Over a year ago now, I wrote a piece called Welcome to the Radiohead Economy for Report on Business Magazine. In the piece I compared Radiohead’s experiment of putting In Rainbows online and asking for donations to the practice of farmers leaving an “honesty box” along with their corn at an unmanned roadside stand.

During my research for that piece I also learned about a cafe in Kirkland, Washington that has all the lovely espresso drinks and sandwiches you would expect at an upscale cafe, but no prices or cash register, just a locked honesty box patrons can drop money into.

Obviously this isn’t a system that would work everywhere, but any good salesman (or conman) will tell you that one of the best ways to get your customers (or victims) to trust you is to first show that you trust them. I wish that more businesses understood that.

That’s why I was so pleased to read this story from the UK about a hardware store in North Yorkshire that was left open on Boxing Day with no staff and just an honest box. The truly amazing thing about the story is not that people didn’t make off with all the goods, but how many notes of thanks were also received in the box. This is a great way to build a community of trust and I’m sure it will benefit this guy’s business for years to come.

An honesty box is a terribly civilized thing, and putting one out shows just how much you think about