I live in a relatively safe neighborhood and have no confidence $20 left taped to a trash can on the curb would survive the night. I guess one could tape it inside the lid? Even that wouldn't survive the night in grittier neighborhoods.
My wife said much the same thing; and we're so rural no one actually drives past our trash cans but us. We put ours out a couple hours before they come by; can't leave trash by the road overnight cuz the coyotes will scatter it all over.
Civil society vanished quick, apparently. I once knew the kind of people who would steal cars or anything else because they could; and those people would've found the notion of stealing tips low.
To be fair, I haven't experimented with leaving clearly marked cash on the sidewalk to discern whether the local thieves' code condones tip-stealing or not. (This is a Boston suburb innervated by public transit, so there's plenty of foot traffic.)
