Enterprising or Cheating

My brother Harry related this incident to me:

It was the last day for offending Malaysian motorists to take advantage of the 50% discount to pay up their summonses. He was at the post office and had gotten a number that was more than a hundred after the number being served at the counters. The place was packed with various shapes, sizes and colours of Malaysians, tempers were frazzled, collective patience of the mass of humanity was running low, faces were getting long and more sour by the hour. The friendly Malaysian has left the building.

He stepped outside the glass doors for a bit of fresh air and gravitated towards 2 gentlemen in animated conversation. The Chinese man in his 40s was holding forth and gesticulating with a clutch of tickets while the Indian gent in his 50s nodded in commiseration.  

As Harry joined the duo, he realised that the Chinese man (we'll call him Mr A) was talking about Mr B, another Chinese gent in his 60s whom Harry now noticed was standing at a counter in the full-blown posture of one "making an official complaint".

What transpired was Mr A had this brainwave: pay the cleaner $20 to go through the trash. He figured there woould be people who would come in, take a number, see that there is a long wait, and as they leave throw away their ticket in disgust. His $20 investment netted him 5 usable tickets, all with numbers way ahead of his own by at least 50.

In his exuberance he had shared what he had done to two strangers whom he thought might benefit from his windfall. The Indian gentleman's own ticket was a few numbers ahead of the earliest of the five tickets. Mr B, the Chinese gent in his 60s got on his high horse and accused Mr A of cheating. He was so righteously indignant that he felt compelled to seek out the Person In Charge and make an Official Complaint.

Enters Harry from stage right: Mr A has found a new best friend. After telling his story and getting the requisite sympathy, he tells Harry, "Don't worry, I'll give you the second best ticket once I know that my tickets are usable and have not been sabotaged by him. And the rest of the tickets I'll give it out to anybody but him."

What then happened was: the Post Office official decided to disregard the incident as a cheat and when Mr A went to the counter and was able to use his first number, he rushed out to give Harry his second number. After he had conducted his business, he went around distributing the rest of his tickets but came back to where Mr B was seated in a blue funk and with the sourest of visage: "Here, cheer up. Take the ticket," pushed the ticket into his hand and left.

Harry reported that Mr B held the ticket at arm's length, suspicion, indignation, anger, irritation replacing each other on his face. He just might have thrown it to the floor and stamped on it if not for his wife who told him, "Don't be silly. It was given to you, use it."