If you stain a pair of jeans before you check out, must you buy them?

How honest should you be when returning product to store shelves?

A reader we’re calling Davis is particular about the type of denim jeans he wears, both brand and style. He keeps a lookout when they become available at the membership warehouse club to which he belongs since the price is much better than elsewhere.

A challenge Davis has is that the size jeans he wears, waist and inside leg length, is rarely as available as other sizes. He figures that he either has unusual measurements or one of the most common measurements. Whatever the reason, Davis tries to grab a pair of his favorite jeans whenever he finds them at a good price. Typically, by the time this happens the jeans he does own either have holes in the knees or splattered paint or grease embedded in the denim.

But on a recent trip to his warehouse club, large stacks of Davis’ favorite jeans were piled up on counters in the center of the store. Davis parked his shopping cart at the end of the counter, ransacked his way through the hundreds of pairs of jeans to see if they had his size. He grabbed the two pair of jeans in his size that were in the denim piles.

Pleased with his find, Davis went about his shopping. He picked up a rotisserie chicken, a bag of coffee beans, some navel oranges, and a container of strawberries, among other things. When he got to the line queued up for the cash registers, Davis noticed that the strawberries had been sitting on top of the jeans and had left what looked to be a stain on them.

Now, Davis was faced with a decision. Should he buy the jeans and hope to get the stain out? Should he pull out of line and go back to toss the jeans onto the pile where he found them? Or should he go to the customer service counter at the front of the store and hand the jeans over to them explaining what happened?

Two of these options could have been a right thing to do. Davis could have purchased the jeans and hoped for the best in removing the stain. Or he could have handed the jeans over to the customer service desk or to the cashier at the cash register and explained what happened. Returning them with a stain to the pile of goods may have been the quickest remedy, but that chanced that an unsuspecting customer might purchase them without noticing the strawberry blemish.

If Davis didn’t want to deal with getting the stain out of the jeans, then the right thing would have been to turn them over to someone at the store who could make the decision about what to do with them. Davis shouldn’t feel guilty if he chose not to buy the jeans even though he was the one who wasn’t careful about where the strawberries were placed in his cart. He should be no more responsible for this error of judgment than he would be had he knocked over a jar of olives. Next time the jeans become available, however, Davis would be wise to be more careful about his cart produce placement.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.

(c) 2025 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Should we always vote for our friends?

Is it OK to vote for your friends or yourself even if you believe someone else is a better choice?

When I was in graduate school and living in graduate housing, the choice of who would serve as dorm proctor the following academic year was left to the vote of the current dorm residents. The dorm proctor was mostly charged with keeping track of keys and being the direct line of contact for the dean of students whenever an issue arose. The main attraction was that the proctor didn’t have to pay for his or her room for the academic year.

While there were no formal campaigns for the position, there were always several people vying for the position. In trying to weigh who would do the job the best, a friend of mine held firm that the choice was obvious: “You always vote for your friends.”

I was reminded of her admonition when I received an email from Phil Clutts, a long-time reader of the column from North Carolina. Phil had received a notification that a caption he had written for the New Yorker cartoon caption contest was accepted as a finalist and was among the three submitted captions to a blank cartoon that readers would choose as the best for the week.

“I can vote for myself, as can others whom I have encouraged to vote,” wrote Phil. “What if I or the others think that one (or both) of the competing captions is funnier than mine? Can I/we ethically vote for mine?”

Humor, as I’ve written here before, can be a funny thing. If Phil indeed thought his caption was simply awful, he likely shouldn’t have submitted it and tried a little harder. But if his was equally strong, as the screeners at the New Yorker seemed to think it was, then he might ask himself if he simply enjoyed the other entries a bit more because they were new to him. He had likely read and re-read his entry many times before submitting it, so beyond the excitement of learning it was chosen as a finalist, could it be that he was unsure if it was the best of the three simply because it was the most familiar?

I don’t believe Phil should have any qualms about voting for his own work and encouraging others to do so as well. Ultimately, the right thing is to let his friends know about his good news, encourage them to consider his entry, but recognize they might or might not vote for his comedic pearls.

Which brings me to my friend’s admonition that you always vote for your friends. In principle, I understood her reasoning since I was in the running for dorm proctor and I believed it was her way of telling me I had her vote. Of course, she might have been telling me that she was going to vote for another of her friends who might be running. I’ll never know, but unless she believed someone was woefully unqualified to do the job, she was free to use whatever criteria she chose to decide her vote.

I ended up being chosen to serve as dorm proctor. And it turns out Phil won that week’s caption contest with or without his own and his friends’ vote. Nicely done, Mr. Clutts.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.

(c) 2024 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Listening before interrupting may yield better understanding

Is it wrong to correct someone if you’re not certain they’re wrong?

In the early 1970s, when I was a sophomore in high school, I was enrolled in a class called “PSSC Physics.” The other students in the class were seniors with far more science and math classes under their belt than I had. I never knew what the PSSC stood for until about a week ago when I looked it up and found that it was an acronym for the Physical Science Study Committee, a group that grew out of a 1956 conference whose mission it was to produce curriculum for high school physics classes.

I recall few things about the course. I do remember that we had regular standardized tests that were used to measure our progress throughout the term. I remember heavy use of steel ball bearings. There was also a lot of discussion about electricity and currents. But mostly I remember being in way over my head and rarely having a clear grasp of the material. On the rare occasion when I did understand something, or at least thought I understood it, a wave of momentary confidence washed over me.

On one such occasion when I was absolutely certain I knew what was going on, I interrupted our teacher, Mr. Wittman, mid-sentence in his lecture and blurted out, “That’s wrong.” Mr. Wittman was an institution at my high school – older, demanding, revered and not to be messed with. Upon my interruption, without hesitation, he stared me down and responded: “You’re interrupting me to tell me I’m wrong.”

And then he proceeded to lay out how I had been rude in interrupting him, and also laid out clearly in excruciating detail how I was wrong about him being wrong. He ended by looking directly at me from behind the lab table at the front of the room and asked: “Are we clear now?”

I did not ask for clarification on whether he wondered if I was clear on the material or clear about how rude I’d been. I suspect he was referencing both.

That experience with Mr. Wittman has never left me. There have been dozens of incidents since where I have seen others interrupt speakers to correct them before giving them a chance to complete a sentence. It’s been all too common an occurrence to hear someone choose to correct rather than to ask a question or two to make sure they understood what was being discussed. There is a rush to be seen as right and someone else wrong instead of a patience to make sure we are.

Students should question their instructors if they need clarity on a topic. They have every right to challenge what’s being presented if they believe they have something to offer that can advance the discussion.

But the right thing is to make sure we listen to others, whether in a classroom or workplace setting or in life, before we rush to correct. Not just because it’s rude, but because by listening closely we might gain a clearer understanding of what someone is trying to say and it might help us sharpen out own views that may differ from the presenter’s

Mr. Wittman never seemed to hold my interruption against me, and I was able to pass his class. But please don’t quiz me on physics.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin. 

(c) 2024 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Are you foolish not to maximize your company expense account?

Is it wrong to spend as much as allowable on a business expense report?

According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ (ACFE) 2024 Report to the Nations, one of the most common “occupational fraud schemes” in the United States and Canada involves expense reimbursement. Internationally, roughly 20% of businesses with fewer than 100 employees and 12% of business with more than 100 employees are affected by expense fraud according to the ACFE report.

Filing a fraudulent expense report is wrong, both legally and ethically.

But how careful should employees be expected to be when following the rules of spending their company’s money while doing company business?

A reader we’re calling Tuppence asked if she was being foolish because she tries to be as frugal as possible when traveling on her company’s dime. Whenever possible she eschews an overnight stay that would incur hotel costs and instead books an early flight to her destination and a late flight home. Tuppence also rarely spends the allowable amount on meals or other incidentals while traveling.

What caused Tuppence to ask her question, she says, is that colleagues regularly tease her for being so careful about incurring allowable expenses. Partly she believes they can’t understand why she would care about limiting how much of the company’s money she spends. But she also worries that they think she’s making others look like they might be spending too much.

If Tuppence’s frugality is getting in the way of her doing her job as well as possible, then she might reconsider her approach. If, for example, she regularly is exhausted at meetings while on the road because she arose at an obscenely early hour to catch a flight, then her efforts might not have the best outcome for the company. She also shouldn’t do anything that results in her being personally out of pocket for any expenses that should be legitimately reimbursed. And neither should she be expected not to eat a decent meal while away on company business. Vending machines might be handy, but Tuppence’s health is likely better served by finding something better to consume.

But if Tuppence’s frugality while on company business results from her belief that she doesn’t want to spend more of the company’s money than she has to, even if it’s allowable, she should have no second thoughts regardless of the teasing of colleagues or a fear of somehow not behaving as a hard-driving employee should behave.

The right thing is for Tuppence to do her job as best as she can while on the road and to continue to act in what she believes to be the most responsible way for her company. The right thing for Tuppence’s or anyone’s company is to make sure that when it asks an employee to be away from home that it reimburses them for whatever personal expenses they incur and develops an expense reimbursement policy that is fair, clear and helps ensure that its employees are safe while on the road.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.

 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.

 

 (c) 2024 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.