issue: instead of 15:45, the receipt showed 13:39. It was a receipt another customer had left behind when leaving.

Annoyed by the fraud and tax theft, which mainly harmed the abstract entity called the public purse, I decided to report the illegality to the competent financial authority or to the financial crime squad. For that reason, I photocopied the receipt and thought of preparing a written complaint. Yet I did not proceed, thinking that I would become entangled in the gears of bureaucracy and, in addition, that I risked being troubled by the certain challenge to my credibility. Besides, I thought, everyone does this. One person cheats another, and all together cheat the state, which is essentially nonexistent, abstract, and undefined, damaging the common interest, the so-called public interest, which is invoked by those who break the law. And, after all, what would I gain? Thus I suspended the decision to complain until some future time, when I might overcome the objections of reason and prudence.

Because of my work, I had to stay in a hotel in Larissa, near the city's large square and very close to the wretched courthouse building. When I reached the hotel tired, after driving for more than three hours from Athens to Larissa and after completing laborious tasks, an employee appeared at the reception while I was arranging my stay. He volunteered, for a tip, to take the car to the hotel's parking area. I thanked him for his willingness and, satisfied, settled into the hotel room. It was Monday evening. On Thursday, after completing my work and paying the excessive hotel bill, I later learned that I should absolutely have negotiated the price or else I would be unlucky, as indeed happened, I went to the parking area to collect my car. There I discovered that the vehicle could not move because of its battery. What was the cause? The willing hotel employee who had taken it had forgotten to turn off the lights, which remained on for four days.

The parking manager made it clear that he bore no responsibility because, when he saw that the car lights were on, he had notified the hotel reception many times; I had handed the car keys there, and they told him they would notify me. In short, there was nobody with honor and conscientiousness who cared enough to turn off the car lights. I was therefore forced to call the vehicle's roadside assistance, which arrived sluggishly after more than an hour. The competent technician declared himself unable to open the car door and left without much discussion, so that he would not cause any damage and get involved. After hours of arrangements, efforts, and anxiety, specialized technicians from the car manufacturer finally agreed to come only when I assured them that I would not demand an invoice, not even a receipt for their payment. With that statement their objections were overcome, the obstacles were removed, and within fifteen minutes a full crew arrived and solved the vehicle's problem in the blink of an eye. As for the substantial expense required, the hotel officials told me that the only thing they could offer was a room, free of charge, so that I could rest for a while.

The scene moves from Larissa to Kifisias Avenue in Athens, on the border between Kifisia and Marousi, on 03.12.2012, at about 21:00. Since the gauge showed that my car had no petrol, I stopped at a petrol station, a liquid fuels station, which according to its sign sells Greek fuels, and asked for 50 euros' worth of petrol. The employee willingly began to carry out my order. At the same time, he told me that he was offering free cleaning fluid for the windshield wipers with a special cleaning mixture. For that reason he asked me to open the hood and, without my permission, supposedly checked the engine oil as well. With great seriousness he pronounced that it was burnt, useless, and dangerous. I was very lucky that he had seen it. It had to be changed immediately, here and now, otherwise the engine would burn out. Since I was dizzy and tired, I thought that the helpful and polite employee wanted selflessly to assist me, in a spirit of social solidarity, with Greek honor and humanity. I asked him what the urgent oil change would cost. He answered that the price was 23 euros, so, calculating the money I had, I agreed that he should change the oil. Later, when he asked me for 161 euros, I understood that when he said 23 euros, he meant the unit price per liter.

After paying for the oil and the petrol, I left puzzled, because only a few days earlier the car had undergone a full service. When I discussed the matter with a car technician, I understood the scheme that the polite and willing employee had set for me. Exploiting my fatigue, dizziness, the late hour, and above all my unjustified ignorance about car maintenance, through the trick of the supposed free offer of cleaning fluid, he managed to sell me oil that the car did not need. It was explained to me that the oil already in the car was sufficient for many kilometers, 15,000 or more, and in any event the vehicle's electronic system gives notice, with a special warning light, when the oil must be changed.

Thus, through the staged procedure, the clever businessman of the petrol station managed to extract a significant sum from me under a lawful appearance. He must have done the same to others like me, people unfamiliar with the matter, so that we may learn that we must be competent in everything and, above all, suspicious, because we live in a society dominated by fraudsters and every kind of scoundrel.

Of course, this businessman too will become the victim of fraud, theft, or some other crime by people of his own trade when he seeks to satisfy their needs, individual and family, so that evil perpetuates itself and society slides ever deeper into disrepute and shame. Has the time perhaps come to change our minds? With the minds we have, neither we nor our devastated country will survive. Morality, solidarity, honesty, consistency, care, and virtues in general are necessary if we are to exist and live within a civilized and harmonious framework, looking toward the happiness that we drove away together with hope.