About a month ago I was sitting at my desk at my home office in Boston when the phone rang. It was my insurance broker.
"Mr. Seglin," my broker said, "we just got a call that your parked car has been hit."
Not the kind of call that one enjoys getting, but this one could have been much worse.
It turned out that some fellow had lost control of his steering and rammed full speed into the back of my vehicle.
My insurance broker had been called by an officer of the Boston Police Department. She wanted to make sure that I got the note that the driver had left tucked in the driver's-side door of my car.
My broker e-mailed me an incident report, and I walked over to assess the damage and fill in the form.
Most of the right rear side had been crumpled, as had the back bumper, and the taillight was broken. But it was nothing that couldn't be repaired.
And indeed, as my broker had said, the young driver who had hit my car had left a note with his contact information and his insurance-company information tucked in the door. As I was filling in the report, an older gentleman came over and handed me a Post-it note with the police-cruiser number on it.
I was happy that the driver had left me a note, of course, because it meant that I could get the car repaired without having to pay the deductible on my insurance.
The appraiser for the insurance company came out the next morning to assess the damage. He observed the same damage I had noted, but also remarked that the front bumper seemed to be damaged as well. I hadn't noticed the front-bumper damage originally, but I did point it out when I spoke to the body shop about the repairs.
A few weeks passed, and all seemed to be going well with the repairs.
Then I got a call from the insurance adjustor, questioning whether the damage to the front bumper had happened in the original accident, noting that neither I nor the appraiser had reported it initially.
"Did the front-bumper damage happen as a result of this accident?," the adjustor asked.
It would have been easy to simply say that it did. I hadn't spotted it before, and it was consistent with the car having been pushed forward into another car by the impact from the rear. But the truth was that I didn't know. I hadn't noticed it in my own inspection of the car after the accident, and it was possible that this fairly minor damage had occurred sometime previously.
"I don't know," I told the adjustor. "But I only noticed it after your appraiser pointed it out to me."
After a few days of hemming and hawing from the insurance company, the appraiser went back out to the body shop to reassess the front-bumper damage. He gave the body-shop people no clue whether or not he had concluded that the damage was the result of the accident.
But a few days later the appraiser called.
"Good news," he said. "We're covering the damage to the front of your car."
Rather than respond smugly, I thanked him. It was, after all, a rare occasion in life in which everybody did the right thing.
The appraiser did the right thing in pointing out some damage that I had overlooked, though it would have saved his company money to keep quiet about it. I did the right thing, if I say it myself, in acknowledging that I had no idea if this damage was the result of this accident, though it would have been to my advantage to insist that it was. The adjustor did the right thing in having his appraiser reassess the damage to resolve the conflicting information, rather than simply using my uncertainty as an excuse not to pay.
I can only assume that the appraiser's failure to list that damage on his report was a simple oversight, but in the end nobody was hurt by it.
And, lest we forget, everybody else in this story - the driver who left me his information, the office who went the extra mile to make sure that the information got to me and even the bystander who jotted down the police-car number - did the right thing.
That's very gratifying, especially in a situation that often brings out the worst in people.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, November 15, 2009
SOUND OFF: OUT OF THE PAST
On Sept. 26 Swiss authorities arrested Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski, a French citizen who was wanted in the United States on an old conviction for having sex with a 13-year-old girl: In 1978, in California, Polanski had pled guilty to one count of unlawful sex with a minor, but fled the country before being sentenced.
Of those readers responding to an unscientific poll on my column's blog, 88 percent believed that the nature of Polanski's crime requires that he pay the penalty, even 32 years after the fact and despite the fact that his victim has long since forgiven him and called for the dismissal of all remaining charges.
"He should finish whatever jail sentence he has," writes Carol Ludovise of Orange County, Calif. "He deserves no special treatment."
Mary Beth McCurdy of London, Ontario, agrees.
"American authorities should definitely pursue extradition of this predator," McCurdy writes. "The passage of time should in no way diminish the serious nature of this crime."
"The victim has publicly stated that she has forgiven Polanski," notes William Jacobson of Cypress, Calif., "not because he has done anything to deserve it - he hasn't - but rather because she didn't want this issue to destroy her. The public charges are not hers to forgive, though, and charges, once filed, have no statute of limitations and so will continue until justice is served."
"If Polanski were a poor, American black," Marilyn Johnson adds, "would we be asking this question?"
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Of those readers responding to an unscientific poll on my column's blog, 88 percent believed that the nature of Polanski's crime requires that he pay the penalty, even 32 years after the fact and despite the fact that his victim has long since forgiven him and called for the dismissal of all remaining charges.
"He should finish whatever jail sentence he has," writes Carol Ludovise of Orange County, Calif. "He deserves no special treatment."
Mary Beth McCurdy of London, Ontario, agrees.
"American authorities should definitely pursue extradition of this predator," McCurdy writes. "The passage of time should in no way diminish the serious nature of this crime."
"The victim has publicly stated that she has forgiven Polanski," notes William Jacobson of Cypress, Calif., "not because he has done anything to deserve it - he hasn't - but rather because she didn't want this issue to destroy her. The public charges are not hers to forgive, though, and charges, once filed, have no statute of limitations and so will continue until justice is served."
"If Polanski were a poor, American black," Marilyn Johnson adds, "would we be asking this question?"
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, November 08, 2009
SOUND OFF: NEWLY MINTED ETHICS
Disgraced former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, whose fabrications and plagiarism wreaked havoc on his readers, on his colleagues and on the newspaper industry as a whole, has tried to shift careers to become a "life coach." Recently Washington and Lee University's Journalism Ethics Institute invited him to deliver a talk called "Lessons Learned" in which he would discuss his misdeeds and what he has learned from them. The university presents Blair's talk as an opportunity for students to hear from someone who can speak to the "pressures and temptations" that face young journalists.
Is it right to offer a forum to someone whose professional transgressions may serve as a life lesson to future journalists? Or is it wrong to give a platform to someone guilty of such misdeeds?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Is it right to offer a forum to someone whose professional transgressions may serve as a life lesson to future journalists? Or is it wrong to give a platform to someone guilty of such misdeeds?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: `HERE'S MONEY FOR X, BUT NOT FOR Y'
According to a survey conducted by The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the largest charitable organizations in the country are expecting their greatest drop in donations in the 17 years the journal has been collecting such data.
The expected drop for 2009 is 9 percent, after an uptick in contributions in 2008 of 1 percent, which itself was down from the 5-to-6-percent donation increases that these organizations had been experiencing for years. The latest data from Canada, collected in 2007, suggests that the Canadian rate of charitable giving was already flat even before the economy took its turn for the worse.
Not great news for organizations already pressed to continue to fulfill their charitable missions as funding gets scarcer.
It's reasonable to assume that donors, finding their own dollars stretched thinner, are looking longer and harder at the organizations to which they contribute. Issues of effective use of contributions come into play. Is an organization using too much of its money for overhead and not enough for the cause it was set up to champion? Is money going to efforts other than its primary mission? It's easier to check on such things nowadays with the help of Web sites such as www.charitynavigator.com, which evaluate how charities use their funds.
How much control, however, should you expect to have over your contribution once you give it to a charitable organization?
Sure, the money should never be used for a purpose that strays from the charity's stated mission. But what if only some parts of that mission are to your liking?
That's what's bothering a reader in Columbus, Ohio.
"Recently," she writes, "I found out that a charity I contribute to, which advertises itself as fighting a disease, gives some of the donations it receives to an organization which I do not want to support."
She e-mailed the organization to raise her concerns, but never received any response.
"If on future donations I include a request that any donations from me be used for the disease the group fights but not be donated to the other organization," she asks, "would the charity be obligated to honor my request?"
It's not unreasonable to hope that a charitable organization would take the time to respond to the concerns of its donors and indeed to honor any special requests that they may have. It's reasonable, but it's not mandatory.
A contribution made to the general funds of an organization can be spent as that organization sees fit. So long as that charity responsibly uses the money to champion its stated cause - rather than, say, funding terrorism or lavish lifestyles for its executives - it cannot be expected to wall off various parts of its activities because individual donors might favor one activity but not another. Given that different people have different likings, it could create an organizational and logistical nightmare.
This is a problem which has long vexed the federal government and, though individual taxpayers may ask that their money not be used to finance, say, wars or social programs with which they disagree, in reality all the money goes into one pot from which all federal programs are funded. Colleges face the same problem and often allow dedicated giving, especially to large donors.
In the case of charities, prospective donors are certainly within their rights to ask questions about how their money will be used, and the right thing for the charity to do is to respond to these queries - if not out of ethical concerns, at least because a donor who feels ignored is less likely to give again. My reader ought to have gotten a response to her e-mail, even if the answer wasn't what she wanted to hear.
The charity didn't ask me for advice, though, and my reader did.
The right thing for her to do is to donate her money to charitable organizations that do not spend money on things she finds distasteful. Rather than try to change the mission or practices of an organization that uses its funds in a way that she doesn't like, my reader would be better off investing her time and her funds in a charity that does.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, November 01, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: GRANDMA PUT ONE OVER ON HIM
America is aging, they tell us, and apparently so are its con artists.
That's the word from a reader living outside Columbus, Ohio, who plaintively writes, "I was robbed by Grandma."
My reader and his wife held their first-ever yard sale in early September. The grandmother in question appeared as a customer, accompanied by her daughter and her grandson, who called himself "Blaze." Because the grandmother had selected several items for purchase, my reader gave her a discount on her purchases.
"I even threw in a couple of odd ball boxes to go with the items she was purchasing," he writes.
When the items were all gathered, the grandmother asked if she could pay with a check. My reader hesitated for a moment, but she assured him that she was local and so was her bank.
"So I trusted Grandma," he writes.
He helped Blaze, his mom and his grandmother load their items into their car, and they sped away.
Traffic was slow at the yard sale, so my reader decided to drive into town and cash Grandma's check, leaving his wife in charge at home. He pulled up to the bank's drive-through window, handed the endorsed check to the teller and, instead of the cash he expected, got a shock.
"Sorry," the teller told him. "There are no funds available for this account."
"You can imagine how I felt," he writes. "Talk about shock and awe. I just got hoodwinked by a grandma at our yard sale."
The teller gave back the check, and my reader noticed that there was a telephone number printed on it. When he called the number, however, he didn't get Grandma. The person who answered told him that the number had long since been reassigned, and added that she had received at least six calls that afternoon from people who had received bad checks.
When he returned home, red-faced, my reader got a scolding from his wife, who said that the experience was his own fault for accepting a personal check.
"Well, excuse me for trusting people," he writes. "Especially a grandma. I mean, she was with her daughter and grandson! What kind of example are you trying to set here, Grandma?"
Every day since the yard sale, my reader has called the bank to see if funds have been deposited to cover the check. Nothing.
He can't help wondering if his wife is right, that it's foolish to trust people, especially when it comes to taking personal checks.
"I mean, when you can't trust a grandma, whom can you trust?" he writes.
My reader's central issue here is not an ethical one. It may or may not be foolish to be scammed by a silver-haired grifter, but it's not unethical. She was the only unethical one in this story and, if she were to write for advice, I could certainly offer her a few pointers.
As far as my reader is concerned, his only ethical obligation is to report the incident to his local police. There's clearly the potential for widespread check kiting here, and other area residents should be alerted.
Personally, I don't think my reader's experience with this grandmother - if she really is one - should tarnish his trust in people. That one person took advantage of him does not mean that he should expect the same from all people or even most people. Every day millions of personal checks are cashed and clear.
That said, his wife has a point that accepting personal checks at yard sales from people he doesn't know is a risky business. Adopting a general policy of not accepting checks wouldn't be a declaration of distrust in humanity, merely a prudent precaution against the occasional bad apple.
Or he could continue to accept checks, realizing that now and then he'll probably get stung. There's no ethical mandate either way.
I myself would favor a no-checks policy, which doesn't have to be unduly harsh. The next time a grandma says that she doesn't have the cash for her purchases, he should offer to set aside her items for an hour or two while she goes home for the money or visits a bank.
And if he never sees her again, I doubt that would bother him much.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
That's the word from a reader living outside Columbus, Ohio, who plaintively writes, "I was robbed by Grandma."
My reader and his wife held their first-ever yard sale in early September. The grandmother in question appeared as a customer, accompanied by her daughter and her grandson, who called himself "Blaze." Because the grandmother had selected several items for purchase, my reader gave her a discount on her purchases.
"I even threw in a couple of odd ball boxes to go with the items she was purchasing," he writes.
When the items were all gathered, the grandmother asked if she could pay with a check. My reader hesitated for a moment, but she assured him that she was local and so was her bank.
"So I trusted Grandma," he writes.
He helped Blaze, his mom and his grandmother load their items into their car, and they sped away.
Traffic was slow at the yard sale, so my reader decided to drive into town and cash Grandma's check, leaving his wife in charge at home. He pulled up to the bank's drive-through window, handed the endorsed check to the teller and, instead of the cash he expected, got a shock.
"Sorry," the teller told him. "There are no funds available for this account."
"You can imagine how I felt," he writes. "Talk about shock and awe. I just got hoodwinked by a grandma at our yard sale."
The teller gave back the check, and my reader noticed that there was a telephone number printed on it. When he called the number, however, he didn't get Grandma. The person who answered told him that the number had long since been reassigned, and added that she had received at least six calls that afternoon from people who had received bad checks.
When he returned home, red-faced, my reader got a scolding from his wife, who said that the experience was his own fault for accepting a personal check.
"Well, excuse me for trusting people," he writes. "Especially a grandma. I mean, she was with her daughter and grandson! What kind of example are you trying to set here, Grandma?"
Every day since the yard sale, my reader has called the bank to see if funds have been deposited to cover the check. Nothing.
He can't help wondering if his wife is right, that it's foolish to trust people, especially when it comes to taking personal checks.
"I mean, when you can't trust a grandma, whom can you trust?" he writes.
My reader's central issue here is not an ethical one. It may or may not be foolish to be scammed by a silver-haired grifter, but it's not unethical. She was the only unethical one in this story and, if she were to write for advice, I could certainly offer her a few pointers.
As far as my reader is concerned, his only ethical obligation is to report the incident to his local police. There's clearly the potential for widespread check kiting here, and other area residents should be alerted.
Personally, I don't think my reader's experience with this grandmother - if she really is one - should tarnish his trust in people. That one person took advantage of him does not mean that he should expect the same from all people or even most people. Every day millions of personal checks are cashed and clear.
That said, his wife has a point that accepting personal checks at yard sales from people he doesn't know is a risky business. Adopting a general policy of not accepting checks wouldn't be a declaration of distrust in humanity, merely a prudent precaution against the occasional bad apple.
Or he could continue to accept checks, realizing that now and then he'll probably get stung. There's no ethical mandate either way.
I myself would favor a no-checks policy, which doesn't have to be unduly harsh. The next time a grandma says that she doesn't have the cash for her purchases, he should offer to set aside her items for an hour or two while she goes home for the money or visits a bank.
And if he never sees her again, I doubt that would bother him much.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: PANTS ON FIRE?
Of the readers responding to an unscientific poll on my column's blog, 81 percent believed that Rep. Joe Wilson (R.-S.C.) was wrong to shout "You lie!" when President Barack Obama recently addressed Congress on health care. Wilson later apologized to the president for his outburst.
"Rep. Wilson was wrong to make the outburst in the joint session of Congress," one reader writes. "That he was correct - the president did not tell the truth - does not make the impulse appropriate."
"Wilson's apology does not make right his wrong outburst," writes William Jacobson of Cypress, Calif. "It was a breach of decorum that was wholly uncalled for."
The final word belongs to editorial cartoonist Randy Bish of The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, whose cartoon was sent to me by Max Maizels of Richmond, Va.: "If a man yells `You lie' in a room full of politicians, how do they know who he's talking to?"
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
"Rep. Wilson was wrong to make the outburst in the joint session of Congress," one reader writes. "That he was correct - the president did not tell the truth - does not make the impulse appropriate."
"Wilson's apology does not make right his wrong outburst," writes William Jacobson of Cypress, Calif. "It was a breach of decorum that was wholly uncalled for."
The final word belongs to editorial cartoonist Randy Bish of The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, whose cartoon was sent to me by Max Maizels of Richmond, Va.: "If a man yells `You lie' in a room full of politicians, how do they know who he's talking to?"
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, October 25, 2009
SOUND OFF: SHOULD `ZERO' MEAN ZERO?
After initially suspending a Delaware first grader and requiring him to spend 45 days at an alternative school, for having brought a camping knife to school in order to eat his lunch with the knife's fork and spoon, the school has re-evaluated its position. Now he will be suspended for three to five days and undergo counseling.
The original punishment reflected the school's zero-tolerance policy for students who come to school with weapons of any kind. The revised policy came about after widespread media attention prompted the school to decide that a child's "cognitive level" should be considered in determining punishment in such cases.
Given the student's age and innocent intent, was the school right to alter its stance? Or is the zero-tolerance policy best, given that the camping knife could still have caused serious harm?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: NOT RECOMMENDED
The honor code for the United States Military Academy is a model of clarity.
"A Cadet will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do," it says.
When the lines are clearly drawn and it's simple to recognize lying, cheating or stealing, a West Point cadet should know what to do. But what about when the act in question falls into a decidedly gray area? How does a cadet make the call? And to what extent should a prospective cadet hold herself to the same standards?
One of my readers is the parent of a young woman in exactly that situation. My reader's daughter is a high-school senior applying for admission to four U.S. military service academies, for which purpose she has solicited letters of recommendation from a number of teachers she has had - necessary because each academy requires letters from both English and math teachers.
The daughter's junior-year math teacher recently retired, and the new math teacher deferred to her predecessor, rather than write a recommendation for a student whom she really hasn't had in class yet. That was fine ... at first.
The retired teacher wrote one hard-copy letter. The other institutions require electronic recommendations, however, so he is on the list to recommend her to the other three academies.
"Today she received an e-mail requesting a $20 check from this teacher who is not `agile' on the keyboard," my reader writes. "He asked that the check be made out to his daughter for formatting and writing the letter."
My reader feels that there is something amiss with his request, but she's wondering how to handle the situation ethically and, ideally, to make it a bona-fide "teachable moment" for her daughter.
Adding to the problem is that she has little time to ponder the issue: The deadline for recommendations is Nov. 1.
If he finds the technology too baffling, the former math teacher would be well within his rights to decline the request to write an online recommendation. No teacher is obligated to write a recommendation for a student. In fact, if a prospective recommender did not think highly of a student's academic work, she might be doing him a favor by declining - though that's not the case here.
Regardless of his intent, however, it is inappropriate for him to request any compensation for writing a recommendation for a former student. If my reader's daughter forks over the $20, whether to the former teacher or to his daughter, a reasonable observer might conclude that she was buying a recommendation, rather than receiving it on the merits of her work. My reader is right to be uncomfortable with the situation, and right to worry that it might not pass muster with any military academy's honor code if it were to come out.
The right thing for my reader and her daughter to do is to explain these concerns to the teacher and ask him to forgo the $20. If, out of concern for his daughter or for any other reason, he doesn't see it this way, they should thank him and find another teacher to write her math recommendation. Perhaps, under the circumstances, the new teacher would be willing to talk with her predecessor and write a recommendation combining both viewpoints.
It may be hard to find a new recommender on such short notice, but it's a worthwhile effort. It's not too soon for her daughter to be living up to the standards of the academies she seeks to join, and this experience should be helpful to her in considering future gray-area situations that may arise.
The retired teacher didn't ask me for advice. If he had, though, I'd have told him that, if he's having trouble with the online technology but wants to write the letter, the right thing for him to do would be to seek assistance from the school. Quite likely, someone in the guidance office would be willing to help him input his recommendation and/or give him a tutorial for future reference.
As for the school, the guidance office should make clear to all teachers that asking for compensation for recommendations, regardless of the rationale for the request, is unacceptable. A teacher asked for a recommendation can fairly say "Yes" or "No," but not "If ... "
Incidentally, speaking as one who has written his share of recommendations, it's perfectly all right for a student to pay for postage for a hard-copy recommendation, ideally by providing a stamped, addressed envelope for that purpose. Postage is steeper than it used to be, and some teachers end up writing dozens of recommendations. The commitment of time and attention is enough - no recommender should have to foot the bill to send a letter, although many of us end up doing so.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
"A Cadet will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do," it says.
When the lines are clearly drawn and it's simple to recognize lying, cheating or stealing, a West Point cadet should know what to do. But what about when the act in question falls into a decidedly gray area? How does a cadet make the call? And to what extent should a prospective cadet hold herself to the same standards?
One of my readers is the parent of a young woman in exactly that situation. My reader's daughter is a high-school senior applying for admission to four U.S. military service academies, for which purpose she has solicited letters of recommendation from a number of teachers she has had - necessary because each academy requires letters from both English and math teachers.
The daughter's junior-year math teacher recently retired, and the new math teacher deferred to her predecessor, rather than write a recommendation for a student whom she really hasn't had in class yet. That was fine ... at first.
The retired teacher wrote one hard-copy letter. The other institutions require electronic recommendations, however, so he is on the list to recommend her to the other three academies.
"Today she received an e-mail requesting a $20 check from this teacher who is not `agile' on the keyboard," my reader writes. "He asked that the check be made out to his daughter for formatting and writing the letter."
My reader feels that there is something amiss with his request, but she's wondering how to handle the situation ethically and, ideally, to make it a bona-fide "teachable moment" for her daughter.
Adding to the problem is that she has little time to ponder the issue: The deadline for recommendations is Nov. 1.
If he finds the technology too baffling, the former math teacher would be well within his rights to decline the request to write an online recommendation. No teacher is obligated to write a recommendation for a student. In fact, if a prospective recommender did not think highly of a student's academic work, she might be doing him a favor by declining - though that's not the case here.
Regardless of his intent, however, it is inappropriate for him to request any compensation for writing a recommendation for a former student. If my reader's daughter forks over the $20, whether to the former teacher or to his daughter, a reasonable observer might conclude that she was buying a recommendation, rather than receiving it on the merits of her work. My reader is right to be uncomfortable with the situation, and right to worry that it might not pass muster with any military academy's honor code if it were to come out.
The right thing for my reader and her daughter to do is to explain these concerns to the teacher and ask him to forgo the $20. If, out of concern for his daughter or for any other reason, he doesn't see it this way, they should thank him and find another teacher to write her math recommendation. Perhaps, under the circumstances, the new teacher would be willing to talk with her predecessor and write a recommendation combining both viewpoints.
It may be hard to find a new recommender on such short notice, but it's a worthwhile effort. It's not too soon for her daughter to be living up to the standards of the academies she seeks to join, and this experience should be helpful to her in considering future gray-area situations that may arise.
The retired teacher didn't ask me for advice. If he had, though, I'd have told him that, if he's having trouble with the online technology but wants to write the letter, the right thing for him to do would be to seek assistance from the school. Quite likely, someone in the guidance office would be willing to help him input his recommendation and/or give him a tutorial for future reference.
As for the school, the guidance office should make clear to all teachers that asking for compensation for recommendations, regardless of the rationale for the request, is unacceptable. A teacher asked for a recommendation can fairly say "Yes" or "No," but not "If ... "
Incidentally, speaking as one who has written his share of recommendations, it's perfectly all right for a student to pay for postage for a hard-copy recommendation, ideally by providing a stamped, addressed envelope for that purpose. Postage is steeper than it used to be, and some teachers end up writing dozens of recommendations. The commitment of time and attention is enough - no recommender should have to foot the bill to send a letter, although many of us end up doing so.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, October 18, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: THE RIGHT CANDIDATE WITH THE WRONG IDEAS
How many of you, I wonder, deplore the state of education in your country ... but adore the teachers who work with your kids at your local school?
How about politicians? As a group they rank low in positive ratings, but as individuals they keep getting re-elected. Do you hate politicians ... but love your local representative?
Years ago, when I was dissecting the results of a poll about workers' attitudes toward work, the findings suggested a similar disconnect: Workers thought that workers' situations were miserable ... but the majority of them were satisfied with their own jobs.
Benjamin R. Barber, a political scientist whom I interviewed at the time, referred to this phenomena as a "halo effect."
"You know," he said, "people hate Congress except for their own congressperson."
Barber's observation came to mind when I received an e-mail from a reader asking me a question about a friend whom he described as "very conservative" in his politics.
"My friend can't stand the politics of his liberal U.S. senator," my reader writes, nothing that he's particularly unsympathetic to the senator's stance on gay rights.
Years ago, however, when the friend faced a lawsuit that threatened to make him responsible for a deceased family member's debts, he turned to his senator for help after exhausting all other resources. The Senator quickly intervened, and the suit was settled in the friend's favor - "for which," my reader writes, "he is very grateful."
As a result the friend continues to vote for this senator every time she's on the ballot, even though he dislikes everything she stands for.
My reader understands that his friend might see voting against this particular senator as "biting the hand that feeds you," he writes. "But who's to say that another senator might not have been able to accomplish the same thing?"
Wouldn't it have been better, he wonders, for his friend simply to tell others about how his senator had helped him out and write her a sincere note of thanks - but nevertheless to vote in accordance with his conscience?
My reader suggests his friend should write something along these lines: "I appreciate that you, like all good members of Congress, serve your constituents regardless of their political positions, but since I am diametrically opposed to virtually everything you stand for, I'm sorry that I cannot in good conscience vote for you in the next election."
"Where should the line be drawn between standing by values central to your very being and ignoring them in gratitude for a moneysaving favor provided by a big shot that you otherwise regard with contempt?" he asks. "What's the right thing to do?"
My reader makes a good point. If you believe that an elected official in no way reflects your personal values, you shouldn't vote for him or her.
That's not really the case with his friend, though. Political beliefs reflect values, but they aren't the only values out there. Americans have a long history of voting for candidates whom they admire as people, even if they are unaware of the candidates' positions on particular issues or are opposed to those positions. Sometimes one set of values trumps another.
Clearly his friend places a higher priority than does my reader on the values reflected in his senator's effort to help him. Gratitude and loyalty weigh more heavily for him, and political compatibility less heavily, than they do for my reader.
Our values are shaped early in life. While the priorities we place on our values may change, depending on where we are in our lives, the values themselves hold pretty steady throughout. My reader's friend hasn't changed his principles as a result of the favor his senator did for him _ he's simply revealed them.
My reader's friend didn't ask me how to vote, and if he did I would never try to tell him. If he's decided that the help he got from his senator makes her worthy of his vote, then voting for her is the right thing for him to do.
As to my reader, I'd advise him to lighten up on this. We all cast our votes for a variety of reasons, and those reasons are our own. The important thing is to vote, not to vote for any particular candidate or for any particular reason.
My reader's friend is meeting his societal obligation, and my reader should leave it there.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
How about politicians? As a group they rank low in positive ratings, but as individuals they keep getting re-elected. Do you hate politicians ... but love your local representative?
Years ago, when I was dissecting the results of a poll about workers' attitudes toward work, the findings suggested a similar disconnect: Workers thought that workers' situations were miserable ... but the majority of them were satisfied with their own jobs.
Benjamin R. Barber, a political scientist whom I interviewed at the time, referred to this phenomena as a "halo effect."
"You know," he said, "people hate Congress except for their own congressperson."
Barber's observation came to mind when I received an e-mail from a reader asking me a question about a friend whom he described as "very conservative" in his politics.
"My friend can't stand the politics of his liberal U.S. senator," my reader writes, nothing that he's particularly unsympathetic to the senator's stance on gay rights.
Years ago, however, when the friend faced a lawsuit that threatened to make him responsible for a deceased family member's debts, he turned to his senator for help after exhausting all other resources. The Senator quickly intervened, and the suit was settled in the friend's favor - "for which," my reader writes, "he is very grateful."
As a result the friend continues to vote for this senator every time she's on the ballot, even though he dislikes everything she stands for.
My reader understands that his friend might see voting against this particular senator as "biting the hand that feeds you," he writes. "But who's to say that another senator might not have been able to accomplish the same thing?"
Wouldn't it have been better, he wonders, for his friend simply to tell others about how his senator had helped him out and write her a sincere note of thanks - but nevertheless to vote in accordance with his conscience?
My reader suggests his friend should write something along these lines: "I appreciate that you, like all good members of Congress, serve your constituents regardless of their political positions, but since I am diametrically opposed to virtually everything you stand for, I'm sorry that I cannot in good conscience vote for you in the next election."
"Where should the line be drawn between standing by values central to your very being and ignoring them in gratitude for a moneysaving favor provided by a big shot that you otherwise regard with contempt?" he asks. "What's the right thing to do?"
My reader makes a good point. If you believe that an elected official in no way reflects your personal values, you shouldn't vote for him or her.
That's not really the case with his friend, though. Political beliefs reflect values, but they aren't the only values out there. Americans have a long history of voting for candidates whom they admire as people, even if they are unaware of the candidates' positions on particular issues or are opposed to those positions. Sometimes one set of values trumps another.
Clearly his friend places a higher priority than does my reader on the values reflected in his senator's effort to help him. Gratitude and loyalty weigh more heavily for him, and political compatibility less heavily, than they do for my reader.
Our values are shaped early in life. While the priorities we place on our values may change, depending on where we are in our lives, the values themselves hold pretty steady throughout. My reader's friend hasn't changed his principles as a result of the favor his senator did for him _ he's simply revealed them.
My reader's friend didn't ask me how to vote, and if he did I would never try to tell him. If he's decided that the help he got from his senator makes her worthy of his vote, then voting for her is the right thing for him to do.
As to my reader, I'd advise him to lighten up on this. We all cast our votes for a variety of reasons, and those reasons are our own. The important thing is to vote, not to vote for any particular candidate or for any particular reason.
My reader's friend is meeting his societal obligation, and my reader should leave it there.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: LYING ON BLOGS
Of those readers responding to an unscientific poll on my column's blog, 36 percent believed that was OK for Julie Powell, the based-on-fact character in the movie Julie and Julia, to make up anything she wants on her blog. It is her personal expression, they said, and is read only by those who choose to read it.
Most of the respondents - 63 percent, to be exact - disagreed.
"I don't know which is sillier, the premise for the movie or the attempt to cover up the recipe failure and the machinations with the spouse and her boss using the supposed personal nature of a personal blog," writes Charlie Seng of Lancaster, S.C.
Dagmar Roman of New Windsor, N.Y., agrees.
"A lie is a lie is a lie," Roman writes. "No matter if it's to your boss or in a blog. Once I find that someone has lied, for whatever reason, I can never entirely trust them again."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, October 11, 2009
SOUND OFF: THE LONG MEMORY OF THE LAW
On Sept. 26 Swiss authorities arrested Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski, a French citizen who was wanted in the United States for having sex with a 13-year-old girl. In 1978 Polanski pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful sex with a minor in California, but fled the country before being sentenced. Given that the victim of his crime has publicly forgiven Polanski, is it wrong for American prosecutors to continue to pursue his extradition? Or does the nature of his crime require that he pay the penalty, even 32 years after the fact?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: LABELED A TARGET
Several years ago, when I was an editor for a magazine, a photographer who worked there gave me an old-fashioned, oversized mailbox that he had spray-painted gray for a photo shoot that had accompanied a column I wrote. It's the type of mailbox you attach to a stake in the ground, and it came complete with a red flag for the mail carrier to raise when making a delivery.
I thought it would be nice to attach the mailbox to my house, even though that wasn't its intended purpose, so I drilled a few holes in its side and screwed the box into the shingles to the left of the top step of my front stoop.
The problem is that, when a great deal of mail is stuffed into the box, the screws sometime pull away from the house and the box falls onto the concrete step below.
This is particularly annoying to me when unsolicited mail is the culprit, so I have no fondness for all of those tokens sent by charities in an effort to entice you to contribute, including greeting cards and personalized mailing labels.
A reader from Calgary, Alberta, probably has a different kind of mailbox, but has the same kind of question: If an unsolicited charity sends you "a nice packet" of personalized address labels to convince you to donate, but you don't donate, is it legitimate to keep and use the labels? Or, he asks, "Do you have to throw them in the trash?"
Given their tendency to overtax my mailbox, I wouldn't use the word "nice" to describe any of these unsolicited items. Clearly, however, my reader has no such aversion and would like to use the labels, if he can do so without stepping over the ethical line.
"Part of me says that, whether or not I donate, the company would figure this into their marketing strategy," he writes. "The other part of me says, `Donate or deep-six it.'"
The charitable organization sending those lovely labels obviously would appreciate his donating if he's going to use them, but he's under no obligation to do so. Obligations are assumed through mutual consent, not imposed, and there's no such agreement here. The labels came unsolicited and without any way to return them if he chooses not to donate. Moreover, the charity that sent the labels, like most such charities, in no way suggests that a donation is essential to keep the labels. They are a gift _ a gift made in the hope of prompting a gift in return, but nonetheless a gift.
Some such labels bear an inscription implying that the sender has given to the charity, which would send an insincere message if used by a non-donor. That's not the case here, however. The labels simply feature his name and address.
When I told my reader that it is perfectly OK for him to use the labels, whether or not he donates, he added an extra question: "What do you do, if I might ask?"
Sorry, I have no Solomonic solution to offer.
"I can't stand those labels and never use them," I told him, "so I throw them out whether I donate to the charity or not."
The right thing for him to do is to use the labels if he wants to and to donate to whatever charities he finds worthy. The two have nothing to do with each other, whether or not the charity in question wants him to think so.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
I thought it would be nice to attach the mailbox to my house, even though that wasn't its intended purpose, so I drilled a few holes in its side and screwed the box into the shingles to the left of the top step of my front stoop.
The problem is that, when a great deal of mail is stuffed into the box, the screws sometime pull away from the house and the box falls onto the concrete step below.
This is particularly annoying to me when unsolicited mail is the culprit, so I have no fondness for all of those tokens sent by charities in an effort to entice you to contribute, including greeting cards and personalized mailing labels.
A reader from Calgary, Alberta, probably has a different kind of mailbox, but has the same kind of question: If an unsolicited charity sends you "a nice packet" of personalized address labels to convince you to donate, but you don't donate, is it legitimate to keep and use the labels? Or, he asks, "Do you have to throw them in the trash?"
Given their tendency to overtax my mailbox, I wouldn't use the word "nice" to describe any of these unsolicited items. Clearly, however, my reader has no such aversion and would like to use the labels, if he can do so without stepping over the ethical line.
"Part of me says that, whether or not I donate, the company would figure this into their marketing strategy," he writes. "The other part of me says, `Donate or deep-six it.'"
The charitable organization sending those lovely labels obviously would appreciate his donating if he's going to use them, but he's under no obligation to do so. Obligations are assumed through mutual consent, not imposed, and there's no such agreement here. The labels came unsolicited and without any way to return them if he chooses not to donate. Moreover, the charity that sent the labels, like most such charities, in no way suggests that a donation is essential to keep the labels. They are a gift _ a gift made in the hope of prompting a gift in return, but nonetheless a gift.
Some such labels bear an inscription implying that the sender has given to the charity, which would send an insincere message if used by a non-donor. That's not the case here, however. The labels simply feature his name and address.
When I told my reader that it is perfectly OK for him to use the labels, whether or not he donates, he added an extra question: "What do you do, if I might ask?"
Sorry, I have no Solomonic solution to offer.
"I can't stand those labels and never use them," I told him, "so I throw them out whether I donate to the charity or not."
The right thing for him to do is to use the labels if he wants to and to donate to whatever charities he finds worthy. The two have nothing to do with each other, whether or not the charity in question wants him to think so.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, October 04, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: ONE PRICE FOR ALL...EXCEPT SOMETIMES
"I'm hoping you can resolve a dispute my boss and I are having," a reader from southern California writes.
Some background: Customer A contacted my reader's company months ago. He ordered, purchased and installed equipment, spending a considerable amount of money in the process.
"He has been a loyal customer for many years," my reader writes, "and spends a great deal of money with our company."
Customer B, on the other hand, is relatively new and has purchased very little from the company. Recently Customer B wanted to buy equipment similar to that which Customer A had purchased. He asked for and received an estimate from my reader's company, but found it a bit high for his taste. He asked my reader to consider giving him a better price on the equipment he wanted to purchase.
My reader and her boss agreed that Customer B should not get a better price than Customer A. After this initial agreement, however, they found themselves at loggerheads.
"My boss believes that both customers should receive the same price," my reader writes. "I believe that Customer A has been loyal to us, has money and time invested with us, came to us first and should get a better price."
Now she wants to know, from an ethical point of view, whether she or her boss is off base.
I contacted my reader for further information, and learned that the company has no policy, formal or informal, suggesting that regular customers should get a break on prices. Nor does it tell customers that, if they spend a cumulative dollar amount, the company's appreciation will be reflected in better pricing.
There would be nothing wrong in having such policies, assuming that the company wasn't violating any pricing regulations, but there's no ethical problem with not having such policies. Obviously there's no ethical issue in not honoring a policy that doesn't exist.
If the boss decides that all current and prospective customers will be treated the same when it comes to pricing, there's no ethical flaw in that approach. It doesn't reward loyalty, as my reader thinks the company should, but it does ensure consistent treatment of all customers, which is not a bad thing. There's something to be said for either approach, from an ethical point of view, and neither one is in any sense wrong.
The right thing for the boss and his managers to do is to decide what the company's policy will be in this area, then to make sure that all current and future customers know the policy. If it's even-steven across the board, fine. If it rewards longer-standing customers, that's fine too - so long as the rationale is made clear, so that my reader and her colleagues don't end up trying to placate angry customers who think that they're being discriminated against.
"I guess the boss wins this battle," my reader told me when we discussed the issue.
That's as it should be, because within certain limits a company is free to determine its own prices and pricing policies. She and her boss did agree, however, that it would help avoid future questions of this nature if the company established a written policy.
On that they both agreed, and so do I.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Some background: Customer A contacted my reader's company months ago. He ordered, purchased and installed equipment, spending a considerable amount of money in the process.
"He has been a loyal customer for many years," my reader writes, "and spends a great deal of money with our company."
Customer B, on the other hand, is relatively new and has purchased very little from the company. Recently Customer B wanted to buy equipment similar to that which Customer A had purchased. He asked for and received an estimate from my reader's company, but found it a bit high for his taste. He asked my reader to consider giving him a better price on the equipment he wanted to purchase.
My reader and her boss agreed that Customer B should not get a better price than Customer A. After this initial agreement, however, they found themselves at loggerheads.
"My boss believes that both customers should receive the same price," my reader writes. "I believe that Customer A has been loyal to us, has money and time invested with us, came to us first and should get a better price."
Now she wants to know, from an ethical point of view, whether she or her boss is off base.
I contacted my reader for further information, and learned that the company has no policy, formal or informal, suggesting that regular customers should get a break on prices. Nor does it tell customers that, if they spend a cumulative dollar amount, the company's appreciation will be reflected in better pricing.
There would be nothing wrong in having such policies, assuming that the company wasn't violating any pricing regulations, but there's no ethical problem with not having such policies. Obviously there's no ethical issue in not honoring a policy that doesn't exist.
If the boss decides that all current and prospective customers will be treated the same when it comes to pricing, there's no ethical flaw in that approach. It doesn't reward loyalty, as my reader thinks the company should, but it does ensure consistent treatment of all customers, which is not a bad thing. There's something to be said for either approach, from an ethical point of view, and neither one is in any sense wrong.
The right thing for the boss and his managers to do is to decide what the company's policy will be in this area, then to make sure that all current and future customers know the policy. If it's even-steven across the board, fine. If it rewards longer-standing customers, that's fine too - so long as the rationale is made clear, so that my reader and her colleagues don't end up trying to placate angry customers who think that they're being discriminated against.
"I guess the boss wins this battle," my reader told me when we discussed the issue.
That's as it should be, because within certain limits a company is free to determine its own prices and pricing policies. She and her boss did agree, however, that it would help avoid future questions of this nature if the company established a written policy.
On that they both agreed, and so do I.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: A DOG IN THE FIGHT
Quarterback Michael Vick, formerly of the Atlanta Falcons, now plays for the Philadelphia Eagles. As any sports fan knows, Vick was released by the Falcons after being convicted of involvement in illegal dogfighting. He served a 23-month prison sentence, and will remain on probation for three years.
In an informal poll on my column's blog, 46 percent of respondents argued that Vick's crime was heinous enough that he should not be allowed to play professional football again. Another 53 percent felt that, since he's done his time for the crime, there's nothing wrong with him signing with any team that will have him.
"Since Vick's release and the NFL commissioner's approval of his transition to active NFL status," writes Charlie Seng of Lancaster, S.C., "the criers and haters who constantly bombard Vick with unforgiving taunts should be ignored and Vick should be left in peace."
James Z. of Connecticut disagrees.
"It's unfortunate that those with the resources and the money get second chances like the one Michael Vick is getting with the Eagles," he writes. "A job applicant with a history as a convicted felon rarely, if at all, gets a job ... Celebrities that get in trouble with the law should struggle the same way as people who don't have the money. If that were the case, Vick would be lucky to be working at the local dump. Really, that's where he belongs."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
In an informal poll on my column's blog, 46 percent of respondents argued that Vick's crime was heinous enough that he should not be allowed to play professional football again. Another 53 percent felt that, since he's done his time for the crime, there's nothing wrong with him signing with any team that will have him.
"Since Vick's release and the NFL commissioner's approval of his transition to active NFL status," writes Charlie Seng of Lancaster, S.C., "the criers and haters who constantly bombard Vick with unforgiving taunts should be ignored and Vick should be left in peace."
James Z. of Connecticut disagrees.
"It's unfortunate that those with the resources and the money get second chances like the one Michael Vick is getting with the Eagles," he writes. "A job applicant with a history as a convicted felon rarely, if at all, gets a job ... Celebrities that get in trouble with the law should struggle the same way as people who don't have the money. If that were the case, Vick would be lucky to be working at the local dump. Really, that's where he belongs."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, September 27, 2009
SOUND OFF: SHOUTING `LIAR' IN A CROWDED CONGRESS
When President Barack Obama recently addressed the Congress on health care, Rep. Joe Wilson (R.-S.Car.) thought the president was being untruthful about whether or not his plan would extend health coverage to illegal immigrants. He interrupted the speech, shouting "You lie!"
The etiquette of the situation is clear: Wilson's outcry was a breach of Congressional protocol, and he later apologized to Obama. Voting largely along party lines, the House of Representatives passed a resolution disapproving of Wilson's comment.
What about the ethics, though? Assuming that Wilson truly believed Obama to be lying, was he wrong to call the president on it? Or did he have an obligation to contradict him immediately, given that no subsequent correction would reach so wide an audience?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: THE DISAPPEARING REBATE
A couple of Christmases ago, the husband of a reader from Ontario bought her a Blackberry telephone as a gift. Because her husband wanted to make sure that my reader got the telephone she wanted, she came along when he made the purchase at the store.
"As part of the price, we were told, we were entitled to a $250 rebate," she writes.
When they got home, however, my reader looked through the packaging for a mail-in rebate card and couldn't find one.
She returned to the store to ask about the rebate card, but this time she spoke to the store's owner rather than to the sales clerk with whom she and her husband had originally dealt.
The owner proceeded to tell her that the clerk had "messed up" the original transaction. The rebate wasn't really a rebate, he said, but instead a $250 credit toward monthly bill payments, something my reader and her husband had never been told. And here's the kicker: The owner insisted that the sales clerk had taken an extra $250 off the Blackberry's price when they purchased it.
"Essentially he said that we owed him $250," my reader writes.
The owner told her that he would make sure that the credit toward monthly charges would be applied, and my reader left the store. She did end up receiving the $250 credit to her bills, and eventually forgot about the owner having said that they owed him an additional $250.
Several months later the husband returned to the store to buy something else. He was confronted by the store's owner, who told him that they still owed him $250.
"We are of the feeling that we paid for what we were expecting to get," my reader writes, "and it is not our fault that the clerk messed up. Is the owner right that we owe him money, or should he just bite the bullet?"
My reader works in retail herself, so she has seen this sort of scenario from both sides.
"If I make a mistake in a transaction, even if it means I lose money, I stand by it," she writes. "That said, I also refund money if the mistake goes the other way."
As regular readers know, I believe that it is ethically wrong to take advantage of a mistake by a shopkeeper or clerk. If you are given too much change, or if a clerk rings up your $500 purchase as $50, you are ethically obligated to point out the error and not to capitalize on it for your own advantage.
That would be the case here, if the higher price had been agreed upon between the sales clerk and my reader's husband and the clerk had then mistakenly entered the lower price at his register. In that case, error or no error, the right thing would be for my reader's husband to pay what he had agreed to pay.
That isn't the case here, though. As a representative of the store, the clerk quoted a price to his customer. The customer agreed to the price and payment was made. There was no deception on the part of my reader's husband, nor any error on the part of the clerk. He charged them exactly what he intended to charge them and they paid that amount, so the right thing for the store owner to do is to honor that sale.
If the store owner has an issue with anyone, it should be with his clerk. If indeed the clerk sold the Blackberry at a price lower than he was supposed to, the owner is fully entitled to be angry with him and even to fire him, if he considers the breach serious enough.
It's wrong for him to go after the customer, though. My reader and her husband did nothing wrong, and are in no way to blame for the store's internal problems with this transaction.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
"As part of the price, we were told, we were entitled to a $250 rebate," she writes.
When they got home, however, my reader looked through the packaging for a mail-in rebate card and couldn't find one.
She returned to the store to ask about the rebate card, but this time she spoke to the store's owner rather than to the sales clerk with whom she and her husband had originally dealt.
The owner proceeded to tell her that the clerk had "messed up" the original transaction. The rebate wasn't really a rebate, he said, but instead a $250 credit toward monthly bill payments, something my reader and her husband had never been told. And here's the kicker: The owner insisted that the sales clerk had taken an extra $250 off the Blackberry's price when they purchased it.
"Essentially he said that we owed him $250," my reader writes.
The owner told her that he would make sure that the credit toward monthly charges would be applied, and my reader left the store. She did end up receiving the $250 credit to her bills, and eventually forgot about the owner having said that they owed him an additional $250.
Several months later the husband returned to the store to buy something else. He was confronted by the store's owner, who told him that they still owed him $250.
"We are of the feeling that we paid for what we were expecting to get," my reader writes, "and it is not our fault that the clerk messed up. Is the owner right that we owe him money, or should he just bite the bullet?"
My reader works in retail herself, so she has seen this sort of scenario from both sides.
"If I make a mistake in a transaction, even if it means I lose money, I stand by it," she writes. "That said, I also refund money if the mistake goes the other way."
As regular readers know, I believe that it is ethically wrong to take advantage of a mistake by a shopkeeper or clerk. If you are given too much change, or if a clerk rings up your $500 purchase as $50, you are ethically obligated to point out the error and not to capitalize on it for your own advantage.
That would be the case here, if the higher price had been agreed upon between the sales clerk and my reader's husband and the clerk had then mistakenly entered the lower price at his register. In that case, error or no error, the right thing would be for my reader's husband to pay what he had agreed to pay.
That isn't the case here, though. As a representative of the store, the clerk quoted a price to his customer. The customer agreed to the price and payment was made. There was no deception on the part of my reader's husband, nor any error on the part of the clerk. He charged them exactly what he intended to charge them and they paid that amount, so the right thing for the store owner to do is to honor that sale.
If the store owner has an issue with anyone, it should be with his clerk. If indeed the clerk sold the Blackberry at a price lower than he was supposed to, the owner is fully entitled to be angry with him and even to fire him, if he considers the breach serious enough.
It's wrong for him to go after the customer, though. My reader and her husband did nothing wrong, and are in no way to blame for the store's internal problems with this transaction.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, September 20, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: TO WARN A THIEF
The start of a new school year always seems to raise some ethical issues for teachers, myself included.
One such teacher is a reader of mine from Pittsburgh, who is starting a new teaching job at a college. Like most colleges, his takes a strong stance against plagiarism. Its written policy makes clear, among other things, that stealing words from the Internet will not be tolerated.
That policy is one which my reader has no problem supporting, but he's troubled by some advice he's been receiving from colleagues.
"I have been encouraged not to tell my students that I'll be checking their written work through an online program that detects plagiarism," he writes.
These programs highlight portions of a student's writing and automatically search published databases to see if the student has "borrowed" too aggressively and without attribution from another source. My reader has little problem with the use of such programs, but feels that many of his colleagues seem "too excited" about the prospect of catching unsuspecting plagiarists.
He wonders if "we should be out to `catch' people in such instances where, instead, we might be able to pre-empt their poor choices by more clearly showing them that they're unlikely to get away with it."
In other words, why not tell your students ahead of time that you will be using the anti-plagiarism software, giving them a disincentive to cheat?
Ultimately, my reader writes, it's up to him whether or not to disclose the truth. But he wonders if it's inappropriate to be more interested in catching someone doing something wrong than in guiding them to do what's right.
Are my reader's colleagues wrong not to disclose to their students that they will be using plagiarism-detection software? No.
The existence of a written policy against plagiarism implies enforcement of that policy, so students should expect their professors to use any reasonable means at their disposal to detect violations. The use of anti-plagiarism software in no way violates students' privacy or other rights, so it's a perfectly legitimate tool for the college to use to ensure the authenticity of its students' work.
All the same, that it isn't wrong doesn't make it the right choice. I believe my reader's concerns are legitimate, not because using undisclosed software is unethical but because it's not the best way for the college to educate its students and promote their welfare.
The college's primary interest is not in collecting the "scalps" of plagiarists, but in preventing plagiarism. It also presumably aims to help students learn to make critical decisions for themselves, and both interests are better served by advance disclosure of the use of the anti-plagiarism software.
With the consequences of getting caught made clear to them, students have everything they need to make a choice about plagiarism. Hopefully most of them will make the right choice and the anti-plagiarism software will work well ... and bag few plagiarists.
A recurring theme in my column, through the years, has been that it isn't the stark right-and-wrong ethical choices that are difficult to make. Not everything that passes the "ethical or unethical" test is equally desirable, however, and the real challenge comes when we face a situation that presents us with a number of right choices.
Our goal should be not simply to avoid the wrong choices, but to choose the best of the right choices. The way to that choice involves weighing the potential consequences of our actions.
In this case, the right thing for my colleague to do is to focus on teaching his students the reasons not to plagiarize, rather than to work to catch them in the act. He's right in thinking that the goal is to teach a lesson through teaching, rather than through punishing.
If his colleagues are on the ball, they'll follow his example.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
One such teacher is a reader of mine from Pittsburgh, who is starting a new teaching job at a college. Like most colleges, his takes a strong stance against plagiarism. Its written policy makes clear, among other things, that stealing words from the Internet will not be tolerated.
That policy is one which my reader has no problem supporting, but he's troubled by some advice he's been receiving from colleagues.
"I have been encouraged not to tell my students that I'll be checking their written work through an online program that detects plagiarism," he writes.
These programs highlight portions of a student's writing and automatically search published databases to see if the student has "borrowed" too aggressively and without attribution from another source. My reader has little problem with the use of such programs, but feels that many of his colleagues seem "too excited" about the prospect of catching unsuspecting plagiarists.
He wonders if "we should be out to `catch' people in such instances where, instead, we might be able to pre-empt their poor choices by more clearly showing them that they're unlikely to get away with it."
In other words, why not tell your students ahead of time that you will be using the anti-plagiarism software, giving them a disincentive to cheat?
Ultimately, my reader writes, it's up to him whether or not to disclose the truth. But he wonders if it's inappropriate to be more interested in catching someone doing something wrong than in guiding them to do what's right.
Are my reader's colleagues wrong not to disclose to their students that they will be using plagiarism-detection software? No.
The existence of a written policy against plagiarism implies enforcement of that policy, so students should expect their professors to use any reasonable means at their disposal to detect violations. The use of anti-plagiarism software in no way violates students' privacy or other rights, so it's a perfectly legitimate tool for the college to use to ensure the authenticity of its students' work.
All the same, that it isn't wrong doesn't make it the right choice. I believe my reader's concerns are legitimate, not because using undisclosed software is unethical but because it's not the best way for the college to educate its students and promote their welfare.
The college's primary interest is not in collecting the "scalps" of plagiarists, but in preventing plagiarism. It also presumably aims to help students learn to make critical decisions for themselves, and both interests are better served by advance disclosure of the use of the anti-plagiarism software.
With the consequences of getting caught made clear to them, students have everything they need to make a choice about plagiarism. Hopefully most of them will make the right choice and the anti-plagiarism software will work well ... and bag few plagiarists.
A recurring theme in my column, through the years, has been that it isn't the stark right-and-wrong ethical choices that are difficult to make. Not everything that passes the "ethical or unethical" test is equally desirable, however, and the real challenge comes when we face a situation that presents us with a number of right choices.
Our goal should be not simply to avoid the wrong choices, but to choose the best of the right choices. The way to that choice involves weighing the potential consequences of our actions.
In this case, the right thing for my colleague to do is to focus on teaching his students the reasons not to plagiarize, rather than to work to catch them in the act. He's right in thinking that the goal is to teach a lesson through teaching, rather than through punishing.
If his colleagues are on the ball, they'll follow his example.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: SECONDHAND INSPIRATION
Of the readers who responded to an unscientific survey on my column's blog, 61 percent believed that it was OK for ministers to use previously written sermons downloaded from online sources only if they acknowledge to their flocks that the sermons are partially or entirely someone else's work. Only 23 percent believed that it is OK to deliver the sermons as their own, assuming that the original writers have given permission for their work to be used in this way, while 15 percent said that it is never OK to deliver someone else's sermon as your own, with or without credit.
Kristie Rutzel, director of marketing for sermonsearch.com, one of the sites that provides sermons, writes that the goal of her company is to "provide inspiration" for pastors, not to rip anyone off. Most of my respondents agreed with her perspective.
"Congregations do not expect original thought as much as truth - the same truth that was taught 50, 100, 1,000 years ago," writes William Jacobson of Cypress, Calif. "So why shouldn't the pastor `stand on the shoulders of giants' in constructing his sermons?"
"It is definitely OK to surf for inspiration," Sean Chang writes, "and I believe that God can speak to us through many channels, including the materials provided online."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, September 13, 2009
SOUND OFF: BUTTERING UP THE BOSS
The current movie Julie and Julia recounts the true story of Julie Powell, a blogger who decided to spend a year cooking every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Well into her effort Powell (Amy Adams) runs into a problem: The night before a dinner with an important editor, she sleeps through the timer and her main dish is ruined. The following day she calls in sick to work, in order to remake the meal. At her husband's suggestion, she writes in her blog that she has been laid low by a cold, so as to avoid having her bosses find out the truth from her blog.
Independent of the ethics of calling in sick when you're not sick, which have been thoroughly explored in this column, is it wrong to lie about this sort of thing in a personal blog? Or, because the blog is the writer's personal expression and is read only by those who choose to, can the blogger make up anything he or she likes?
Independent of the ethics of calling in sick when you're not sick, which have been thoroughly explored in this column, is it wrong to lie about this sort of thing in a personal blog? Or, because the blog is the writer's personal expression and is read only by those who choose to, can the blogger make up anything he or she likes?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: COLLECTION IN THE CLASSROOM
Several years ago, after retiring from a long career as a human-resources professional, a reader from New York accepted a position teaching graduate-level human-resources courses as an adjunct professor at a nearby college.
Adjunct professors are traditionally hired on a course-by-course basis by colleges or universities that need to find instructors to teach courses that their full-time faculty cannot cover. As such, adjuncts often serve on a temporary basis and may find themselves without a teaching assignment if their services aren't needed in a particular semester.
In the past few years my reader has taught roughly 35 courses in labor relations, staffing and recruiting, employee benefits and other human-resources-related courses. Generally he has been pleased with his work, and the college has been pleased with him.
All that changed, however, when he received an e-mail from the college administration saying that some students in his class were behind in tuition payments. Representatives from the purser's office might come to his classroom, the e-mail added, to deliver letters to any students who owed money.
My reader objected to this, and sent back an e-mail saying so. It could prove embarrassing to any students who were singled out, he argued, and it was not directly related to the instruction taking place in his classroom.
He also gave his students a heads-up, reading them the e-mail from the college and letting them know that, if anyone came into their classroom to deliver such letters, he would excuse all his students from the class. He also let a representative from the purser's office know of his plan.
The provost of the college, who serves as its chief academic official, interceded at this point, calling my reader to discuss the matter. He said that visits to the classroom were the best way the administration had to collect past-due tuition payments.
"I voiced my objections to the method chosen," my reader writes.
My reader believes that the college would be better advised to send letters or e-mails to students in arrears, informing them that they could no longer attend classes until their tuition was paid.
"If they had chosen this option, and advised me," he writes, "I could have discreetly taken any students aside privately and suggested that they contact the purser's office, without embarrassing the student. Instead they proposed sending `bill collectors' into classrooms to present `collection letters.'"
Since my reader took his stand, no purser's representatives have shown up at his classroom door. However, he has not been invited back to teach any future course or courses. No reason was given, and of course the college is not obligated to give one, regardless of his successful service as an adjunct professor.
It's hard to see how singling out students in front of their classmates would solve the issue facing the college. Clearly there was no expectation that the students would get out their checkbooks and pay up on the spot. If hand-delivering the letters to students during class was an attempt to shame them in front of their peers and pressure them into paying up, it was the wrong thing to do.
Obviously the students are responsible for paying what they owe, and the college is entitled to seek payment. The right thing for the college to do, however, was exactly what my reader suggests: Let the students know directly, outside the classroom, that they would not be able to attend classes or receive grades until their tuition was up to date. It would also be entirely appropriate for the college to require faculty members, including my reader, to cooperate with this effort.
My reader was correct to disagree with the collection ploy, and to tell the college that he would not cooperate with it. However, I think he was wrong to convey his feelings to the students before he had discussed it with the provost.
A teacher is a representative of the college, and it's legitimate for the college to feel that its representatives should keep disagreements in house for as long as possible, rather than immediately broadcast them to the students and, by extension, to the general public.
Both sides in this dispute have done the wrong thing, and both need to make amends.
Most colleges and universities make it a point of pride to support their instructors, even when they question the status quo. It's more awkward when it's the status quo at the college itself that is being challenged, but the principle should be the same. Whether or not it is required by policy, the college owes my reader an explanation for his suddenly being frozen out.
If, as seems likely, it's because of this disagreement, the college should make a good-faith attempt to find common ground for the future and, if that can be done, should invite this teacher back into the classroom.
My reader should admit that, while his opinion of the college's collection policies has not changed, he was wrong to go public with his objections without a more substantial attempt to settle things with the college behind closed doors.
It would be no compromise of his principles to agree to discuss any future issues of this nature with the administration before airing them to his students.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Adjunct professors are traditionally hired on a course-by-course basis by colleges or universities that need to find instructors to teach courses that their full-time faculty cannot cover. As such, adjuncts often serve on a temporary basis and may find themselves without a teaching assignment if their services aren't needed in a particular semester.
In the past few years my reader has taught roughly 35 courses in labor relations, staffing and recruiting, employee benefits and other human-resources-related courses. Generally he has been pleased with his work, and the college has been pleased with him.
All that changed, however, when he received an e-mail from the college administration saying that some students in his class were behind in tuition payments. Representatives from the purser's office might come to his classroom, the e-mail added, to deliver letters to any students who owed money.
My reader objected to this, and sent back an e-mail saying so. It could prove embarrassing to any students who were singled out, he argued, and it was not directly related to the instruction taking place in his classroom.
He also gave his students a heads-up, reading them the e-mail from the college and letting them know that, if anyone came into their classroom to deliver such letters, he would excuse all his students from the class. He also let a representative from the purser's office know of his plan.
The provost of the college, who serves as its chief academic official, interceded at this point, calling my reader to discuss the matter. He said that visits to the classroom were the best way the administration had to collect past-due tuition payments.
"I voiced my objections to the method chosen," my reader writes.
My reader believes that the college would be better advised to send letters or e-mails to students in arrears, informing them that they could no longer attend classes until their tuition was paid.
"If they had chosen this option, and advised me," he writes, "I could have discreetly taken any students aside privately and suggested that they contact the purser's office, without embarrassing the student. Instead they proposed sending `bill collectors' into classrooms to present `collection letters.'"
Since my reader took his stand, no purser's representatives have shown up at his classroom door. However, he has not been invited back to teach any future course or courses. No reason was given, and of course the college is not obligated to give one, regardless of his successful service as an adjunct professor.
It's hard to see how singling out students in front of their classmates would solve the issue facing the college. Clearly there was no expectation that the students would get out their checkbooks and pay up on the spot. If hand-delivering the letters to students during class was an attempt to shame them in front of their peers and pressure them into paying up, it was the wrong thing to do.
Obviously the students are responsible for paying what they owe, and the college is entitled to seek payment. The right thing for the college to do, however, was exactly what my reader suggests: Let the students know directly, outside the classroom, that they would not be able to attend classes or receive grades until their tuition was up to date. It would also be entirely appropriate for the college to require faculty members, including my reader, to cooperate with this effort.
My reader was correct to disagree with the collection ploy, and to tell the college that he would not cooperate with it. However, I think he was wrong to convey his feelings to the students before he had discussed it with the provost.
A teacher is a representative of the college, and it's legitimate for the college to feel that its representatives should keep disagreements in house for as long as possible, rather than immediately broadcast them to the students and, by extension, to the general public.
Both sides in this dispute have done the wrong thing, and both need to make amends.
Most colleges and universities make it a point of pride to support their instructors, even when they question the status quo. It's more awkward when it's the status quo at the college itself that is being challenged, but the principle should be the same. Whether or not it is required by policy, the college owes my reader an explanation for his suddenly being frozen out.
If, as seems likely, it's because of this disagreement, the college should make a good-faith attempt to find common ground for the future and, if that can be done, should invite this teacher back into the classroom.
My reader should admit that, while his opinion of the college's collection policies has not changed, he was wrong to go public with his objections without a more substantial attempt to settle things with the college behind closed doors.
It would be no compromise of his principles to agree to discuss any future issues of this nature with the administration before airing them to his students.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, September 06, 2009
SOUND OFF: WHERE'D YOU GET THAT MONEY?
Financier Bernard Madoff has been sentenced to 150 years in prison for swindling billions from investors, millions of which he gave to various charities. Of readers responding to an unscientific poll on my column's blog, 52 percent believed that unsuspecting charities that benefited from Madoff's crimes but had no knowledge of his misdeeds should keep every cent they received. It was one of my most closely divided surveys, however, with 47 percent feeling that the charities have a moral obligation to give back the money.
"Unless the charities had reason to suspect that the money was tainted," writes Phil Clutts of Harrisburg, N.C., "they don't `owe' it to the deceived Madoff investors, many if not most of whom, after all, were seeking almost unconscionable profits."
"The charities had no way of knowing the circumstances of how the funds were earned," agrees Charlie Seng of Lancaster, S.C., "so the charities don't owe the Madoff investors anything. We seem to have, as a society, reached the point where anyone who has ever suffered a reversal in fortunes, for whatever reason, feels that they must be made whole."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
"Unless the charities had reason to suspect that the money was tainted," writes Phil Clutts of Harrisburg, N.C., "they don't `owe' it to the deceived Madoff investors, many if not most of whom, after all, were seeking almost unconscionable profits."
"The charities had no way of knowing the circumstances of how the funds were earned," agrees Charlie Seng of Lancaster, S.C., "so the charities don't owe the Madoff investors anything. We seem to have, as a society, reached the point where anyone who has ever suffered a reversal in fortunes, for whatever reason, feels that they must be made whole."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: SHOWERS LIKELY
Twice this year an Ohio reader's company has decided to throw a wedding or baby shower in the middle of a business meeting at the company's main office. My reader works remotely for this small company, but was required to attend these meetings.
"Quite a few of us were vocal about not wanting to participate in the showers," she writes, "mostly because we don't even know these people, except for seeing them at an annual meeting."
The company's manager told them that they didn't have to participate, and gave them permission to leave during the showers and return when the fun was over and work resumed.
"Of course," she adds, "we were told that we were still expected to contribute to the shower gifts."
My reader and some of her colleagues believe that, if others want to host a shower for a colleague, it should not be on company time and attendance should not be mandatory. She worries that, as more young women become engaged or pregnant, more and more showers will be planned for company time.
"We are told we are not `team players' when we don't want to participate," she writes, adding that, if she takes a strong stance on the matter, her image as a team player stands to get even worse.
"What is the right thing to do when my company arranges wedding and baby showers in the middle of a business meeting?" she asks. "Are we wrong in not wanting to be a part of this?"
To answer the second question first, there's no right or wrong about wanting to be part of such celebrations. We feel the way we feel. Ethics doesn't tell us how to feel, only what to do about those feelings.
Going back to the first question, there's nothing wrong with having a wedding or baby shower on company time. Obviously the company feels that, in the interest of employee morale, this is a worthwhile use of the company's time. If management is happy with the practice, as apparently it is, it's fine.
The sticking point, obviously, is the idea of mandatory participation, particularly when there's a cost involved. An employee celebration of a private milestone isn't the same as an organized work session, and for those who don't feel comfortable participating _ because, as in my reader's case, they don't know the honoree or for any other reason _ discreetly opting out should be an option.
Whatever benefits the showers may have for employee morale are at least partially offset if some of those present resent being there and/or feel that they've been forced to contribute to a gift they wouldn't otherwise support.
To require any employee to donate to a group gift is plain wrong. If the company believes that it's good for morale or otherwise important for a shower recipient to get a gift on such an occasion, let the company pay for it.
And the company should consider scheduling these showers as voluntary events, scheduled after work or at least outside of official meetings. Not as many people may attend, but the honoree won't miss a few strangers - and, after all, what does it say about you anyway if people have to be forced to attend your party?
Unfortunately it wasn't company management that wrote to me for advice. My reader isn't in a position to personally change the policy, so her situation is different.
She and like-minded employees should sit down with the appropriate manager, explain the issues I've outlined above and request that the company change its employee-party policy to be more friendly to all the employees, especially those who aren't usually in the office and don't know most of the other employees.
This may inspire a change, or it may not. If it doesn't, my reader has every right to politely decline to contribute to a gift - "I'm sorry, but I don't really know her" - and then to step out of the room as the celebration begins, as her manager suggests. It would be wrong to refuse to ante up and then stay for the festivities.
If this won't fly with management, she'll have to literally grin and bear it, making the best of a party she'd rather not be at and writing off an occasional shower-gift contribution as part of the cost of doing business with this company.
I hope it won't come to that, though. "Mandatory gift" and "compulsory celebration" are both contradictions in terms, and a smart manager wouldn't mind letting her sit out the party on her own terms.¶
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
"Quite a few of us were vocal about not wanting to participate in the showers," she writes, "mostly because we don't even know these people, except for seeing them at an annual meeting."
The company's manager told them that they didn't have to participate, and gave them permission to leave during the showers and return when the fun was over and work resumed.
"Of course," she adds, "we were told that we were still expected to contribute to the shower gifts."
My reader and some of her colleagues believe that, if others want to host a shower for a colleague, it should not be on company time and attendance should not be mandatory. She worries that, as more young women become engaged or pregnant, more and more showers will be planned for company time.
"We are told we are not `team players' when we don't want to participate," she writes, adding that, if she takes a strong stance on the matter, her image as a team player stands to get even worse.
"What is the right thing to do when my company arranges wedding and baby showers in the middle of a business meeting?" she asks. "Are we wrong in not wanting to be a part of this?"
To answer the second question first, there's no right or wrong about wanting to be part of such celebrations. We feel the way we feel. Ethics doesn't tell us how to feel, only what to do about those feelings.
Going back to the first question, there's nothing wrong with having a wedding or baby shower on company time. Obviously the company feels that, in the interest of employee morale, this is a worthwhile use of the company's time. If management is happy with the practice, as apparently it is, it's fine.
The sticking point, obviously, is the idea of mandatory participation, particularly when there's a cost involved. An employee celebration of a private milestone isn't the same as an organized work session, and for those who don't feel comfortable participating _ because, as in my reader's case, they don't know the honoree or for any other reason _ discreetly opting out should be an option.
Whatever benefits the showers may have for employee morale are at least partially offset if some of those present resent being there and/or feel that they've been forced to contribute to a gift they wouldn't otherwise support.
To require any employee to donate to a group gift is plain wrong. If the company believes that it's good for morale or otherwise important for a shower recipient to get a gift on such an occasion, let the company pay for it.
And the company should consider scheduling these showers as voluntary events, scheduled after work or at least outside of official meetings. Not as many people may attend, but the honoree won't miss a few strangers - and, after all, what does it say about you anyway if people have to be forced to attend your party?
Unfortunately it wasn't company management that wrote to me for advice. My reader isn't in a position to personally change the policy, so her situation is different.
She and like-minded employees should sit down with the appropriate manager, explain the issues I've outlined above and request that the company change its employee-party policy to be more friendly to all the employees, especially those who aren't usually in the office and don't know most of the other employees.
This may inspire a change, or it may not. If it doesn't, my reader has every right to politely decline to contribute to a gift - "I'm sorry, but I don't really know her" - and then to step out of the room as the celebration begins, as her manager suggests. It would be wrong to refuse to ante up and then stay for the festivities.
If this won't fly with management, she'll have to literally grin and bear it, making the best of a party she'd rather not be at and writing off an occasional shower-gift contribution as part of the cost of doing business with this company.
I hope it won't come to that, though. "Mandatory gift" and "compulsory celebration" are both contradictions in terms, and a smart manager wouldn't mind letting her sit out the party on her own terms.¶
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, August 30, 2009
SOUND OFF: OUT OF BOUNDS?
On Aug. 13 the Philadelphia Eagles signed a one-year contract with Michael Vick, former quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons. As nearly everyone knows, Vick had been released by the Falcons after being arrested for involvement in illegal dogfighting. Vick served a 23-month prison sentence for his crimes, and will remain on probation for three years.
Some observers argue that Vick's crime was heinous enough that he should not be allowed to play professional football again. Others insist that, having done his time for the crime, there's nothing wrong with him signing with any team that will have him. What do you think?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: DO WHAT I MEAN, NOT WHAT I SAY
A reader in the state of Washington planned to move to a furnished condominium in southern Florida, one owned by a friend of hers.
For several years the friend had tried to rent out the condo seasonally, but without any luck, leaving it to sit idle for at least 10 months of the year. She offered to rent it to my reader, at whatever rent she was paying for her apartment in Washington, from October through May. The arrangement was to start this October.
"She sent me an e-mail at the end of July to the effect that it was settled," my reader writes. "The place was ready and waiting for my arrival."
It seemed like an ideal arrangement. The condo owner could visit my reader occasionally, even when she didn't use the apartment herself, while my reader could rent the place at a price far below market rates. What could go wrong?
"We discussed and agreed that the rental agent needed to be told that the place was no longer available," my reader writes, "which she said she would do."
As it turns out, she never did.
The two talked almost every week, and my reader told her friend about the progress she was making in packing for Florida and planning the drive from the West Coast. She had given notice to her landlord, rented storage space and given away furniture. She even told her friend that she had lined up someone else to rent her apartment in Washington.
"Then one morning, recently, she calls me to say that something incredible happened," my reader writes.
The friend had forgotten to tell her rental agent that the apartment was unavailable, and the agent had found a couple who wanted to rent the place for the same eight months. At full price.
"My friend asked me what she should do," my reader writes. "I told her that she should go ahead with the rental, because I did not want to be the cause of a loss of the full rent."
While the friend apologized, she ultimately decided to go ahead with the new, full-price renters.
Though she had told her friend to do this, my reader is nonetheless upset and disappointed. She believes that it was wrong for her friend to ask her what to do, and blames her friend for the various complications she has to unravel, now that she's staying in Washington.
She has every right to be upset and disappointed at losing out on the apartment she had agreed to rent. Her friend obviously should have contacted the rental agent as she had promised to do.
When the other offer appeared, however, her friend was not wrong to ask my reader's opinion on what she should do. Asking for help with a tough decision is never a bad idea _ if only because it keeps ethics columnists in business.
The failure here, obviously, was on my reader's part. If she felt that her friend would be wrong to take advantage of the new opportunity, which clearly she did feel, she ought to have said so. By not saying so, and indeed by giving her friend the opposite advice, she forfeited the moral high ground here.
Her friend did her the dirty, yes, but she did it with her own permission. I can't blame the condo owner for taking her friend's advice at face value.
The right thing for my reader to do, when her friend asked, was to say that she ought to stick to the agreement they had. She might also have reminded her friend of all the preparations she had made for the move.
It would have been wrong for the friend to jump at the chance for a higher rent as soon as she heard from the rental agent. It might have been best for her to simply turn down the second offer, but I don't blame her for turning to her friend for advice. It's a pity that my reader responded with insincere advice that not only cost her her place in the sun but also put their friendship in jeopardy.
Had my reader told her friend what she really thought, she probably would have ended up spending the next eight months in that condo in Florida, instead of in high dudgeon in Washington.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
For several years the friend had tried to rent out the condo seasonally, but without any luck, leaving it to sit idle for at least 10 months of the year. She offered to rent it to my reader, at whatever rent she was paying for her apartment in Washington, from October through May. The arrangement was to start this October.
"She sent me an e-mail at the end of July to the effect that it was settled," my reader writes. "The place was ready and waiting for my arrival."
It seemed like an ideal arrangement. The condo owner could visit my reader occasionally, even when she didn't use the apartment herself, while my reader could rent the place at a price far below market rates. What could go wrong?
"We discussed and agreed that the rental agent needed to be told that the place was no longer available," my reader writes, "which she said she would do."
As it turns out, she never did.
The two talked almost every week, and my reader told her friend about the progress she was making in packing for Florida and planning the drive from the West Coast. She had given notice to her landlord, rented storage space and given away furniture. She even told her friend that she had lined up someone else to rent her apartment in Washington.
"Then one morning, recently, she calls me to say that something incredible happened," my reader writes.
The friend had forgotten to tell her rental agent that the apartment was unavailable, and the agent had found a couple who wanted to rent the place for the same eight months. At full price.
"My friend asked me what she should do," my reader writes. "I told her that she should go ahead with the rental, because I did not want to be the cause of a loss of the full rent."
While the friend apologized, she ultimately decided to go ahead with the new, full-price renters.
Though she had told her friend to do this, my reader is nonetheless upset and disappointed. She believes that it was wrong for her friend to ask her what to do, and blames her friend for the various complications she has to unravel, now that she's staying in Washington.
She has every right to be upset and disappointed at losing out on the apartment she had agreed to rent. Her friend obviously should have contacted the rental agent as she had promised to do.
When the other offer appeared, however, her friend was not wrong to ask my reader's opinion on what she should do. Asking for help with a tough decision is never a bad idea _ if only because it keeps ethics columnists in business.
The failure here, obviously, was on my reader's part. If she felt that her friend would be wrong to take advantage of the new opportunity, which clearly she did feel, she ought to have said so. By not saying so, and indeed by giving her friend the opposite advice, she forfeited the moral high ground here.
Her friend did her the dirty, yes, but she did it with her own permission. I can't blame the condo owner for taking her friend's advice at face value.
The right thing for my reader to do, when her friend asked, was to say that she ought to stick to the agreement they had. She might also have reminded her friend of all the preparations she had made for the move.
It would have been wrong for the friend to jump at the chance for a higher rent as soon as she heard from the rental agent. It might have been best for her to simply turn down the second offer, but I don't blame her for turning to her friend for advice. It's a pity that my reader responded with insincere advice that not only cost her her place in the sun but also put their friendship in jeopardy.
Had my reader told her friend what she really thought, she probably would have ended up spending the next eight months in that condo in Florida, instead of in high dudgeon in Washington.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, August 23, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: STOP SPREADING THE NEWS?
What's the right thing to do when the ethical obligations of citizenship seem to conflict with professional objectivity?
A reader in North Carolina serves as an unpaid committee of one handling communications for the board of his homeowner's association. In this capacity he has collected the e-mail addresses of the 60 or so members of the association in order to distribute the HOA newsletter, in which he conveys announcements of events, security concerns or anything else of "probable resident interest."
My reader is not a member of the HOA's board of directors, but his efforts have had the board's approval.
"I have had nothing but positive feedback on my efforts as the chairman of the one-person Communications Committee," he says.
He has no idea how others in his upper-middle-class community feel about health-care reform, but he says that, having actually read some of the proposed reform bills winding their way through Congress, he has "serious reservations" about them. He has been thinking about getting together a group of his neighbors to discuss the issues of the day, and in particular health care.
He'd like to explore his neighbors' interest in getting together for such a purpose, to see "if anybody had any ideas on how best to express our opinions," and is considering using that e-mail list - but not the newsletter itself - to see what people think.
In the past my reader has been approached by people who wanted the HOA's e-mail list for commercial purposes, and he always has turned them down, pointing out that the e-mails are available on the community Web site.
Given these past refusals, he wonders if it would be "ethical for me to send out an e-mail _ disclaiming any HOA board involvement _ to see what interest it generates."
He recognizes that to do so would open him to possible criticism, and has considered instead printing a flyer and distributing it by hand, at his own expense, to gauge his neighbors' interest.
My reader's worries about the appropriateness of using the e-mail addresses for his own purposes is creditable to him. As long as he makes clear what he's doing, however, there's no reason that he shouldn't use the e-mail addresses. After all, as he says, they are available to any member of the association - including himself - on its Web site.
He is wary of using the newsletter or its e-mail list to advance his own personal views, and rightly so. If he were to send the members an e-mail laying out his position on health-care reform or, worse, if he put his opinions into the newsletter itself, that would indeed be overstepping his bounds.
The whole purpose of the newsletter is to announce upcoming events and issues of interest to the broader membership, however. If he proposes to organize a community meeting to discuss health-care reform or any other public issues, there's no reason not to use the newsletter to publicize that meeting.
If some other member were staging it, he'd obviously include it in the newsletter. Sensitivity about conflict of interest does not extend to denying himself the basic rights of membership.
The right thing for my reader to do is to organize the meeting, working to ensure that it is not merely a platform for his views but rather an exploratory session to which those with views on any side of the issue are welcome. He can then announce it in the newsletter, confining himself to the when-and-where of the meeting and its general topic, and not laying out any pros or cons on the issues involved.
To do so will not only steer clear of ethical issues where the newsletter is concerned, but also fit well with the ethical obligations of citizenship.
At the meeting itself, of course, he is free to lay out his own feelings on the issue.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
A reader in North Carolina serves as an unpaid committee of one handling communications for the board of his homeowner's association. In this capacity he has collected the e-mail addresses of the 60 or so members of the association in order to distribute the HOA newsletter, in which he conveys announcements of events, security concerns or anything else of "probable resident interest."
My reader is not a member of the HOA's board of directors, but his efforts have had the board's approval.
"I have had nothing but positive feedback on my efforts as the chairman of the one-person Communications Committee," he says.
He has no idea how others in his upper-middle-class community feel about health-care reform, but he says that, having actually read some of the proposed reform bills winding their way through Congress, he has "serious reservations" about them. He has been thinking about getting together a group of his neighbors to discuss the issues of the day, and in particular health care.
He'd like to explore his neighbors' interest in getting together for such a purpose, to see "if anybody had any ideas on how best to express our opinions," and is considering using that e-mail list - but not the newsletter itself - to see what people think.
In the past my reader has been approached by people who wanted the HOA's e-mail list for commercial purposes, and he always has turned them down, pointing out that the e-mails are available on the community Web site.
Given these past refusals, he wonders if it would be "ethical for me to send out an e-mail _ disclaiming any HOA board involvement _ to see what interest it generates."
He recognizes that to do so would open him to possible criticism, and has considered instead printing a flyer and distributing it by hand, at his own expense, to gauge his neighbors' interest.
My reader's worries about the appropriateness of using the e-mail addresses for his own purposes is creditable to him. As long as he makes clear what he's doing, however, there's no reason that he shouldn't use the e-mail addresses. After all, as he says, they are available to any member of the association - including himself - on its Web site.
He is wary of using the newsletter or its e-mail list to advance his own personal views, and rightly so. If he were to send the members an e-mail laying out his position on health-care reform or, worse, if he put his opinions into the newsletter itself, that would indeed be overstepping his bounds.
The whole purpose of the newsletter is to announce upcoming events and issues of interest to the broader membership, however. If he proposes to organize a community meeting to discuss health-care reform or any other public issues, there's no reason not to use the newsletter to publicize that meeting.
If some other member were staging it, he'd obviously include it in the newsletter. Sensitivity about conflict of interest does not extend to denying himself the basic rights of membership.
The right thing for my reader to do is to organize the meeting, working to ensure that it is not merely a platform for his views but rather an exploratory session to which those with views on any side of the issue are welcome. He can then announce it in the newsletter, confining himself to the when-and-where of the meeting and its general topic, and not laying out any pros or cons on the issues involved.
To do so will not only steer clear of ethical issues where the newsletter is concerned, but also fit well with the ethical obligations of citizenship.
At the meeting itself, of course, he is free to lay out his own feelings on the issue.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: PAYING TO REMEMBER THE KING OF POP
Of the readers who responded to an informal poll on my column's blog, two-thirds thought that Michael Jackson's estate should cover the cost of his multimillion-dollar memorial service, which was held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Only 8 percent thought that the City of Los Angeles should foot the bill.
"It appalls me that the city would allow this to go forward," writes William Jacobson of Cypress, Calif., "without a whimper beforehand on who would pick up the tab, in the shadow of the Lakers parade, where the city specifically said that they would not pick up the tab (and that it) needed to be paid for out of private donations _ and was."
"The expenses to the City of Los Angeles connected to the Michael Jackson memorial services should be paid by the Michael Jackson estate," writes Jan Bohren of Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., "but the city has an obligation to tell any party what the expenses might be prior to the event."
"What about the media giants who filmed and televised the memorial?," another reader asks. "Shouldn't they step up and help foot the bill through donation of royalties?"
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
"It appalls me that the city would allow this to go forward," writes William Jacobson of Cypress, Calif., "without a whimper beforehand on who would pick up the tab, in the shadow of the Lakers parade, where the city specifically said that they would not pick up the tab (and that it) needed to be paid for out of private donations _ and was."
"The expenses to the City of Los Angeles connected to the Michael Jackson memorial services should be paid by the Michael Jackson estate," writes Jan Bohren of Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., "but the city has an obligation to tell any party what the expenses might be prior to the event."
"What about the media giants who filmed and televised the memorial?," another reader asks. "Shouldn't they step up and help foot the bill through donation of royalties?"
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, August 16, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: IT TAKES A THIEF
Two years ago, while she was at a hockey game, a reader had her car broken into.
"There wasn't a lot for them to steal," she writes, "but they did get my collection of CDs that was in the car."
As bad luck would have it, she had only recently started listening to CDs in her car, but had grown used to leaving them there.
"Then they broke in and took them all!," she writes.
Altogether she lost 20 to 30 of her favorite CDs. None of what was stolen was covered by her insurance company, nor was the cost of replacing the broken window, because of her policy's high deductible. If she replaces the CDs, therefore, she will have to shell out for duplicate copies of music that she's already bought.
"I've been avoiding buying new ones to replace the lost ones," she writes. "I just didn't want to spend the money, because I knew I would be afraid to leave them in the car again."
Recently, however, she has begun to think about investing in an MP3 player for her car. She'd like to load onto her MP3 player some of the music that was on the stolen CDs, but money is tight right now and she's reluctant to spend the money to replace the stolen CDs.
You can probably guess where this is going: My reader's husband suggested that she borrow those same CDs from the library, make copies of them and then download them to her MP3 player.
"His reasoning was that, because I had already paid for the original CDs and it wasn't my fault that they were stolen, I wouldn't be infringing on the copyright," she writes.
She's not convinced, however.
"I think it would still be wrong," she writes. "I think I still need to pay for new copies of the music.
"What do you think?"
Longtime readers of my column may remember that I have addressed the acceptability of making unauthorized copies of copyrighted material - such as CDs but also books, DVDs, computer programs etc. - in the past. My stance has been consistent: There is no ethical justification for copying and making use of the work of others without either obtaining their permission or paying for the privilege of doing so.
Borrowing a legitimate copy from a library or from a friend is fine, so long as you plan merely to listen to it and then return it. Making illegal copies of your own, or downloading someone else's illegal copies, is not. It's stealing from the record company and from the artists who created the music and are entitled to royalties.
This is the first time, though, that I've had a reader tell me that she's considering duplicating CDs because her legal ones were stolen. Nor have I previously encountered the husband's argument that having legitimately purchased the original CDs and lost them through a sad twist of fate justifies making illegal copies of the local library's holdings.
Nice try, but those facts don't change the ethics of making illicit copies. It's still wrong.
My reader's husband is guilty of the all-too-common tendency to regard intellectual property as somehow less "real" than physical property. If the thieves had stolen my reader's car, I doubt that her husband would be encouraging her to steal someone else's car to make up for it, though it's not her fault that her legitimately purchased car was stolen. He probably wouldn't want her to shoplift replacement CDs. But somehow stealing someone's song doesn't seem the same as stealing someone's car or someone's CD.
It is the same, though. The right thing for my reader to do _ as she appears to realize - if she wants to replace her stolen music is either to buy new copies of the CDs or to buy the individual songs online so that she can play them on her MP3 player.
It's sad that she was the victim of a theft, but she's right in thinking that the answer to her problem is not some thievery of her own.¶
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
"There wasn't a lot for them to steal," she writes, "but they did get my collection of CDs that was in the car."
As bad luck would have it, she had only recently started listening to CDs in her car, but had grown used to leaving them there.
"Then they broke in and took them all!," she writes.
Altogether she lost 20 to 30 of her favorite CDs. None of what was stolen was covered by her insurance company, nor was the cost of replacing the broken window, because of her policy's high deductible. If she replaces the CDs, therefore, she will have to shell out for duplicate copies of music that she's already bought.
"I've been avoiding buying new ones to replace the lost ones," she writes. "I just didn't want to spend the money, because I knew I would be afraid to leave them in the car again."
Recently, however, she has begun to think about investing in an MP3 player for her car. She'd like to load onto her MP3 player some of the music that was on the stolen CDs, but money is tight right now and she's reluctant to spend the money to replace the stolen CDs.
You can probably guess where this is going: My reader's husband suggested that she borrow those same CDs from the library, make copies of them and then download them to her MP3 player.
"His reasoning was that, because I had already paid for the original CDs and it wasn't my fault that they were stolen, I wouldn't be infringing on the copyright," she writes.
She's not convinced, however.
"I think it would still be wrong," she writes. "I think I still need to pay for new copies of the music.
"What do you think?"
Longtime readers of my column may remember that I have addressed the acceptability of making unauthorized copies of copyrighted material - such as CDs but also books, DVDs, computer programs etc. - in the past. My stance has been consistent: There is no ethical justification for copying and making use of the work of others without either obtaining their permission or paying for the privilege of doing so.
Borrowing a legitimate copy from a library or from a friend is fine, so long as you plan merely to listen to it and then return it. Making illegal copies of your own, or downloading someone else's illegal copies, is not. It's stealing from the record company and from the artists who created the music and are entitled to royalties.
This is the first time, though, that I've had a reader tell me that she's considering duplicating CDs because her legal ones were stolen. Nor have I previously encountered the husband's argument that having legitimately purchased the original CDs and lost them through a sad twist of fate justifies making illegal copies of the local library's holdings.
Nice try, but those facts don't change the ethics of making illicit copies. It's still wrong.
My reader's husband is guilty of the all-too-common tendency to regard intellectual property as somehow less "real" than physical property. If the thieves had stolen my reader's car, I doubt that her husband would be encouraging her to steal someone else's car to make up for it, though it's not her fault that her legitimately purchased car was stolen. He probably wouldn't want her to shoplift replacement CDs. But somehow stealing someone's song doesn't seem the same as stealing someone's car or someone's CD.
It is the same, though. The right thing for my reader to do _ as she appears to realize - if she wants to replace her stolen music is either to buy new copies of the CDs or to buy the individual songs online so that she can play them on her MP3 player.
It's sad that she was the victim of a theft, but she's right in thinking that the answer to her problem is not some thievery of her own.¶
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: SURFING FOR SERMONS
Jeff Strickler, a religion reporter for The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, recently wrote about a number of online Web sites that provide ministers of various denominations with either outlines or fully written sermons to be delivered as their own. These online offerings are a new twist on the older tradition of printed books of sermons to which ministers can refer for inspiration.
Assuming that the writers of the sermons on these Web sites have given their permission for their work to be used in this way, is it OK for ministers to take advantage of these databases? Does it make a difference whether or not they acknowledge that the sermon is partially or entirely someone else's work?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Assuming that the writers of the sermons on these Web sites have given their permission for their work to be used in this way, is it OK for ministers to take advantage of these databases? Does it make a difference whether or not they acknowledge that the sermon is partially or entirely someone else's work?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, August 09, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: CAN MOM CHANGE MY ALLOWANCE?
"Am I being greedy?"
That's how a reader in New York begins his e-mail message to me. He asks because, according to his mother, he is indeed being a greedy son.
His 75-year-old mother has decided to begin distributing her assets to her three children while she is still alive. She began the process nine years ago, and told her offspring that she would give the money based on "a principle of equality."
Until recently my reader had received $5,000 a month from his mother. His sister received $6,000 a month and his brother $4,000 a month.
My reader and his brother are currently unemployed. The brother received an interest-free loan from their mother for a real-estate deal, something my reader says he also asked for but was denied. His sister owns a sizable business and has significant assets of her own, including homes and cars.
From 2003 through 2005, my reader says, he received $6,000 a month, the same as his sister. His mother lowered the number, however, because his expenses were lower than those of his sister, who pays private-school tuition for her children.
Now, because of the recession, their mother has decided to stop giving any money to my reader or to his brother. She continues, however, to give $6,000 a month to their sister to cover her children's tuition.
Seeing this as unfair, my reader told his mother that, if she is going to distribute the assets of her estate to his sister, she should do the same for him and his brother.
His mother's response: Don't be greedy.
"Am I really greedy?," he writes. "Any greedier than my brother or sister?"
Is he being greedy? I don't know - that's a question of motivation that only he can answer. I'm not even prepared to make a judgment call on whether he's acting greedy, which is a slightly different question.
The ethical question here is whether the mother of these three adult children is acting fairly in the way she's doling out her assets or whether her son is justified in feeling that he's being discriminated against.
I don't believe he is. It's her money, and she is entitled to distribute it any way she wants, whether in her will or while she's still alive.
So she isn't acting unethically, which isn't to say that she's acting wisely. By doling out cash disbursements to her children on an ongoing basis, by giving different amounts to different children and by changing the ground rules as she goes along, she's inviting rifts among her children and between her and them. Whether she's consciously manipulating them by making them dependent upon her or merely failing to see the consequences of her approach, it's a recipe for problems.
None of which changes the fact that this choice is hers and hers alone to make. There is no rule that says that what you give one child, you must give another. It would be unreasonable to ask my reader not to feel slighted when a monthly check goes to his sister but not to him, but he isn't being cheated. He's not entitled to any of her money simply because he's her son.
In retrospect, the right thing for the son to do would have been not only to live on the substantial stipend he has been receiving for the past nine years but also to put a little aside in case the well ever ran dry.
As it is, the right thing for him to do is to be grateful for what he has been given, to appreciate anything he may be given in the future and, in the meantime, to figure out a way to stand on his own two feet. If he can manage that, his cutoff of funds may be the best thing his mother ever gave him.
His mother didn't ask for my advice. If she had, though, I'd have told her that the right thing for her to do is to make a decision about what she wants to do with her money, make that decision clear to her children and then stick to it. She's free to do with her money whatever she likes, but even the least popular decision will cause less turmoil than a constantly changing plan.
If her children don't like the way she's going about it, though, they would do well to learn to live within their own means, insulating themselves from their mother's whims, over which they do not now have and will not ever have any real control.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
That's how a reader in New York begins his e-mail message to me. He asks because, according to his mother, he is indeed being a greedy son.
His 75-year-old mother has decided to begin distributing her assets to her three children while she is still alive. She began the process nine years ago, and told her offspring that she would give the money based on "a principle of equality."
Until recently my reader had received $5,000 a month from his mother. His sister received $6,000 a month and his brother $4,000 a month.
My reader and his brother are currently unemployed. The brother received an interest-free loan from their mother for a real-estate deal, something my reader says he also asked for but was denied. His sister owns a sizable business and has significant assets of her own, including homes and cars.
From 2003 through 2005, my reader says, he received $6,000 a month, the same as his sister. His mother lowered the number, however, because his expenses were lower than those of his sister, who pays private-school tuition for her children.
Now, because of the recession, their mother has decided to stop giving any money to my reader or to his brother. She continues, however, to give $6,000 a month to their sister to cover her children's tuition.
Seeing this as unfair, my reader told his mother that, if she is going to distribute the assets of her estate to his sister, she should do the same for him and his brother.
His mother's response: Don't be greedy.
"Am I really greedy?," he writes. "Any greedier than my brother or sister?"
Is he being greedy? I don't know - that's a question of motivation that only he can answer. I'm not even prepared to make a judgment call on whether he's acting greedy, which is a slightly different question.
The ethical question here is whether the mother of these three adult children is acting fairly in the way she's doling out her assets or whether her son is justified in feeling that he's being discriminated against.
I don't believe he is. It's her money, and she is entitled to distribute it any way she wants, whether in her will or while she's still alive.
So she isn't acting unethically, which isn't to say that she's acting wisely. By doling out cash disbursements to her children on an ongoing basis, by giving different amounts to different children and by changing the ground rules as she goes along, she's inviting rifts among her children and between her and them. Whether she's consciously manipulating them by making them dependent upon her or merely failing to see the consequences of her approach, it's a recipe for problems.
None of which changes the fact that this choice is hers and hers alone to make. There is no rule that says that what you give one child, you must give another. It would be unreasonable to ask my reader not to feel slighted when a monthly check goes to his sister but not to him, but he isn't being cheated. He's not entitled to any of her money simply because he's her son.
In retrospect, the right thing for the son to do would have been not only to live on the substantial stipend he has been receiving for the past nine years but also to put a little aside in case the well ever ran dry.
As it is, the right thing for him to do is to be grateful for what he has been given, to appreciate anything he may be given in the future and, in the meantime, to figure out a way to stand on his own two feet. If he can manage that, his cutoff of funds may be the best thing his mother ever gave him.
His mother didn't ask for my advice. If she had, though, I'd have told her that the right thing for her to do is to make a decision about what she wants to do with her money, make that decision clear to her children and then stick to it. She's free to do with her money whatever she likes, but even the least popular decision will cause less turmoil than a constantly changing plan.
If her children don't like the way she's going about it, though, they would do well to learn to live within their own means, insulating themselves from their mother's whims, over which they do not now have and will not ever have any real control.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: BEHIND THE VEIL
Sixty-five percent of the readers who responded to an informal poll on my column's blog believe that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France was right to tell his country's parliament that "The burqa is not welcome on French territory." They share his assessment that that garment, worn by some Muslim women to cover their entire bodies, is "a sign of enslavement and debasement."
"I, for one, applaud Sarkozy for his courage in standing up against this anathema to personal freedom," one reader writes.
"President Sarkozy made the right choice in expressing that France is no place for burqas," agrees Sjoerd Bakker of Ontario. "Numerous freethinking, well-educated Muslim women and men ... have proven the argument that the burqa is not a religious symbol but a device for repressing women's rights and freedom."
But Maggie Lawrence of Culpepper, Va., disagrees.
"If any person wants to cover themselves from head to toe in public, I don't care, as long as they aren't disguising their identity for the purpose of crime," Lawrence writes. "For Sarkozy to say, `The burqa is not welcome on French territory,' strikes me as smug and self-righteous."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
"I, for one, applaud Sarkozy for his courage in standing up against this anathema to personal freedom," one reader writes.
"President Sarkozy made the right choice in expressing that France is no place for burqas," agrees Sjoerd Bakker of Ontario. "Numerous freethinking, well-educated Muslim women and men ... have proven the argument that the burqa is not a religious symbol but a device for repressing women's rights and freedom."
But Maggie Lawrence of Culpepper, Va., disagrees.
"If any person wants to cover themselves from head to toe in public, I don't care, as long as they aren't disguising their identity for the purpose of crime," Lawrence writes. "For Sarkozy to say, `The burqa is not welcome on French territory,' strikes me as smug and self-righteous."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, August 02, 2009
SOUND OFF: TAINTED FUNDS
Financier Bernard Madoff has been sentenced to 150 years in prison for swindling billions from investors. In his blog for The New York Times, Steven M. Davidoff notes that many unsuspecting charities may have received money from Madoff, money that was not rightfully his.
If these charities benefited from Madoff's crimes, Davidoff wonders, do they have a moral or legal obligation to give back the money? Or, if they had no knowledge of his misdeeds, should the charities keep every cent?
What do you think?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
If these charities benefited from Madoff's crimes, Davidoff wonders, do they have a moral or legal obligation to give back the money? Or, if they had no knowledge of his misdeeds, should the charities keep every cent?
What do you think?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: WELCOME HOME, THERE'S THE DOOR
After a year's tour of duty in Afghanistan, a member of the National Guard recently returned home to the United States.
It wasn't his first tour overseas, and he expected that, as in the past, he would be able to return to the civilian job he had left.
But, according to a regular reader of this column in whom he confided, he discovered that his regular job had been filled in his absence and that his employer had no other job for him.
"I was surprised to learn this," my reader writes, "because I thought that, by law, his employer had to offer him the same job or a similar one when he got back."
What makes this an ethical issue, rather than a legal dispute? Well, the guardsman's civilian employer was ... the National Guard itself.
Perplexed by his situation, the guardsman went to speak with the judge-advocate group designated by the National Guard to handle re-entry issues. He was told that his understanding of the law was correct: If they meet the eligibility requirements of the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act, members of the National Guard returning from active duty are entitled to re-employment in the civilian job they had before leaving to serve.
"They told him that he indeed did have a case," my reader writes. "But, since his old civilian job was also with the National Guard, they advised him not to pursue it, because it might hamper his long-term career with the Guard!"
She is "simply incensed," my reader adds, "that someone who has served and continues to serve honorably is treated so horribly."
Her ethical question is not whether the National Guard is wrong for not providing him with the opportunity to return to the job he had left.
"That's pretty obvious," she writes.
Her question is rather what, if anything, she should do about it.
"On the one hand," she writes, "I can sympathize with his plight and mind my business. I do not want to jeopardize his career. On the other hand I feel pretty strongly that what has been done to him is not only wrong but also against the law.
"What are your thoughts?"
It will be no surprise that, as almost anybody would, I agree with my reader that it's unconscionable that the National Guard - or any employer, for that matter - would not honor its legal obligation to hold a returning serviceman's job while he served his tour of duty for his country.
It makes matter even worse that those who are designated to protect his rights appear to be advising him not to exercise those rights in order not to make waves.
That said, my reader's proper course of action is to do nothing.
The guardsman has made clear to my reader that, because he would like to continue to serve in the National Guard, he has "made peace" with the issue and plans to look for another job elsewhere to support his young family.
He told his story to my reader in confidence and asked her to keep it to herself, so she has an obligation to honor that request.
Yes, it stinks that he returned home to find that the job he had every reason to believe would be waiting for him had vanished, especially since it was the National Guard itself that failed to respect his service. But it is up to him to decide if he wants to pursue what is rightly his or to let the matter ride.
Like my reader, I think that the National Guard has failed to live up to its standards and that the judge advocate has acted shamefully, but it isn't up to either of us to decide what should be done, because we aren't the injured party.
If this young man came to me and asked me for advice, I would tell him that I believe he should try to get his job back, not only for himself and his family but also for the sake of other guardsmen who might face the same situation in the future.
He isn't the one who came to me, though. That was my reader, who is not directly involved in the situation. The right thing for her to do is to stand aside and let the guardsman decide his future for himself.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
It wasn't his first tour overseas, and he expected that, as in the past, he would be able to return to the civilian job he had left.
But, according to a regular reader of this column in whom he confided, he discovered that his regular job had been filled in his absence and that his employer had no other job for him.
"I was surprised to learn this," my reader writes, "because I thought that, by law, his employer had to offer him the same job or a similar one when he got back."
What makes this an ethical issue, rather than a legal dispute? Well, the guardsman's civilian employer was ... the National Guard itself.
Perplexed by his situation, the guardsman went to speak with the judge-advocate group designated by the National Guard to handle re-entry issues. He was told that his understanding of the law was correct: If they meet the eligibility requirements of the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act, members of the National Guard returning from active duty are entitled to re-employment in the civilian job they had before leaving to serve.
"They told him that he indeed did have a case," my reader writes. "But, since his old civilian job was also with the National Guard, they advised him not to pursue it, because it might hamper his long-term career with the Guard!"
She is "simply incensed," my reader adds, "that someone who has served and continues to serve honorably is treated so horribly."
Her ethical question is not whether the National Guard is wrong for not providing him with the opportunity to return to the job he had left.
"That's pretty obvious," she writes.
Her question is rather what, if anything, she should do about it.
"On the one hand," she writes, "I can sympathize with his plight and mind my business. I do not want to jeopardize his career. On the other hand I feel pretty strongly that what has been done to him is not only wrong but also against the law.
"What are your thoughts?"
It will be no surprise that, as almost anybody would, I agree with my reader that it's unconscionable that the National Guard - or any employer, for that matter - would not honor its legal obligation to hold a returning serviceman's job while he served his tour of duty for his country.
It makes matter even worse that those who are designated to protect his rights appear to be advising him not to exercise those rights in order not to make waves.
That said, my reader's proper course of action is to do nothing.
The guardsman has made clear to my reader that, because he would like to continue to serve in the National Guard, he has "made peace" with the issue and plans to look for another job elsewhere to support his young family.
He told his story to my reader in confidence and asked her to keep it to herself, so she has an obligation to honor that request.
Yes, it stinks that he returned home to find that the job he had every reason to believe would be waiting for him had vanished, especially since it was the National Guard itself that failed to respect his service. But it is up to him to decide if he wants to pursue what is rightly his or to let the matter ride.
Like my reader, I think that the National Guard has failed to live up to its standards and that the judge advocate has acted shamefully, but it isn't up to either of us to decide what should be done, because we aren't the injured party.
If this young man came to me and asked me for advice, I would tell him that I believe he should try to get his job back, not only for himself and his family but also for the sake of other guardsmen who might face the same situation in the future.
He isn't the one who came to me, though. That was my reader, who is not directly involved in the situation. The right thing for her to do is to stand aside and let the guardsman decide his future for himself.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, July 26, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: YOUR CHEATING HERD
Last month Centerburg High School, located in central Ohio, canceled its graduation ceremonies. The reason: Administrators had discovered that a large percentage of the graduating class had been cheating on exams throughout their final semester.
The plot was masterminded by a student who had hacked onto the school's computer system, accessed teachers' files, downloaded upcoming exams and distributed copies to classmates. It came to light when a video referring to the cheating as "the biggest prank ever" was found on a school computer.
The cheating apparently was widespread, with most of the graduating class either participating in the cheating or at least being aware of it and remaining silent.
Unable to identify everyone who was involved in the caper, Superintendent Dorothy Holden decided to cancel graduation ceremonies and instead mail diplomas to students. Her intention, she said, was to send a message that cheating will not be tolerated and that it is not OK to turn a blind eye to such misconduct.
William Jacobson, a reader in Cypress, Calif., alerted me to the incident. He believes that, by choosing the path she did, Holden has sent a message precisely opposite the one she intended.
"Far from letting students know that cheating cannot be tolerated," he writes, "she still graduated these students who had cheated all semester. She is making no (distinction between) those who cheated, those who only knew about the cheating (and) those who were innocent bystanders."
Jacobson has three questions: Is it ethical for the school to punish the noncheating students as well as the cheaters? Is it ethical to punish students for knowing about the cheating and not reporting it? Is it ethical for the school to graduate those who cheated along with those who didn't?
Rarely can incidents like this be resolved with one clear-cut response. It would be good to believe that students who were aware of the cheating would alert school administrators. Unless students are instructed how to do such reporting, however, and unless it is made clear to them why to do so is important to their own integrity and the integrity of their school, the hazards of speaking up against their own classmates may be overwhelming.
Those who are truly innocent bystanders should not be punished, of course. But in this situation, as is often the case, it's difficult to discern the truly innocent from those who simply kept quiet about something they knew or even those who actively participated but did not get caught.
To answer Jacobson's first question, if the cheating was as widespread as seems to be the case -and if there's no way to definitively determine who did and who didn't cheat - I believe a punishment for the class as a whole, one that deprives them of a social occasion but does no long-term damage to any student's educational prospects, is acceptable. Not ideal, but acceptable.
Should students be punished for knowing about the cheating, not participating in it but failing to report it? If the school has a clear honor code that lays out students' responsibility not only to behave honestly but also to report any infractions that they may witness, then obviously it is fair to hold them accountable for not reporting this widespread cheating.
If there is no honor code, the situation is not as clear-cut. I still believe, however, that the scope of the problem justifies punishment. This is not a case of one student failing to report an individual cheater, but rather of a systemic breach of conduct which threatens the integrity of the educational process as a whole.
As to Jacobson's third question, I agree that it sends a counterproductive message to allow known cheaters to pass the courses in which they cheated and to receive their diplomas, by mail or otherwise. All students whose active participation in the scheme can be confirmed should receive a substantial punishment that is clearly more severe than those only suspected, those who looked the other way or, obviously, those who were not involved.
Looking ahead, the right thing for the high-school administrators to do is to establish a clear set of guidelines covering students' responsibilities in the case of cheating by other students. Then they should work hard to get their students to embrace those guidelines and follow them, recognizing that, if they don't, it will be the whole school that loses.¶
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
The plot was masterminded by a student who had hacked onto the school's computer system, accessed teachers' files, downloaded upcoming exams and distributed copies to classmates. It came to light when a video referring to the cheating as "the biggest prank ever" was found on a school computer.
The cheating apparently was widespread, with most of the graduating class either participating in the cheating or at least being aware of it and remaining silent.
Unable to identify everyone who was involved in the caper, Superintendent Dorothy Holden decided to cancel graduation ceremonies and instead mail diplomas to students. Her intention, she said, was to send a message that cheating will not be tolerated and that it is not OK to turn a blind eye to such misconduct.
William Jacobson, a reader in Cypress, Calif., alerted me to the incident. He believes that, by choosing the path she did, Holden has sent a message precisely opposite the one she intended.
"Far from letting students know that cheating cannot be tolerated," he writes, "she still graduated these students who had cheated all semester. She is making no (distinction between) those who cheated, those who only knew about the cheating (and) those who were innocent bystanders."
Jacobson has three questions: Is it ethical for the school to punish the noncheating students as well as the cheaters? Is it ethical to punish students for knowing about the cheating and not reporting it? Is it ethical for the school to graduate those who cheated along with those who didn't?
Rarely can incidents like this be resolved with one clear-cut response. It would be good to believe that students who were aware of the cheating would alert school administrators. Unless students are instructed how to do such reporting, however, and unless it is made clear to them why to do so is important to their own integrity and the integrity of their school, the hazards of speaking up against their own classmates may be overwhelming.
Those who are truly innocent bystanders should not be punished, of course. But in this situation, as is often the case, it's difficult to discern the truly innocent from those who simply kept quiet about something they knew or even those who actively participated but did not get caught.
To answer Jacobson's first question, if the cheating was as widespread as seems to be the case -and if there's no way to definitively determine who did and who didn't cheat - I believe a punishment for the class as a whole, one that deprives them of a social occasion but does no long-term damage to any student's educational prospects, is acceptable. Not ideal, but acceptable.
Should students be punished for knowing about the cheating, not participating in it but failing to report it? If the school has a clear honor code that lays out students' responsibility not only to behave honestly but also to report any infractions that they may witness, then obviously it is fair to hold them accountable for not reporting this widespread cheating.
If there is no honor code, the situation is not as clear-cut. I still believe, however, that the scope of the problem justifies punishment. This is not a case of one student failing to report an individual cheater, but rather of a systemic breach of conduct which threatens the integrity of the educational process as a whole.
As to Jacobson's third question, I agree that it sends a counterproductive message to allow known cheaters to pass the courses in which they cheated and to receive their diplomas, by mail or otherwise. All students whose active participation in the scheme can be confirmed should receive a substantial punishment that is clearly more severe than those only suspected, those who looked the other way or, obviously, those who were not involved.
Looking ahead, the right thing for the high-school administrators to do is to establish a clear set of guidelines covering students' responsibilities in the case of cheating by other students. Then they should work hard to get their students to embrace those guidelines and follow them, recognizing that, if they don't, it will be the whole school that loses.¶
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: DID THE KILLER WIN?
After an anti-abortion zealot murdered Dr. George Tiller, a Kansas physician who operated an abortion clinic, his family decided to close the clinic. Even some opponents of abortion were bothered by the decision, Stephanie Simon reported in The Wall Street Journal, because they feared that "extremists might conclude that violence gets results where legal protests don't."
Seventy-seven percent of the readers who responded to an informal poll on my column's blog said that the doctor's survivors are free to act as they see fit, regardless of the circumstances.
"This family has suffered a tragic loss," writes Dagmar Roman of New Windsor, N.Y. "No matter which side of the abortion issue you're on, the decision to close the clinic is theirs and theirs alone. It's no one else's concern how they choose to handle their grief."
"The family ... has every right to decide what to do with the clinic," agrees Bert Hoogendam of Sarnia, Ontario. "The family has decided to close the facility, so let it be!"
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Seventy-seven percent of the readers who responded to an informal poll on my column's blog said that the doctor's survivors are free to act as they see fit, regardless of the circumstances.
"This family has suffered a tragic loss," writes Dagmar Roman of New Windsor, N.Y. "No matter which side of the abortion issue you're on, the decision to close the clinic is theirs and theirs alone. It's no one else's concern how they choose to handle their grief."
"The family ... has every right to decide what to do with the clinic," agrees Bert Hoogendam of Sarnia, Ontario. "The family has decided to close the facility, so let it be!"
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, July 19, 2009
SOUND OFF: WHO PAYS FOR THE MEMORIES?
Estimates of the cost to the City of Los Angeles for security and other services associated with the Michael Jackson memorial tribute at the Staples Center hovered around $4 million. City and state budgets are feeling the economic pinch these days, and Los Angeles is no exception. That's why Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had asked Jackson's fans to help cover those costs through donations to the city.
Should the city be expected to pick up the tab for the costs associated with the memorial? Should fans have footed the bill by paying for tickets, rather than getting them for free by lottery? Should wealthy friends of Jackson have ponied up the cash? Or should the cost be covered by the Jackson estate?¶
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Should the city be expected to pick up the tab for the costs associated with the memorial? Should fans have footed the bill by paying for tickets, rather than getting them for free by lottery? Should wealthy friends of Jackson have ponied up the cash? Or should the cost be covered by the Jackson estate?¶
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT I JUST HEARD ...
As has been the case for a number of years, a reader's annual performance review struck her as a thrown-together affair. The morning of the scheduled review, her supervisor told her that she would need to reschedule their meeting since she had not had a chance to write the review. But at noon the supervisor told her that she'd be able to do it as scheduled after all.
It wasn't, overall, a stellar review. Some items struck my reader, a child-care worker, as contradictory: She was chastised for not working as well as she could with outside vendors in one portion of the review, for example, but in another was told that her job required her not to deal with anyone outside the office.
My reader has never actually been given a written job description for the position she has held for more than five years. As a result she couldn't help seeing the expectations upon which she was being measured for her annual review as a moving target.
But where my reader wonders if her boss has crossed an ethical line is in the source of some of the comments her supervisor made during their meeting: conversation overheard in the lunch room.
The supervisor told my reader that she had overheard other workers in the lunchroom talking about some problems they had in working with my reader, such as her occasional lateness to work and her not responding to telephone and e-mail messages.
Is it right, my reader wants to know, for a supervisor to base an official performance review on overheard conversation?
No, it isn't.
Because the supervisor was not part of this conversation, she has no context for the discussion, no way of knowing how serious the other employees' concerns are or how justified they may be. Eavesdropping on employee-lunchroom chatter is hardly a virtue, but it's also not a useful means of gathering credible information.
It's entirely legitimate for her supervisor to use the annual review to discuss any issues of unresponsiveness or tardiness that my reader may have, though it would be better to raise them before the annual review, so that the employee would have a chance to correct the problems before her review comes around. Any manager is within his or her rights to call out an employee on substantiated inappropriate behavior or poor performance.
The right thing for the supervisor to have done, however, was to base her review of my reader's performance on information which she herself had witnessed or which she had gathered directly from other employees with their knowledge. Checking her employee's attendance record is fair game. So is speaking to my reader's colleagues, to see what they think of her performance on the job, or talking with clients of the company to get their feedback.
In other words, the overheard conversation is merely an indication of a possible problem _ in itself it is nothing. To base a performance review on that conversation, without substantiating its content in any way, is unfair not only to the employee on the receiving end of the review but also to the employees who didn't know that they were being listened to by management. Besides which, it's plain old lazy.
My reader's boss should step up her own performance a bit and be more responsible in the way she collects and uses information about her employees for their reviews. While she's at it, she should get around to making sure that her employees have written job descriptions or, at the very least, that they are clearly told what is expected of them on the job.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, July 12, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: HOW FREE ARE FREEBIES?
Whenever I stay at a particular hotel in downtown Madison, Wisc., I know that I don't have to worry about remembering to pack shaving cream, toothpaste or other basic toiletries to use on the road. The desk clerk routinely offers me such sundries upon check-in.
So I understood the basic context of an e-mail from a reader in North Carolina who has an ethical quandary involving this sort of freebie.
A former colleague of my reader's is a volunteer for an organization that provides food and shelter to homeless people during the winter. The colleague sent my reader and others an appeal for donations of small, sample-size containers of goods such as soap, shampoo, toothpaste, razors and shaving cream.
"While his appeal noted that such items can be purchased inexpensively," my reader writes, "it also pointed out that, since they are available at hotels and motels, we should bring them back when traveling or on vacation."
My reader normally leaves any unused "freebies" at the place he's staying. He reflects that, while hotels may consider the disappearance of these goods to be "part of the cost of doing business," perhaps "other travelers would rather have lower room rates than, in effect, contribute to a cause they don't care about."
His question: "Is it ethical to collect these items for the purpose of donating them to this worthwhile cause?"
Many hotels, in an effort to be perceived as more environment-friendly, have taken to asking guests whether they want their towels laundered daily. So far, though, they've yet to give guests the option of choosing a lower room rate if they don't use the free shampoo and soap, although it's a novel cost-saving idea.
Unlike the linen, towels or alarm clocks placed in hotel rooms for a guest's use during their stay _ and only during their stay _ bars of soap and bottles of shampoo are consumable. If there are two bars of soap in the bathroom, one on the sink and another in the shower, and a guest decides to unwrap only one and save the other for later use, given that the hike from the sink to the shower is not exactly arduous, he is not using more than the hotel has given him for personal consumption. If, like many travelers, he returns home with an occasional bar of unused hotel soap packed among his belongings, it seems like a worthy endeavor to donate such goods to a not-for-profit that can put them to good use.
My reader's ex-colleague goes too far, however, when he suggests that travelers set out to collect more than was intended for use during their individual hotel stay. Saving a bar of soap intended for personal use is one thing, but grabbing a handful from a maid's cart is quite another.
As I have often said in this column, if you've obtained something wrongly, it doesn't matter what you do with it, it's still wrong. Robbing from the rich is still robbing, whether you give it to the poor or blow it in Las Vegas. That applies to money, valuables and even, yes, little bars of soap.
The right thing for the shelter to do is to request that individuals donate toiletries that they either have purchased on their own or have been given for their own use. It should not encourage the wrongful acquisition of such items, regardless of how noble its intentions.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)SOUND OFF: CASH FOR CRITICS?
While 72 percent of readers responding to an informal poll on my column's blog questioned the credibility of reporters who accept free travel to cover their industries, many who wrote in agreed with the 20 percent of readers who believed that an honest reporter can nevertheless maintain his or her objectivity under such circumstances. Granted, some respondents had a vested interest in the issue.
"If you don't want the writers to get handouts from the industry they are reviewing," writes Penney A. of Columbus, Ohio, "then you need to find another way to pay their way. If not, then you will be left with `free' reviews from online people who may really have an agenda to promote their company!"
As a travel writer, Rob R. of California struggles with this question a great deal.
"I certainly make an effort to pay my expenses whenever possible," he writes. "There is simply no way I would be able to do my job without accepting free travel or accommodation from some of the places I am writing about ... The alternative would allow only independently wealthy people ... to become travel writers."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, July 05, 2009
SOUND OFF: A FRENCH COVER-UP
Recently President Nicolas Sarkozy of France told his country's parliament, "The burqa is not welcome on French territory." He referred to that garment, worn by some Muslim women to cover their entire bodies, as "a sign of enslavement and debasement."
According to The Wall Street Journal, some Muslim groups objected, saying that such a stance could be taken as anti-Islamic. Sarkozy replied that he does not view the burqa as a religious symbol.
Was Sarkozy out of line to express his disapproval of a garment whose use is largely limited to female members of a particular religious group? Or was he correct in calling attention to the larger issue he identified?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
According to The Wall Street Journal, some Muslim groups objected, saying that such a stance could be taken as anti-Islamic. Sarkozy replied that he does not view the burqa as a religious symbol.
Was Sarkozy out of line to express his disapproval of a garment whose use is largely limited to female members of a particular religious group? Or was he correct in calling attention to the larger issue he identified?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: SHOULD SHE LET THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG?
A board member at a cat-rescue shelter confided in one of my readers that, during the past six months, six cats had been allowed to starve to death at this "non-kill," not-for-profit shelter.
"The cats wouldn't eat," my reader reports, "and the employees and management made no effort to locate foster homes which might have mitigated the problem. These poor cats, once people's pets, died painful, lonely deaths in their cages, basically not attended to properly, if at all."
My reader, who has volunteered at the shelter for the past year, feels compelled to blow the whistle to her local media about the starved cats who suffered such painful and inexcusable deaths. Her goal, she writes, would be to shed light on how poorly the shelter is run. She fears, however, that such publicity would cause donations to the center to dry up.
She has a bigger worry, though: The shelter's board members have signed a "loyalty oath" promising not to disclose any information about shelter operations to anyone not a member of the board, on penalty of dismissal. If she contacts the media, she fears, it will be clear who told her the facts and her informant will be removed from the board.
This board member, who is facing personal financial troubles, occasionally receives free care for the nearly dozen cats she looks after. Losing her seat on the board, and the free or at-cost medical care from the shelter, would be a hardship.
"Do I just go to the media," my reader asks, "and let the chips fall where they may?"
If her informant is then dismissed from the board, my reader wants to know if she is ethically obliged to assume her vet bills.
"Deep inside I know I am, aren't I?" she asks.
My reader clearly has competing issues here. The biggest question is whether her concern for the shelter cats' well-being should outweigh her concern about her informant's possibly getting in trouble _ and losing medical care for her own cats _ as a consequence of revealing the conditions at the shelter. And, of course, she's worried that speaking up on the cats' behalf might hurt the shelter's donations ... which would be bad for the cats.
If my reader's concerns are justified and her information is correct, both of which seem to be the case, she has an obligation to act. Her informant _ both as a board member and as a personal protector of cats _ the rest of the board and my reader herself, as a shelter volunteer, are united in their desire to help cats. Letting this situation continue would be unjustifiable for all concerned, which is probably why her informant mentioned the matter in the first place.
My reader should confront the board, but not until she has enlisted the assistance of those in the community who would help her to do so. If this means going to the local media with the story, she should not hesitate to share her evidence of wrongdoing.
Her informant may be exposed, but she's already been compromised: As a board member, she should have used her position to call attention to the deplorable conditions. The welfare of the shelter's cats must be a higher priority at this stage.
And my reader has absolutely no obligation to assume her informant's vet bills. Doing the right thing does not imply personal responsibility for anyone who may suffer as a result. If she feels sorry for the cats and wants to help out, she obviously can do so, but it's a matter of choice, not obligation.
Will airing of the shelter's problems hurt donations? Probably, but hopefully the shelter's board, whether the same board or a new one, will make every effort to demonstrate that these problems are in the past. In any event, to allow donors to unknowingly contribute to a poorly run shelter that negligently kills cats would be unconscionable.
Everyone involved with the shelter has a responsibility to hew to the mission of the organization, which is to protect the welfare of the cats under the shelter's care. The right thing for my reader, her informant and the rest of the board to do is to make sure that cats are not starved or mistreated while in their care. Any other political, financial or personal issues must be secondary.
If they cannot do this, then they have no business running an organization of this nature.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
"The cats wouldn't eat," my reader reports, "and the employees and management made no effort to locate foster homes which might have mitigated the problem. These poor cats, once people's pets, died painful, lonely deaths in their cages, basically not attended to properly, if at all."
My reader, who has volunteered at the shelter for the past year, feels compelled to blow the whistle to her local media about the starved cats who suffered such painful and inexcusable deaths. Her goal, she writes, would be to shed light on how poorly the shelter is run. She fears, however, that such publicity would cause donations to the center to dry up.
She has a bigger worry, though: The shelter's board members have signed a "loyalty oath" promising not to disclose any information about shelter operations to anyone not a member of the board, on penalty of dismissal. If she contacts the media, she fears, it will be clear who told her the facts and her informant will be removed from the board.
This board member, who is facing personal financial troubles, occasionally receives free care for the nearly dozen cats she looks after. Losing her seat on the board, and the free or at-cost medical care from the shelter, would be a hardship.
"Do I just go to the media," my reader asks, "and let the chips fall where they may?"
If her informant is then dismissed from the board, my reader wants to know if she is ethically obliged to assume her vet bills.
"Deep inside I know I am, aren't I?" she asks.
My reader clearly has competing issues here. The biggest question is whether her concern for the shelter cats' well-being should outweigh her concern about her informant's possibly getting in trouble _ and losing medical care for her own cats _ as a consequence of revealing the conditions at the shelter. And, of course, she's worried that speaking up on the cats' behalf might hurt the shelter's donations ... which would be bad for the cats.
If my reader's concerns are justified and her information is correct, both of which seem to be the case, she has an obligation to act. Her informant _ both as a board member and as a personal protector of cats _ the rest of the board and my reader herself, as a shelter volunteer, are united in their desire to help cats. Letting this situation continue would be unjustifiable for all concerned, which is probably why her informant mentioned the matter in the first place.
My reader should confront the board, but not until she has enlisted the assistance of those in the community who would help her to do so. If this means going to the local media with the story, she should not hesitate to share her evidence of wrongdoing.
Her informant may be exposed, but she's already been compromised: As a board member, she should have used her position to call attention to the deplorable conditions. The welfare of the shelter's cats must be a higher priority at this stage.
And my reader has absolutely no obligation to assume her informant's vet bills. Doing the right thing does not imply personal responsibility for anyone who may suffer as a result. If she feels sorry for the cats and wants to help out, she obviously can do so, but it's a matter of choice, not obligation.
Will airing of the shelter's problems hurt donations? Probably, but hopefully the shelter's board, whether the same board or a new one, will make every effort to demonstrate that these problems are in the past. In any event, to allow donors to unknowingly contribute to a poorly run shelter that negligently kills cats would be unconscionable.
Everyone involved with the shelter has a responsibility to hew to the mission of the organization, which is to protect the welfare of the cats under the shelter's care. The right thing for my reader, her informant and the rest of the board to do is to make sure that cats are not starved or mistreated while in their care. Any other political, financial or personal issues must be secondary.
If they cannot do this, then they have no business running an organization of this nature.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, June 28, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: WHEN THE BOSS ASKS FOR MORE
A reader has a part-time, hourly job with a six-month contract that is due to expire within a month. Her contract calls for her to work 20 hours a week, but from the very start she has been clocking in from 32 hours to 38 hours a week.
Before committing to the job, she had told her boss that she planned to take a vacation _ her honeymoon, in fact _ a few weeks into the job. As the time for her honeymoon drew near, however, her boss asked her to move back the date of her vacation. She agreed, and rescheduled the trip for a few months later.
When the newly appointed time for her honeymoon rolled around, her boss again asked my reader to move it. Again she complied.
"Now," she writes, "I plan to take my honeymoon in four months, about three months after the end date of my current contract."
Even though her contract is soon to expire, however, her boss talks as if she will still be on the job in three months, despite the fact that no new contract has been signed or negotiated.
My reader is starting "to feel taken advantage of," she writes. "I figured that it would be legitimate for me to make vacation and other plans after the end date of the contract, since the company had no legal obligations to me. What sort of ethical obligations do I have to stay here and re-sign the contract and make my plans around this job?
"And what does this sort of behavior say about my boss's ethics?"
To answer the second question first, this boss is apparently someone who asks her employees, even her part-timers, to alter their plans to meet the needs of the company. There's nothing wrong with that. The boss's job is to see that the company's needs are met and if, as in this case, the employee agrees to adjust her plans, it's reasonable for the boss to assume that the adjustments are OK with her.
Nothing that my reader tells me suggests anything unethical about her boss's behavior. She may be demanding, self-interested and lacking in empathy for the personal needs of her employees, but that doesn't make her unethical.
Moving on to the first question, my reader has absolutely no obligation, ethical or otherwise, to continue with the company after her contract is up, let alone to rearrange her life plans accordingly. The whole point of a short-term contract is that neither party is bound beyond the short term.
That she even raises the question suggests that my reader's real problem is that she has trouble saying no to her boss. If it's the boss's job to see to the company's needs, it's the employee's job to see to her own needs.
Particularly in this case, when my reader had told her boss about her honeymoon plans even before signing the initial contract, there is no ethical constraint to prevent her from declining to make adjustments to her plans that go beyond the agreed-upon terms of her contract. When the boss asked if she could reschedule the first time, she should have said no.
Granted, some employees have a hard time viewing their boss's requests as mere requests. The power differential creates an intimidation factor, even if the boss has no intention of coming across that way.
Nonetheless, an employee shouldn't expect his or her boss to be a mind-reader or an advocate for employee rights. A request is a request and, particularly when the parameters of the relationship are laid out contractually, there's nothing wrong with respectfully declining requests that don't fit within an employee's outside plans.
The right thing for my reader to do is to be honest with her boss. She should call her attention to the fact that their contract is about the expire, and that her future employment there is not a given. If, as it seems, her boss still wants her services and if she still wants to work there, they should negotiate a new contract.
At that time she should make clear that she intends to take her twice-readjusted honeymoon as currently scheduled. And when the seemingly inevitable request for a postponement is made, she should respectfully decline to reschedule.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Before committing to the job, she had told her boss that she planned to take a vacation _ her honeymoon, in fact _ a few weeks into the job. As the time for her honeymoon drew near, however, her boss asked her to move back the date of her vacation. She agreed, and rescheduled the trip for a few months later.
When the newly appointed time for her honeymoon rolled around, her boss again asked my reader to move it. Again she complied.
"Now," she writes, "I plan to take my honeymoon in four months, about three months after the end date of my current contract."
Even though her contract is soon to expire, however, her boss talks as if she will still be on the job in three months, despite the fact that no new contract has been signed or negotiated.
My reader is starting "to feel taken advantage of," she writes. "I figured that it would be legitimate for me to make vacation and other plans after the end date of the contract, since the company had no legal obligations to me. What sort of ethical obligations do I have to stay here and re-sign the contract and make my plans around this job?
"And what does this sort of behavior say about my boss's ethics?"
To answer the second question first, this boss is apparently someone who asks her employees, even her part-timers, to alter their plans to meet the needs of the company. There's nothing wrong with that. The boss's job is to see that the company's needs are met and if, as in this case, the employee agrees to adjust her plans, it's reasonable for the boss to assume that the adjustments are OK with her.
Nothing that my reader tells me suggests anything unethical about her boss's behavior. She may be demanding, self-interested and lacking in empathy for the personal needs of her employees, but that doesn't make her unethical.
Moving on to the first question, my reader has absolutely no obligation, ethical or otherwise, to continue with the company after her contract is up, let alone to rearrange her life plans accordingly. The whole point of a short-term contract is that neither party is bound beyond the short term.
That she even raises the question suggests that my reader's real problem is that she has trouble saying no to her boss. If it's the boss's job to see to the company's needs, it's the employee's job to see to her own needs.
Particularly in this case, when my reader had told her boss about her honeymoon plans even before signing the initial contract, there is no ethical constraint to prevent her from declining to make adjustments to her plans that go beyond the agreed-upon terms of her contract. When the boss asked if she could reschedule the first time, she should have said no.
Granted, some employees have a hard time viewing their boss's requests as mere requests. The power differential creates an intimidation factor, even if the boss has no intention of coming across that way.
Nonetheless, an employee shouldn't expect his or her boss to be a mind-reader or an advocate for employee rights. A request is a request and, particularly when the parameters of the relationship are laid out contractually, there's nothing wrong with respectfully declining requests that don't fit within an employee's outside plans.
The right thing for my reader to do is to be honest with her boss. She should call her attention to the fact that their contract is about the expire, and that her future employment there is not a given. If, as it seems, her boss still wants her services and if she still wants to work there, they should negotiate a new contract.
At that time she should make clear that she intends to take her twice-readjusted honeymoon as currently scheduled. And when the seemingly inevitable request for a postponement is made, she should respectfully decline to reschedule.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: DRINK UP ... TO A POINT
In an informal poll on my column's blog, 70 percent of participating readers believed that, when a restaurant offers free refills on drinks, a one-drink-per-person rule is implied, making it wrong to share a drink with someone else and then collect a free refill.
William Jacobson of Cypress, Calif., shares the majority view, which runs counter to the verdict previously expressed in my column.
"When you purchase a free-refills drink," Jacobson writes, "what you actually purchase is a cup and a license (privilege) from the restaurant to fill your cup with their drink. This privilege can be revoked for abuse. Sharing your drink with someone else abuses the common understanding of your agreement, so the restaurant is within its rights to stop you from further refills."
Louise Macaulay of Yorba Linda, Calif., disagrees. She has "never seen a Soda Nazi stationed by the beverage dispenser," she writes, so her guess is that management doesn't have a problem with sharing refills.
"Go ahead and have one free refill," advises Maggie Lawrence of Culpepper, Va. "Just don't be a pig."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
William Jacobson of Cypress, Calif., shares the majority view, which runs counter to the verdict previously expressed in my column.
"When you purchase a free-refills drink," Jacobson writes, "what you actually purchase is a cup and a license (privilege) from the restaurant to fill your cup with their drink. This privilege can be revoked for abuse. Sharing your drink with someone else abuses the common understanding of your agreement, so the restaurant is within its rights to stop you from further refills."
Louise Macaulay of Yorba Linda, Calif., disagrees. She has "never seen a Soda Nazi stationed by the beverage dispenser," she writes, so her guess is that management doesn't have a problem with sharing refills.
"Go ahead and have one free refill," advises Maggie Lawrence of Culpepper, Va. "Just don't be a pig."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, June 21, 2009
SOUND OFF: CLOSING A CLINIC
After Dr. George Tiller, a Kansas physician who operated an abortion clinic, was murdered by an anti-abortion zealot, his family decided to close the clinic. Some opponents of abortion were bothered by the decision, Stephanie Simon reports in The Wall Street Journal, because they feared that "extremists might conclude that violence gets results where legal protests don't."
What do you think? Does the family have an ethical obligation to find a way to keep the clinic open, to avoid having the murderer get what he wanted? Or is the doctor's family free to act as they see fit, regardless of the circumstances?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: DOING GOOD BADLY
When a child is stricken with a disease, it can be harrowing for all concerned. When that disease is rare, one with little ongoing funding for research, it can be even more devastating.
One of the partners in a firm where one of my readers works is facing such circumstances. To counteract the lack of funding, he has established his own foundation to fund research into this disease.
"All very laudable and understandable," my reader writes.
While the partner tries to keep his foundation work separate from his work for the firm, she adds, "there is some inevitable bleed-over, especially since the foundation's staff work in his firm's offices."
Even more bleed-over occurs when the foundation hosts its annual fund-raising dinner to raise money for its research fund. The firm's executives are invited to attend this black-tie event, but the rank-and-file employees are not given the same opportunity.
My reader understands that the partner cannot ethically extend an invitation to the fund-raiser to every employee. Doing so might make some employees feel that they were being coerced to give to this cause, even if they could not afford to do so. They might fear that, if they didn't give, their standing at the firm would be jeopardized.
Nevertheless, she says, by inviting only the executives, the partner breeds resentment among the uninvited, lower-tier employees, who already feel that the firm's management style is very "ivory tower, us-and-them."
"The perceived snub of this annual exclusion is like rubbing salt in a wound for some employees," my reader writes. "There is a great deal of quiet grumbling in the lunch room around the time of the event."
Is the partner handling this in an ethical manner?
There's nothing unethical in raising money to try to find a cure for a rare disease. My reader is right in finding the partner's desire to do so laudable.
The partner is also right in choosing not to put the rank-and-file employees in a position in which they might feel pressured to contribute to his foundation. In such a situation, whether they contributed or whether they didn't, hard feelings wood be inevitable.
By not keeping his foundation work entirely out of his workplace, however, he has created an impression that somehow the non-executive employees are less significant than his executive colleagues. He may intend only to spare the feelings of those who cannot afford his foundation's fund-raiser, but in reality he probably has no idea of who can afford what. In making this decision for them, he's making unfair assumptions about them.
So, if he's wrong to invite them and wrong not to invite them, what's the answer? Obviously he shouldn't put himself into this position in the first place.
In other words, his mistake lies in not keeping his work and his cause separate and clearly defined. If the foundation were a not-for-profit offshoot of the firm, it might be reasonable for its staff to share offices with the firm. If the other executives sat on the board of the foundation, it would make sense for them to get the pricey invites not sent to others at the firm.
Neither is the case, however, so the right thing for the partner to do is to draw a clear line between his work for the firm and his work for the foundation, starting by finding new office space for the foundation. That way, if others at the firm choose to contribute to the foundation or to participate in its annual events _ regardless of their rank in the firm's hierarchy _ they can do so on their own time and without any sense that their professional interests may somehow be involved.
The partner has done nothing wrong, in short, but he's done the right thing in the wrong way. It's time to straighten things out.¶
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
One of the partners in a firm where one of my readers works is facing such circumstances. To counteract the lack of funding, he has established his own foundation to fund research into this disease.
"All very laudable and understandable," my reader writes.
While the partner tries to keep his foundation work separate from his work for the firm, she adds, "there is some inevitable bleed-over, especially since the foundation's staff work in his firm's offices."
Even more bleed-over occurs when the foundation hosts its annual fund-raising dinner to raise money for its research fund. The firm's executives are invited to attend this black-tie event, but the rank-and-file employees are not given the same opportunity.
My reader understands that the partner cannot ethically extend an invitation to the fund-raiser to every employee. Doing so might make some employees feel that they were being coerced to give to this cause, even if they could not afford to do so. They might fear that, if they didn't give, their standing at the firm would be jeopardized.
Nevertheless, she says, by inviting only the executives, the partner breeds resentment among the uninvited, lower-tier employees, who already feel that the firm's management style is very "ivory tower, us-and-them."
"The perceived snub of this annual exclusion is like rubbing salt in a wound for some employees," my reader writes. "There is a great deal of quiet grumbling in the lunch room around the time of the event."
Is the partner handling this in an ethical manner?
There's nothing unethical in raising money to try to find a cure for a rare disease. My reader is right in finding the partner's desire to do so laudable.
The partner is also right in choosing not to put the rank-and-file employees in a position in which they might feel pressured to contribute to his foundation. In such a situation, whether they contributed or whether they didn't, hard feelings wood be inevitable.
By not keeping his foundation work entirely out of his workplace, however, he has created an impression that somehow the non-executive employees are less significant than his executive colleagues. He may intend only to spare the feelings of those who cannot afford his foundation's fund-raiser, but in reality he probably has no idea of who can afford what. In making this decision for them, he's making unfair assumptions about them.
So, if he's wrong to invite them and wrong not to invite them, what's the answer? Obviously he shouldn't put himself into this position in the first place.
In other words, his mistake lies in not keeping his work and his cause separate and clearly defined. If the foundation were a not-for-profit offshoot of the firm, it might be reasonable for its staff to share offices with the firm. If the other executives sat on the board of the foundation, it would make sense for them to get the pricey invites not sent to others at the firm.
Neither is the case, however, so the right thing for the partner to do is to draw a clear line between his work for the firm and his work for the foundation, starting by finding new office space for the foundation. That way, if others at the firm choose to contribute to the foundation or to participate in its annual events _ regardless of their rank in the firm's hierarchy _ they can do so on their own time and without any sense that their professional interests may somehow be involved.
The partner has done nothing wrong, in short, but he's done the right thing in the wrong way. It's time to straighten things out.¶
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Monday, June 15, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: THROW THE BOOK AT HER?
Take a quick glance at the Web site of the American Library Association, and you'll get a sense of how very dire the state of funding for public libraries has become. Across the country budget shortfalls are threatening the ability of public libraries to keep their doors open. The overall funding picture is grim.
Yet these shortfalls come at a time when public libraries are experiencing record usage. According to the ALA's 2009 State of America's Libraries Report, nearly 1.4 billion visitors checked out more than 2 billion items in 2008. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has reported a substantial increase in usage in Canada. At a time when economic pressures make buying a book, upgrading a computer or even picking up a daily newspaper a meaningful expenditure, many people are rediscovering the rich resources of their public libraries.
Because of limited funds, however, it falls upon library managers to be more rigorous than ever about how they spend their money. Public libraries are, after all, taxpayer-supported institutions, and there are plenty of people keeping an eye open for any inappropriate use of funds.
A reader in New England has such a concern, even though she herself is a librarian. She's concerned that the longtime director of her city's public library may be using library funds inappropriately.
The director relies on public transportation to get to and from work. When the weather is particularly rough, however, she calls the library's custodian _ who is, of course, a city employee _ and has him drive the library van to pick her up and bring her to work. It's about a 10-mile round trip.
In the past the library trustees have offered to use library trust funds to pay for the director's transportation in inclement weather, but she has declined.
"The city probably doesn't know what the director is doing," my reader writes. "Most of the library staff are aware of this arrangement and disapprove, but feel powerless to do anything."
She wants to know if the director is behaving ethically and, if not, what can be done.
If the director had accepted the trustees' offer to pay for her transportation during inclement weather, there would be no ethical issue here. Taxpayers might groan about footing the bill, but the director would be in the clear as long as the arrangement was out in the open and accounted for.
But by turning down the offer and then making use of a library vehicle, and thereby incurring city expense, she is putting public services to private use without the consent of the library's trustees. And, yes, that's unethical.
The right thing for the director to do would be to inform the trustees that she is finding it difficult to get to work on some bad-weather days, and that she would like to reconsider their offer of a transportation allowance as part of her compensation.
Chances are that they would agree. Perhaps they'd even want to continue the current arrangement, which would make it perfectly acceptable. The key is not how she gets to work, but that any expenditure of public funds be aired and approved in advance.
If nobody on her staff can convince her to do this, or feels comfortable in making the attempt, then my reader _ ideally with a group of fellow employees _ should do the right thing and inform the board of the situation. It is the responsibility of the trustees to make sure that taxpayers' funds are being used appropriately and are being accounted for properly.
And, of course, the library staffers are also taxpayers and shouldn't be afraid to look out for their own interest.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: IN A DISASTER THERE ARE MANY NEEDS
In an unscientific poll on my column's blog, 69 percent of the readers who responded said that, if a natural disaster hit their town, they would turn down relief if they were not as hard hit as others in the region. But my readers didn't find a simple answer to the question.
"Of course a person is not entitled to relief from a disaster that spared him/her _ at least not in terms of food, blankets and other physical materials," writes Phil Clutts of Harrisburg, N.C. "However, assuming that person experienced the same dread as everyone else, empathized with his or her fellow citizens' pain and losses, and/or experienced a degree of inconvenience because of closed roads or businesses, say, I wouldn't fault him or her for accepting free tickets to events."
Cynthia Dodd of West Haven, Conn., agrees that "just being in a disaster area is traumatizing." She doesn't believe that "red tape" should be allowed to stop "the non-needy" from getting assistance if they deem it necessary.
"All in the town must experience mental stress as a consequence of the disaster," writes Paul Peacock of New York, "and clearly events to relieve that stress would be welcome."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, June 07, 2009
SOUND OFF: VINO VERITAS?
In his blog, "Dr. Vino," Tyler Colman recently revealed that writers for a well-known wine-industry newsletter, The Wine Advocate, had accepted paid trips to cover the industry. The newsletter's founder, Robert M. Parker Jr., has maintained the importance of paying his own way on such trips, The Wall Street Journal subsequently reported, but one of the writers racked up a $25,000 tab for travel, hotel and meals that was paid by Wine Australia.
Do such payments call into question a reporter's credibility, or do you think that an honest reporter can maintain his or her objectivity under such circumstances? Does it make a difference that Parker previously had stressed the importance of paying his own way to cover the industry?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: DRAWING A LINE IN THE WATER
A reader in North Carolina is trying to sort out the difference between "the sensible thing" and "the right thing" after hearing the story of a couple of newlyweds who are friends of his daughter.
One weekend the newlywed wife was alone on the couple's boat, moored at a pier, when she was approached by a much smaller boat with two people aboard. One of them, a woman, asked if she could use the bathroom on the larger boat. The newlywed said that it would be OK.
Once on board, however, the young woman said that she needed her boyfriend to come aboard as well, to bring her some personal necessities.
Again the newlywed wife agreed, and the boyfriend boarded. The newlywed wife felt, however, that the two were spending an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom.
At this point the newlywed husband arrived on the scene, and his wife explained the situation. He decided to investigate, and found that the guests were consuming drugs.
"Get off of my boat," he told them.
The visiting couple got belligerent and a fight ensued. The interlopers finally left, but the newlyweds weren't speaking because the husband was mad at his wife for letting them onto the boat in the first place.
My reader believes, however, that the husband is out of line, since his new wife's "kindly nature (is) part of what made her lovable to him in the first place."
There are two issues here, but only one of them has an ethical component.
Whether or not the newlywed wife should have let the strangers onto the boat isn't an ethical question. Courtesy is a matter of etiquette, and as such can and should be balanced with other considerations such as legal liability and personal safety. How one strikes this balance varies from person to person, and clearly the newlywed husband and wife set the boundaries somewhat differently.
There is no moral imperative here, though, so the question is not whether the husband or the wife has the right answer. His answer is probably more sensible, but that doesn't necessarily make it right.
The other question, the one my reader specifically asked, is whether the husband is justified in being angry at his wife. He would have acted differently than she did, but does that justify his losing his temper with her?
I'm pretty sure that, if I came aboard my boat and found a young couple doing drugs in the bathroom, I'd be angry. Fortunately, I don't own a boat.
My reader has a valid point here, however. While the young husband has every right to be angry, his anger seems misdirected: He should be upset with the couple who took advantage of his wife's hospitality, not at his wife herself. He did the right thing in kicking the drug abusers off his boat, of course, but his anger should have ended there.
Marriage imposes a complex series of ethical obligations, and one of them is that a family's basic policies must be arrived at through discussion, agreement and, when necessary, compromise. Neither party can assume that his or her view automatically prevails unless it's previously been discussed and agreed upon.
I'm guessing that the husband's anger derived in large part from adrenalin left over from the confrontation and from retrospective dismay at the possible harm to which his wife had been exposed. He doesn't want to see her hurt, and feels that she heedlessly put herself in jeopardy.
That's a reasonable point of view, but it's not the only one.
The right thing for him to do is to get past the initial confrontation, calm down and then discuss the matter with his wife. If she agrees that a policy of not allowing any strangers on the boat is a good idea, then that can be their policy. If she feels that hospitality is too important to her to be discarded simply because two individuals took advantage of it, and merely hopes to be more judicious in deciding who is and isn't allowed aboard in the future, that's also a reasonable point of view.
The important thing is that the policy be mutually agreed upon. Until it has been, the husband should try to avoid getting angry at his wife for being the kind of person he fell in love with in the first place.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
One weekend the newlywed wife was alone on the couple's boat, moored at a pier, when she was approached by a much smaller boat with two people aboard. One of them, a woman, asked if she could use the bathroom on the larger boat. The newlywed said that it would be OK.
Once on board, however, the young woman said that she needed her boyfriend to come aboard as well, to bring her some personal necessities.
Again the newlywed wife agreed, and the boyfriend boarded. The newlywed wife felt, however, that the two were spending an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom.
At this point the newlywed husband arrived on the scene, and his wife explained the situation. He decided to investigate, and found that the guests were consuming drugs.
"Get off of my boat," he told them.
The visiting couple got belligerent and a fight ensued. The interlopers finally left, but the newlyweds weren't speaking because the husband was mad at his wife for letting them onto the boat in the first place.
My reader believes, however, that the husband is out of line, since his new wife's "kindly nature (is) part of what made her lovable to him in the first place."
There are two issues here, but only one of them has an ethical component.
Whether or not the newlywed wife should have let the strangers onto the boat isn't an ethical question. Courtesy is a matter of etiquette, and as such can and should be balanced with other considerations such as legal liability and personal safety. How one strikes this balance varies from person to person, and clearly the newlywed husband and wife set the boundaries somewhat differently.
There is no moral imperative here, though, so the question is not whether the husband or the wife has the right answer. His answer is probably more sensible, but that doesn't necessarily make it right.
The other question, the one my reader specifically asked, is whether the husband is justified in being angry at his wife. He would have acted differently than she did, but does that justify his losing his temper with her?
I'm pretty sure that, if I came aboard my boat and found a young couple doing drugs in the bathroom, I'd be angry. Fortunately, I don't own a boat.
My reader has a valid point here, however. While the young husband has every right to be angry, his anger seems misdirected: He should be upset with the couple who took advantage of his wife's hospitality, not at his wife herself. He did the right thing in kicking the drug abusers off his boat, of course, but his anger should have ended there.
Marriage imposes a complex series of ethical obligations, and one of them is that a family's basic policies must be arrived at through discussion, agreement and, when necessary, compromise. Neither party can assume that his or her view automatically prevails unless it's previously been discussed and agreed upon.
I'm guessing that the husband's anger derived in large part from adrenalin left over from the confrontation and from retrospective dismay at the possible harm to which his wife had been exposed. He doesn't want to see her hurt, and feels that she heedlessly put herself in jeopardy.
That's a reasonable point of view, but it's not the only one.
The right thing for him to do is to get past the initial confrontation, calm down and then discuss the matter with his wife. If she agrees that a policy of not allowing any strangers on the boat is a good idea, then that can be their policy. If she feels that hospitality is too important to her to be discarded simply because two individuals took advantage of it, and merely hopes to be more judicious in deciding who is and isn't allowed aboard in the future, that's also a reasonable point of view.
The important thing is that the policy be mutually agreed upon. Until it has been, the husband should try to avoid getting angry at his wife for being the kind of person he fell in love with in the first place.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, May 31, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: TYPHOID MARY AT THE RECEPTION DESK
"My company wants to discourage the use of sick days for financial and staffing reasons," a regular reader from Huntington Beach, Calif., writes.
At a time when many companies are exploring all options to trim costs, it's not surprising that some are looking at employee benefits for potential savings. As with many well-intentioned efforts, however, this one may have unintended consequences.
Her company has reduced the number of hours each employee is allotted for sickness each year, she reports. Employees are not permitted to accrue sick time and carry over hours into the following year.
Furthermore, to encourage employees not to use even the sick days they have, the company rewards them with a paid day off for every six months in which they have perfect work attendance.
"So now," my reader writes, "colleagues come in sick and spread their sickness to others."
My reader sees the new sick-day policy as shortsighted, in part because it pits co-workers against one another.
"An individual may well want an extra day off, rather than be home ill, but the rest of us don't deserve to risk exposure and sickness just for that person's pleasure," she writes. "Isn't this company policy unethical?"
It's natural for companies to reward employees for a desired behavior. Some companies have taken to rewarding employees who participate in wellness programs, for example. So offering employees an incentive to maintain perfect work attendance may be well intentioned, if company management sees it as an incentive for workers to take care of themselves better.
Where this policy goes awry, however, is that it also serves as an incentive for workers to retain their eligibility for the extra day by coming in even when sick. Workers who do so expose their co-workers to germs and risk spreading the illness within the company, which is obviously not something that management should want to encourage.
So the policy is flawed. But is it unethical?
It might be, but I believe that it isn't.
The question is one of intention: If management deliberately set out to entice sick workers to come in anyway, it's not only unethical but also counterproductive. An office can be crippled by an epidemic set off by one ailing worker showing up when he or she ought to have stayed home.
I don't believe, however, that this is the intention of the company's incentive program.
The elephant in the room here is that the company likely believes -- and rightly so, to judge by past surveys of my column's readers -- that workers are using sick days for reasons other than sickness. Management isn't trying to get sick people to come into work, but rather trying to get people who aren't sick not to call in sick.
That's a legitimate goal for the company to pursue, and thus the policy is not unethical, whether or not it has unintended consequences.
Part of the ethical responsibility here lies on the employees themselves. They should know that showing up to work while infected with a communicable illness is virtually never appropriate. Many of us are guilty of having done this very thing, of course, without thinking through how our choices might affect our co-workers. We should take time to rethink such behavior.
Nonetheless, if the company's new policy is actually causing employees who should be home sick to show up at the office instead, the company's managers do have an ethical responsibility not to ignore the situation.
The right thing for them to do is to reassess the program to see if this problem exists and, if so, how it can be addressed.
One solution might be to eliminate the six-months reward for individuals and instead reward all employees with an extra day if overall sick days are down at the end of the designated period. A solution that doesn't pit one employee's interests against another's is inherently better than one that does, because a team spirit is by definition better for the company's interests.
It's obviously possible for a program that is entirely ethical and conceived with the best of intentions to actually make things worse. That shouldn't stop companies from looking for solutions to their problems, but they should be prepared to evaluate the results and make the necessary adjustments if things go wrong.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
At a time when many companies are exploring all options to trim costs, it's not surprising that some are looking at employee benefits for potential savings. As with many well-intentioned efforts, however, this one may have unintended consequences.
Her company has reduced the number of hours each employee is allotted for sickness each year, she reports. Employees are not permitted to accrue sick time and carry over hours into the following year.
Furthermore, to encourage employees not to use even the sick days they have, the company rewards them with a paid day off for every six months in which they have perfect work attendance.
"So now," my reader writes, "colleagues come in sick and spread their sickness to others."
My reader sees the new sick-day policy as shortsighted, in part because it pits co-workers against one another.
"An individual may well want an extra day off, rather than be home ill, but the rest of us don't deserve to risk exposure and sickness just for that person's pleasure," she writes. "Isn't this company policy unethical?"
It's natural for companies to reward employees for a desired behavior. Some companies have taken to rewarding employees who participate in wellness programs, for example. So offering employees an incentive to maintain perfect work attendance may be well intentioned, if company management sees it as an incentive for workers to take care of themselves better.
Where this policy goes awry, however, is that it also serves as an incentive for workers to retain their eligibility for the extra day by coming in even when sick. Workers who do so expose their co-workers to germs and risk spreading the illness within the company, which is obviously not something that management should want to encourage.
So the policy is flawed. But is it unethical?
It might be, but I believe that it isn't.
The question is one of intention: If management deliberately set out to entice sick workers to come in anyway, it's not only unethical but also counterproductive. An office can be crippled by an epidemic set off by one ailing worker showing up when he or she ought to have stayed home.
I don't believe, however, that this is the intention of the company's incentive program.
The elephant in the room here is that the company likely believes -- and rightly so, to judge by past surveys of my column's readers -- that workers are using sick days for reasons other than sickness. Management isn't trying to get sick people to come into work, but rather trying to get people who aren't sick not to call in sick.
That's a legitimate goal for the company to pursue, and thus the policy is not unethical, whether or not it has unintended consequences.
Part of the ethical responsibility here lies on the employees themselves. They should know that showing up to work while infected with a communicable illness is virtually never appropriate. Many of us are guilty of having done this very thing, of course, without thinking through how our choices might affect our co-workers. We should take time to rethink such behavior.
Nonetheless, if the company's new policy is actually causing employees who should be home sick to show up at the office instead, the company's managers do have an ethical responsibility not to ignore the situation.
The right thing for them to do is to reassess the program to see if this problem exists and, if so, how it can be addressed.
One solution might be to eliminate the six-months reward for individuals and instead reward all employees with an extra day if overall sick days are down at the end of the designated period. A solution that doesn't pit one employee's interests against another's is inherently better than one that does, because a team spirit is by definition better for the company's interests.
It's obviously possible for a program that is entirely ethical and conceived with the best of intentions to actually make things worse. That shouldn't stop companies from looking for solutions to their problems, but they should be prepared to evaluate the results and make the necessary adjustments if things go wrong.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: TARZAN, GUV OF THE JUNGLE?
A federal judge in Chicago has prevented former Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois from traveling to Costa Rica to appear in an NBC reality show called "I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!" Blagojevich is free on bail, but faces trial on corruption charges.
In an informal poll on my column's blog, 61 percent of the respondents disagreed with the judge, arguing that Blagojevich remains innocent until proven guilty and therefore should be allowed to make money in any legal fashion -- even if my readers don't seem to think much either of Blagojevich or of the show.
Shmuel Ross of Brooklyn, N.Y., finds the job offer fitting: "Given that Blagojevich is an accused criminal whose alleged crimes were committed while in public office," Ross writes, "he's a perfect choice for a network reality-television show."
"I would think that anybody hammered in the press for misdoings he did not commit would either want to keep a low profile until the trial or present facts that would vindicate him," writes Phil Clutts of Harrisburg, N.C.
"I wouldn't have a problem with Blago going to the jungles of Costa Rica if they'd give the show a more accurate name," writes another reader, who prefers to remain anonymous. "I suggest `I Think I'm Important -- Does Anybody Care?"'
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, May 24, 2009
SOUND OFF: DRINK AS MUCH AS YOU WANT?
Several weeks ago I wrote about a husband and wife who were eating at a restaurant that offered free refills on drinks. The husband wanted to know if it was OK to buy one drink to share with his wife and then refill it. His wife thought it was fine, but he had his doubts.
My take was that, so long as the company had no policy against it, it was fine for them to share the refillable drink. Readers were split on whether my advice held water.
So now I put the question to each of you: In a restaurant that offers refillable drinks, is it OK to buy one drink, share it with someone and then refill it? Or is a one-refillable-drink-per-one-person rule implied, even if not formally stated?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: NOW HEAR THIS ... LIKE IT OR NOT
A reader from Colorado is hearing more than he wants to hear.
He drives a company car, and the vehicle is equipped with a citizens' band radio to allow drivers to communicate with company headquarters and with other drivers. It is supposed to be used strictly for business, and in particular the company has a clear policy prohibiting "cussing" or the telling of any sort of "sexual jokes" over the CB radio.
"But they will not enforce these rules," he writes. "Do I have to continually listen to foul language in my workplace if I find it offensive? Whom do I talk to about this?"
There is a difference between etiquette and ethics, though many situations straddle that boundary. In many contexts this would simply be an issue of etiquette: It's rude for anyone to indulge in obscene language or offensive jokes within the hearing of anyone who might object. If my reader was sitting in a bar and was being subjected to objectionable conversation from the next table, he could rightly condemn the offenders as rude.
In this case, though, there's an added component that makes this an ethical issue, and his fellow drivers' conduct not merely rude but wrong.
A workplace is not a bar, and the public airwaves are not any old workplace. What goes over the radio -- including over CB frequencies -- in the United States is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, and its provisions about "permissible communications" for CB users clearly prohibit "obscene, profane or indecent words, language or meaning."
By using profanity and telling obscene jokes over their CB radios, my reader's co-workers are not only being rude to him and to who knows how many others within range of their transmissions, but also they are probably in violation of FCC regulations. The penalties for such violations range from cease-and-desist orders to hefty fines or imprisonment. And because they are doing this as representatives of their company, they are exposing the company to potential liability as well, the way a casual obscenity uttered by the singer Bono on live television got NBC in trouble, though nobody suggested that the network had caused his remark or even had known it was coming.
By using the company's own radios to place it in jeopardy, his co-workers are being not only rude but also, yes, unethical.
For that reason, my reader shouldn't have to wait for the FCC to intervene in his situation. Since the company itself is at risk because of this conduct, it should enforce its own policy against such misuse of company-owned CB radios.
The right thing for my reader to do is to tell his supervisor that, while he himself finds such utterances offensive, he is also concerned that they are placing the company in legal jeopardy. If his supervisor is one of the offenders, he should report his concerns to the company's human-resources department.
In either case, he is under no obligation to list the names of those who might be violating company policy. If company bosses want to know, they can tune in like anybody else.
The right thing for the company to do is to address his concerns. It should begin by monitoring the radio frequency on which company dispatches are made. The company should also make it clear to everyone who uses a company CB radio that monitoring is ongoing and that infractions of this company policy will not be tolerated, not only because they could result in hefty government fines but also because they are inappropriate in any workplace and shows a lack of respect for co-workers.
If the company refuses to address the issue, it should be ashamed. Furthermore, in that case my reader and others at the company would be fully within their rights to report the behavior to the FCC.
Whatever happened to the company thereafter would be its own fault for not living up to its own policies.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
He drives a company car, and the vehicle is equipped with a citizens' band radio to allow drivers to communicate with company headquarters and with other drivers. It is supposed to be used strictly for business, and in particular the company has a clear policy prohibiting "cussing" or the telling of any sort of "sexual jokes" over the CB radio.
"But they will not enforce these rules," he writes. "Do I have to continually listen to foul language in my workplace if I find it offensive? Whom do I talk to about this?"
There is a difference between etiquette and ethics, though many situations straddle that boundary. In many contexts this would simply be an issue of etiquette: It's rude for anyone to indulge in obscene language or offensive jokes within the hearing of anyone who might object. If my reader was sitting in a bar and was being subjected to objectionable conversation from the next table, he could rightly condemn the offenders as rude.
In this case, though, there's an added component that makes this an ethical issue, and his fellow drivers' conduct not merely rude but wrong.
A workplace is not a bar, and the public airwaves are not any old workplace. What goes over the radio -- including over CB frequencies -- in the United States is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, and its provisions about "permissible communications" for CB users clearly prohibit "obscene, profane or indecent words, language or meaning."
By using profanity and telling obscene jokes over their CB radios, my reader's co-workers are not only being rude to him and to who knows how many others within range of their transmissions, but also they are probably in violation of FCC regulations. The penalties for such violations range from cease-and-desist orders to hefty fines or imprisonment. And because they are doing this as representatives of their company, they are exposing the company to potential liability as well, the way a casual obscenity uttered by the singer Bono on live television got NBC in trouble, though nobody suggested that the network had caused his remark or even had known it was coming.
By using the company's own radios to place it in jeopardy, his co-workers are being not only rude but also, yes, unethical.
For that reason, my reader shouldn't have to wait for the FCC to intervene in his situation. Since the company itself is at risk because of this conduct, it should enforce its own policy against such misuse of company-owned CB radios.
The right thing for my reader to do is to tell his supervisor that, while he himself finds such utterances offensive, he is also concerned that they are placing the company in legal jeopardy. If his supervisor is one of the offenders, he should report his concerns to the company's human-resources department.
In either case, he is under no obligation to list the names of those who might be violating company policy. If company bosses want to know, they can tune in like anybody else.
The right thing for the company to do is to address his concerns. It should begin by monitoring the radio frequency on which company dispatches are made. The company should also make it clear to everyone who uses a company CB radio that monitoring is ongoing and that infractions of this company policy will not be tolerated, not only because they could result in hefty government fines but also because they are inappropriate in any workplace and shows a lack of respect for co-workers.
If the company refuses to address the issue, it should be ashamed. Furthermore, in that case my reader and others at the company would be fully within their rights to report the behavior to the FCC.
Whatever happened to the company thereafter would be its own fault for not living up to its own policies.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, May 17, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: QUARTER NEITHER ASKED NOR GIVEN
There's a terrific scene in "Superman: The Movie" (1978) in which Clark Kent (Christopher Reeve), looking for a place to change into his Superman costume, runs to a telephone booth ... and stops short, confronted by a pay phone on an open pedestal, rather than the once-ubiquitous telephone booth.
These days, thanks to the proliferation of cell telephones, he'd be hard pressed even to find the open-air variety of pay telephone. Pay telephones do still exist, however, even if most of us can't remember the last time we used one.
One of my colleagues, however, had a pay-telephone encounter a couple of years ago that still perplexes him ethically.
Stopping to use a sidewalk telephone in Long Beach, N.Y., he put in his quarter. No dial tone resulted, however, nor did he hear his quarter drop. He had encountered that now-seldom-seen monster, the quarter-eating telephone.
He was about to walk away when he realized that he could actually see the edge of his quarter inside the coin slot. Using a nail file, he found that he could hook the quarter and drag it back out of the slot.
Again he started to walk away, but then he noticed that another quarter had moved into the space previously occupied by his.
It would be equally easy to remove it, using the same technique, but he wasn't sure whether it would be the right thing to do.
On the one hand, he had already retrieved his own quarter and the other quarter clearly wasn't his.
On the other hand, it wasn't the telephone company's either, since it had been given to the company in exchange for a service that hadn't been provided. It belonged to some previous frustrated would-be caller whom my colleague had no way of contacting. Should the telephone company be rewarded for its poor maintenance of the pay telephone? It seemed to him that this was more or less like finding the money on the street, in which case finders keepers.
My colleague chose the second option and extracted the second quarter, whereupon a third quarter appeared. Applying the same logic he extracted that one, and a fourth appeared. He ended up with $2.25 in quarters beyond his own initial one.
Feeling uncomfortable with the situation, he reports, he gave them to some people running a church bake sale at a table down the street. He realizes, however, that simply giving the money to a charitable cause doesn't change the rights or wrongs of taking the coins in the first place.
"If I was ethically entitled to them, I can do whatever I want with them," he writes. "If I wasn't ethically entitled to them, then they aren't mine to give away."
He's right ... in his second observation. The quarters weren't his to give away. The right thing would have been to take the one that was his and then walk away.
My colleague did leave a note on the telephone, warning future potential users not to risk their quarters. If he felt empathy for the telephone company -- yeah, right -- he might also have called in, from a telephone that didn't eat his quarter, to report that the first telephone was on the blink.
As for taking the coins, it isn't the right thing because of the effort involved in extracting them. If he'd found the quarters resting atop the telephone, he might reasonably have pocketed them. "I found some quarters inside a pay phone" isn't the same thing. And, as he says, it doesn't matter whether he used the money to buy a Jaguar or to restore a blind orphan's sight -- it's irrelevant to the ethical question.
Small frustrations often cause us to do things that we know are not quite right. Does this mean that my colleague is not to be trusted? Hardly. I don't for a minute suspect that his pay-telephone episode suggests that he will drive away in someone else's sports car simply because he happens to see the keys in the ignition.
In this one small pay-telephone exchange, however, the right thing eluded him.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
These days, thanks to the proliferation of cell telephones, he'd be hard pressed even to find the open-air variety of pay telephone. Pay telephones do still exist, however, even if most of us can't remember the last time we used one.
One of my colleagues, however, had a pay-telephone encounter a couple of years ago that still perplexes him ethically.
Stopping to use a sidewalk telephone in Long Beach, N.Y., he put in his quarter. No dial tone resulted, however, nor did he hear his quarter drop. He had encountered that now-seldom-seen monster, the quarter-eating telephone.
He was about to walk away when he realized that he could actually see the edge of his quarter inside the coin slot. Using a nail file, he found that he could hook the quarter and drag it back out of the slot.
Again he started to walk away, but then he noticed that another quarter had moved into the space previously occupied by his.
It would be equally easy to remove it, using the same technique, but he wasn't sure whether it would be the right thing to do.
On the one hand, he had already retrieved his own quarter and the other quarter clearly wasn't his.
On the other hand, it wasn't the telephone company's either, since it had been given to the company in exchange for a service that hadn't been provided. It belonged to some previous frustrated would-be caller whom my colleague had no way of contacting. Should the telephone company be rewarded for its poor maintenance of the pay telephone? It seemed to him that this was more or less like finding the money on the street, in which case finders keepers.
My colleague chose the second option and extracted the second quarter, whereupon a third quarter appeared. Applying the same logic he extracted that one, and a fourth appeared. He ended up with $2.25 in quarters beyond his own initial one.
Feeling uncomfortable with the situation, he reports, he gave them to some people running a church bake sale at a table down the street. He realizes, however, that simply giving the money to a charitable cause doesn't change the rights or wrongs of taking the coins in the first place.
"If I was ethically entitled to them, I can do whatever I want with them," he writes. "If I wasn't ethically entitled to them, then they aren't mine to give away."
He's right ... in his second observation. The quarters weren't his to give away. The right thing would have been to take the one that was his and then walk away.
My colleague did leave a note on the telephone, warning future potential users not to risk their quarters. If he felt empathy for the telephone company -- yeah, right -- he might also have called in, from a telephone that didn't eat his quarter, to report that the first telephone was on the blink.
As for taking the coins, it isn't the right thing because of the effort involved in extracting them. If he'd found the quarters resting atop the telephone, he might reasonably have pocketed them. "I found some quarters inside a pay phone" isn't the same thing. And, as he says, it doesn't matter whether he used the money to buy a Jaguar or to restore a blind orphan's sight -- it's irrelevant to the ethical question.
Small frustrations often cause us to do things that we know are not quite right. Does this mean that my colleague is not to be trusted? Hardly. I don't for a minute suspect that his pay-telephone episode suggests that he will drive away in someone else's sports car simply because he happens to see the keys in the ignition.
In this one small pay-telephone exchange, however, the right thing eluded him.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: MADONNA AND CHILD
While 75 percent of the readers responding to an unscientific poll on my column's blog feel that the singer/actress Madonna is entitled to privacy in matters such as adopting a child, most readers who commented believed that she has given up any such right.
"Until Madonna publishes a book entitled `Adoption' to follow up her auto-photographic book `Sex,"' one reader writes, "I think that she's foregone any right to privacy."
"Adoption should be private," another agrees, "but she chooses to put her life on display continually. She has a history of following fads and trends ... and leaving them behind once the cameras are gone ... By `outing' her in advance, perhaps we can save a child who likely will be adopted by a genuinely caring parent from becoming another of Madonna's moments."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
"Until Madonna publishes a book entitled `Adoption' to follow up her auto-photographic book `Sex,"' one reader writes, "I think that she's foregone any right to privacy."
"Adoption should be private," another agrees, "but she chooses to put her life on display continually. She has a history of following fads and trends ... and leaving them behind once the cameras are gone ... By `outing' her in advance, perhaps we can save a child who likely will be adopted by a genuinely caring parent from becoming another of Madonna's moments."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, May 10, 2009
SOUND OFF: A HAND-OUT TO THOSE NOT SO MUCH IN NEED
Your town has been hit by a natural disaster. Many area residents have been evacuated from their homes, and outside support quickly arrives. At various spots around town, residents can receive free assistance ranging from blankets and clothing to food and tickets to performances and recreational outings. All you need to do is to show identification proving that you're a resident of the disaster-stricken town.
You've got the right identification, but as it happens your home was spared, you lost relatively little in the disaster and your life is continuing much as before. Still, free stuff is free stuff and no one is asking any questions.
Well, no one except me: Do you go to get some of the relief that's being offered to everyone in town? Or do you decide that, because you weren't as hard hit as others were, you'll pass?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: Minding Your Neighbor's Business?
A reader who is a member of the board of a condominium association in Ohio recognizes that, as a board member, he is responsible for making sure that the association's bylaws are followed.
One of those bylaws requires anyone buying a unit in the condo complex to pay $1,000 to the association's reserve fund. Wanting to know if a unit currently being rented to someone with an option to buy had actually been sold, the board member accessed the county auditor's Web site.
His search revealed that the unit had not been sold, so the association was not due the $1,000 fee. He discovered, however, that the condo's owner was receiving a 2.5-percent reduction in his property taxes because he stated that he occupies the unit ... which he does not.
This discovery leaves the board member in a quandary. Now that he has the information, what should he do with it?
"Is it ethical for me to notify the county auditor of the situation?" he asks. "Or would I be wrong in doing this?"
OK, no one likes a busybody. Few of us can stomach folks who stick their noses into other people's business. But an accidental discovery during a legitimate investigation is a different story from rummaging around looking for dirt.
So long as the board member did not break any laws by accessing the county auditor's site, he has every right to be concerned about what he found. If the condo owner is not paying the full property taxes due on the property, he is defrauding the community in which he lives, or in which he says he lives. That is not only illegal, but also unethical. His misrepresentation steals money from the community and forces others to pay more than necessary to run the local government's operations.
There is, of course, a risk that, if my reader fingers this owner, others in the condo association might turn out to be doing the same thing and, if so, surely wouldn't appreciate being called out.
That consideration should not stop him from reporting the scofflaw, of course. But the right thing for him to do, before reporting the condo owner, is to discuss the issue with his fellow board members. A good rule of thumb, when making an ethical decision, is to discuss the issue and possible responses with other stakeholders. They may offer valuable feedback both about the options in a particular situation and also about how it might affect the community more broadly.
The board might, for example, decide that it's time to remind all condo owners about the $1,000 purchase fee and also to point out that, if they are renting their units, they are not entitled to the tax reduction for residency. The board might feel that the best response is to tell the tax-ducking condo owner that the situation has come to the board's attention and that it will be reported unless he decides to report it himself -- and pay whatever back taxes are necessary -- by a specified date.
One thing my reader should make clear to the board, however, is that the option of not reporting the issue isn't on the table. If the board won't act on the matter as a group, he will do so as an individual.
Knowing that the law is being broken -- especially in this case, when the violation could directly affect the board's interests -- and doing nothing would make my reader and the rest of the board complicit in a situation that never should have happened in the first place. The question is not whether to sit on this information, in short, but only how to go about remedying it.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)Sunday, May 03, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: HELPING THE PRIVILEGED POOR?
A reader from Orange County, Calif., is perplexed. A friend of hers has two children, and paid to send them to private schools from the time they were in preschool through their high-school years.
Now the friend is footing the college tuition for each child. Neither of the children has been required to hold even a part-time job while in college. The older child has earned some money from paid internships, but none of this money has been used to defray any of her education or living costs.
The mother continues to pay all expenses for each child, my reader writes, including "modest but brand-new cars, trips to Europe, the latest electronic gadgets and just about anything they may need or want."
My reader hastens to add that her friend and her friend's husband have worked very hard to provide for their children.
"Both kids are very nice, very respectful, and have never been in any kind of trouble," she writes. "So, while I would consider them privileged, I would not say that they are spoiled."
So where's the problem?
The daughter will soon graduate from college. Her mother is worried that, because of the current job market, she will not be able to find a job immediately after she graduates. Once she is no longer a full-time student, the daughter will not be covered by her parents' health-care plan.
"My friend is considering having her daughter apply for Medi-Cal," my reader writes, "rather than purchasing a private health-care plan for her daughter."
Medi-Cal is the state's Medicaid program that provides health-care coverage for low-income people, and my reader can't understand why, after spending so much money making sure that her children have the best of everything, she would consider drawing the line when it comes to their health care.
The answer, apparently, is simple economy: As we all know, health-care costs are high and rising, and her friend would rather not foot this particular bill.
My reader doubts that her friend will go the Medi-Cal route, but wonders whether I see any problem, from an ethical perspective, with her even considering it.
If the daughter qualifies for Medi-Cal, there is nothing ethically wrong with her applying for the coverage. Simply having lived a "privileged" life while under the care of her parents does not mean that she will never have to find her own way in the world, financially or otherwise. It's fair to assume that, even if she immediately finds a job, it won't be a high-income one, at least for awhile.
There's nothing in my reader's letter to suggest that the friend plans to continue showering her daughter with fancy electronics, new cars and trips to Europe. If she is planning to do that, then her daughter will not truly be low-income, so Medi-Cal would be inappropriate. Otherwise, there's no reason that the low-income daughter of high-income parents shouldn't take advantage of a program for low-income people.
Her parents might have considered easing their daughter's transition to self-sufficiency by asking her to contribute something toward her expenses during the course of her college career. But there is no ethical imperative that dictates how far parents should go in supporting their children financially. If they decide to pay for more extensive health-care coverage for her, or to lend her the money to enable her to do so for herself, that's OK. So is telling their daughter that, once she's out of college, she's on her own financially.
That these parents have been able to rear two respectful kids speaks well of their parenting skills. The right thing for them to do now, as their daughter prepares to graduate from college, is to speak with her about the responsibilities she will face as an independent adult and to lay out the options available to her. That's the kind of help that any good parent should offer and that any child should cherish.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Now the friend is footing the college tuition for each child. Neither of the children has been required to hold even a part-time job while in college. The older child has earned some money from paid internships, but none of this money has been used to defray any of her education or living costs.
The mother continues to pay all expenses for each child, my reader writes, including "modest but brand-new cars, trips to Europe, the latest electronic gadgets and just about anything they may need or want."
My reader hastens to add that her friend and her friend's husband have worked very hard to provide for their children.
"Both kids are very nice, very respectful, and have never been in any kind of trouble," she writes. "So, while I would consider them privileged, I would not say that they are spoiled."
So where's the problem?
The daughter will soon graduate from college. Her mother is worried that, because of the current job market, she will not be able to find a job immediately after she graduates. Once she is no longer a full-time student, the daughter will not be covered by her parents' health-care plan.
"My friend is considering having her daughter apply for Medi-Cal," my reader writes, "rather than purchasing a private health-care plan for her daughter."
Medi-Cal is the state's Medicaid program that provides health-care coverage for low-income people, and my reader can't understand why, after spending so much money making sure that her children have the best of everything, she would consider drawing the line when it comes to their health care.
The answer, apparently, is simple economy: As we all know, health-care costs are high and rising, and her friend would rather not foot this particular bill.
My reader doubts that her friend will go the Medi-Cal route, but wonders whether I see any problem, from an ethical perspective, with her even considering it.
If the daughter qualifies for Medi-Cal, there is nothing ethically wrong with her applying for the coverage. Simply having lived a "privileged" life while under the care of her parents does not mean that she will never have to find her own way in the world, financially or otherwise. It's fair to assume that, even if she immediately finds a job, it won't be a high-income one, at least for awhile.
There's nothing in my reader's letter to suggest that the friend plans to continue showering her daughter with fancy electronics, new cars and trips to Europe. If she is planning to do that, then her daughter will not truly be low-income, so Medi-Cal would be inappropriate. Otherwise, there's no reason that the low-income daughter of high-income parents shouldn't take advantage of a program for low-income people.
Her parents might have considered easing their daughter's transition to self-sufficiency by asking her to contribute something toward her expenses during the course of her college career. But there is no ethical imperative that dictates how far parents should go in supporting their children financially. If they decide to pay for more extensive health-care coverage for her, or to lend her the money to enable her to do so for herself, that's OK. So is telling their daughter that, once she's out of college, she's on her own financially.
That these parents have been able to rear two respectful kids speaks well of their parenting skills. The right thing for them to do now, as their daughter prepares to graduate from college, is to speak with her about the responsibilities she will face as an independent adult and to lay out the options available to her. That's the kind of help that any good parent should offer and that any child should cherish.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO SPOOF
Does Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," have any obligation to do his daily send-up of the news in an accurate and well-researched manner, given that he is regarded as a journalist by many people? Yes, according to 36 percent of the readers who responded to an unscientific poll on my column's blog.
In a 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Stewart was named by 2 percent of respondents as the journalist they admired most. Katie Couric led at 5 percent. with Stewart tied with Tom Brokaw, Anderson Cooper and Brian Williams for fourth place.
"Perhaps," one reader writes, "Mr. Stewart could have a disclaimer at the beginning and end of each program: `Please don't be stupid enough to believe that everything you hear during this program is truthful."'
Not every reader is so caustic, however.
"Several of the people that I know who watch Jon Stewart do believe that they are getting the `real news,"' another writes, "from someone who is not afraid to `tell it like it is."'
Martin Maines of Middletown, Ohio, suggests that the real issue doesn't involve Stewart at all.
"(If) people can't tell the difference between him and the so-called legitimate, mainstream journalists," Maines writes, "maybe the question of ethical obligations should be raised about the way (mainstream journalists) present the news. After all, their reporting is supposed to be accurate and unbiased. If it were, then maybe it would be easier to tell the difference."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
In a 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Stewart was named by 2 percent of respondents as the journalist they admired most. Katie Couric led at 5 percent. with Stewart tied with Tom Brokaw, Anderson Cooper and Brian Williams for fourth place.
"Perhaps," one reader writes, "Mr. Stewart could have a disclaimer at the beginning and end of each program: `Please don't be stupid enough to believe that everything you hear during this program is truthful."'
Not every reader is so caustic, however.
"Several of the people that I know who watch Jon Stewart do believe that they are getting the `real news,"' another writes, "from someone who is not afraid to `tell it like it is."'
Martin Maines of Middletown, Ohio, suggests that the real issue doesn't involve Stewart at all.
"(If) people can't tell the difference between him and the so-called legitimate, mainstream journalists," Maines writes, "maybe the question of ethical obligations should be raised about the way (mainstream journalists) present the news. After all, their reporting is supposed to be accurate and unbiased. If it were, then maybe it would be easier to tell the difference."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, April 26, 2009
SOUND OFF: GET BLAGOJEVICH OUT OF HERE?
The Associated Press reports that disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois may be among the stars of an NBC reality show called "I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!" The show is to be filmed in the jungle of Costa Rica, however, and Blagojevich cannot leave the country without a court's permission to do so, since he faces trial on corruption charges and is free on bail.
Given that Blagojevich is an accused criminal whose alleged crimes were committed while in public office, is it unacceptable for him to be featured in a network television show? Or, since he remains innocent until proven guilty, should he be allowed to make money in any legal fashion?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Given that Blagojevich is an accused criminal whose alleged crimes were committed while in public office, is it unacceptable for him to be featured in a network television show? Or, since he remains innocent until proven guilty, should he be allowed to make money in any legal fashion?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: GOTTA HAVE IT FRIDAY (OR SO I'D LIKE YOU TO THINK)
I'm driven by deadlines.
Meetings, articles, social obligations, family events ... Every week more than one deadline looms. Hitting various deadlines often requires me to intricately orchestrate tasks so that everything can get done on time.
Even so, it's rare that I miss a deadline. Partly this is out of a feeling of obligation to meet the commitments I've made, but there's also the sense that, if I miss one, the result will be akin to my experiences at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, where one late aircraft can trigger a chain of delays that snarls thousands of people who have nothing to do with that first plane.
That's why I hate it when colleagues, family or friends give me a false deadline. You know, one that has been set weeks before the actual deadline, because the deadline setter doesn't trust people to get things done when they say they will.
Last week a reader told me that his boss, the owner of the company, is notorious for missing deadlines on projects. As a result, my reader and his co-workers have taken it upon themselves to lie when the boss asks them about the deadline for any given project.
"Is it wrong for us to do this?" he asks.
Short answer: Yes, it's wrong. There's a basic ethical obligation to be truthful to your superiors, and nothing about this situation changes that.
We all have colleagues who simply cannot be counted upon to get things done on time. Even when they are gifted, talented people, they are officially among those who drive us nuts.
It's even more challenging when your boss is such a person. When the boss misses a deadline, the whole company misses it and the whole company pays the price. And, of course, there's nobody to call the boss on the carpet and demand that he or she get organized or else.
If you're looking for the ethical approach, however, lying to the boss is not the way to go.
It's ultimately the boss's job, not yours, to see that projects get done on time, even ones that he has entrusted to you. Your job is to make your best effort to accomplish this, and that doesn't mean lying to your boss. All you can ethically do is make clear the consequences of his failing to meet the deadlines: "This is when we need your signoff, and if we don't get it by then the project will inescapably be late."
Once you've done that -- and make sure that what you tell him is true -- you've done all you can do. If he still doesn't come through, devote your unscheduled down time to coming up with a diplomatic way to demonstrate, in the inevitable post-mortem, that the project's lateness was indeed due to his missing the deadline.
Hopefully being burned once or twice will convince him to get serious about time management. In any case, however, you'll know that you did your best and were honest and straightforward throughout.
Please, however, give colleagues who regularly make their deadlines a break by not misleading them into thinking that their work is due before it actually is. I'll appreciate it very much.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Meetings, articles, social obligations, family events ... Every week more than one deadline looms. Hitting various deadlines often requires me to intricately orchestrate tasks so that everything can get done on time.
Even so, it's rare that I miss a deadline. Partly this is out of a feeling of obligation to meet the commitments I've made, but there's also the sense that, if I miss one, the result will be akin to my experiences at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, where one late aircraft can trigger a chain of delays that snarls thousands of people who have nothing to do with that first plane.
That's why I hate it when colleagues, family or friends give me a false deadline. You know, one that has been set weeks before the actual deadline, because the deadline setter doesn't trust people to get things done when they say they will.
Last week a reader told me that his boss, the owner of the company, is notorious for missing deadlines on projects. As a result, my reader and his co-workers have taken it upon themselves to lie when the boss asks them about the deadline for any given project.
"Is it wrong for us to do this?" he asks.
Short answer: Yes, it's wrong. There's a basic ethical obligation to be truthful to your superiors, and nothing about this situation changes that.
We all have colleagues who simply cannot be counted upon to get things done on time. Even when they are gifted, talented people, they are officially among those who drive us nuts.
It's even more challenging when your boss is such a person. When the boss misses a deadline, the whole company misses it and the whole company pays the price. And, of course, there's nobody to call the boss on the carpet and demand that he or she get organized or else.
If you're looking for the ethical approach, however, lying to the boss is not the way to go.
It's ultimately the boss's job, not yours, to see that projects get done on time, even ones that he has entrusted to you. Your job is to make your best effort to accomplish this, and that doesn't mean lying to your boss. All you can ethically do is make clear the consequences of his failing to meet the deadlines: "This is when we need your signoff, and if we don't get it by then the project will inescapably be late."
Once you've done that -- and make sure that what you tell him is true -- you've done all you can do. If he still doesn't come through, devote your unscheduled down time to coming up with a diplomatic way to demonstrate, in the inevitable post-mortem, that the project's lateness was indeed due to his missing the deadline.
Hopefully being burned once or twice will convince him to get serious about time management. In any case, however, you'll know that you did your best and were honest and straightforward throughout.
Please, however, give colleagues who regularly make their deadlines a break by not misleading them into thinking that their work is due before it actually is. I'll appreciate it very much.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Monday, April 20, 2009
FOLIO: Blog: Ads on Magazine Covers
Sunday, April 19, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVE ... AND NOTHING MORE?
A reader and her husband recently received a letter from the federal government that has put each of them in a slightly different ethical bind.
For several years my reader and her husband have been friends with a couple who live near them in Providence, R.I.
"The wife has always been a bit `crazy,"' my reader writes, "but in a fun, life-of-the-party kind of way."
Last year the wife volunteered for the Obama campaign. As she got more and more involved, she would travel to other cities and then to other states for extended stays. Gradually the volunteer wife's contact with local people, including her friends and even her husband, started to wane. After the election the volunteer wife still didn't return home. When my reader was able to reach her on the telephone, my reader reports, she found her evasive and "slightly manic."
Finally she returned home to collect her things and to move to Washington, hoping to get a full-time job with the new administration. She never contacted my reader while she was home to retrieve her stuff.
"Our friendship seemed pretty faded," my reader writes.
Three months into the new administration, though, the volunteer wife called my reader at work. She was in a hurry, she said, but she was applying for a job and asked my reader if she could serve as a "sort of reference" by confirming her address in Providence. My reader agreed. When she started to ask a few questions about the prospective job, however, the volunteer wife quickly excused herself and hung up.
She also tried to call my reader's husband, but wasn't able to reach him directly.
My reader and her husband received a letter shortly thereafter. They were indeed asked to confirm her address -- but were also asked if they had "any reason to question this person's honesty or trustworthiness" or if they had any "adverse information about this person's financial integrity."
Neither is crazy about the idea of vouching for anything about this woman other than her address, which is all that my reader had agreed to do.
"Are we ethically obligated to contact her and say that we aren't interested in serving as this type of reference and refuse to respond to the letters?" my reader asks. "I'm pretty sure that we shouldn't continue ignoring these letters and hoping they'll go away."
Yes, generally speaking, letters and obligations rarely disappear. And there is indeed an obligation in this case, no matter how shabbily the "friend" may have acted toward my reader.
Because she told her friend that she would confirm her address, my reader can't simply ignore the letter. The right thing for her to do is either to answer the letter -- she can, if she wishes, confirm the address but leave blank the rest of the letter, since it goes beyond her commitment to her friend -- or to contact her friend to let her know that she does not plan to do so because the letter isn't what she had been led to expect.
My reader's husband is in a different situation, of course. Since he never agreed to be a reference, he is free to ignore the letter, if he likes, or to fill it out any way he pleases. It was bad form for the volunteer wife not to get his agreement before having the letter sent to him, and the letter itself imposes no obligation on him.
Few people are comfortable turning down such requests from friends, no matter how distant they have become. If the volunteer wife had been more forthcoming about the type of reference she wanted, my reader might have felt more comfortable in telling her that she was not the best choice. If she now sends back the form only confirming her friend's address, it will likely speak volumes to those who asked for the reference -- but that's the volunteer wife's own fault for not being more forthcoming.
Everyone seeking a reference would be wise to choose their references carefully and not to mislead them about what they are being asked for. A bad or mixed reference is worse than no reference at all.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
For several years my reader and her husband have been friends with a couple who live near them in Providence, R.I.
"The wife has always been a bit `crazy,"' my reader writes, "but in a fun, life-of-the-party kind of way."
Last year the wife volunteered for the Obama campaign. As she got more and more involved, she would travel to other cities and then to other states for extended stays. Gradually the volunteer wife's contact with local people, including her friends and even her husband, started to wane. After the election the volunteer wife still didn't return home. When my reader was able to reach her on the telephone, my reader reports, she found her evasive and "slightly manic."
Finally she returned home to collect her things and to move to Washington, hoping to get a full-time job with the new administration. She never contacted my reader while she was home to retrieve her stuff.
"Our friendship seemed pretty faded," my reader writes.
Three months into the new administration, though, the volunteer wife called my reader at work. She was in a hurry, she said, but she was applying for a job and asked my reader if she could serve as a "sort of reference" by confirming her address in Providence. My reader agreed. When she started to ask a few questions about the prospective job, however, the volunteer wife quickly excused herself and hung up.
She also tried to call my reader's husband, but wasn't able to reach him directly.
My reader and her husband received a letter shortly thereafter. They were indeed asked to confirm her address -- but were also asked if they had "any reason to question this person's honesty or trustworthiness" or if they had any "adverse information about this person's financial integrity."
Neither is crazy about the idea of vouching for anything about this woman other than her address, which is all that my reader had agreed to do.
"Are we ethically obligated to contact her and say that we aren't interested in serving as this type of reference and refuse to respond to the letters?" my reader asks. "I'm pretty sure that we shouldn't continue ignoring these letters and hoping they'll go away."
Yes, generally speaking, letters and obligations rarely disappear. And there is indeed an obligation in this case, no matter how shabbily the "friend" may have acted toward my reader.
Because she told her friend that she would confirm her address, my reader can't simply ignore the letter. The right thing for her to do is either to answer the letter -- she can, if she wishes, confirm the address but leave blank the rest of the letter, since it goes beyond her commitment to her friend -- or to contact her friend to let her know that she does not plan to do so because the letter isn't what she had been led to expect.
My reader's husband is in a different situation, of course. Since he never agreed to be a reference, he is free to ignore the letter, if he likes, or to fill it out any way he pleases. It was bad form for the volunteer wife not to get his agreement before having the letter sent to him, and the letter itself imposes no obligation on him.
Few people are comfortable turning down such requests from friends, no matter how distant they have become. If the volunteer wife had been more forthcoming about the type of reference she wanted, my reader might have felt more comfortable in telling her that she was not the best choice. If she now sends back the form only confirming her friend's address, it will likely speak volumes to those who asked for the reference -- but that's the volunteer wife's own fault for not being more forthcoming.
Everyone seeking a reference would be wise to choose their references carefully and not to mislead them about what they are being asked for. A bad or mixed reference is worse than no reference at all.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: Bonus Question
In an informal poll on my column's blog, 75 percent of respondents said that it is never OK for a CEO to receive a bonus in a year when the company hasn't met its predetermined expectations for earnings, profits and overall company performance. Of the remainder, 16 percent thought it was OK only if bonuses were a standard part of the compensation for the CEO's job, while 5 percent thought it was OK only if the shortfall was due to economic conditions beyond the CEO's control. Only 2 percent of readers thought it was always OK to pay a CEO a bonus even in years when expectations aren't met.
"It's part of a CEO's job to evaluate the risks of how the economy or other factors ... might affect operations," writes Phil Clutts of Harrisburg, N.C. "If the company has done poorly because of misfortune or planned losses, the top dog is not entitled to a bonus."
"In these times when companies are receiving huge amounts from the U.S. government, that money should be used in total to revive the company, not the executives or employees or shareholders," writes George Zahka of Bradenton Beach, Fla. "If the company's condition is due to malfeasance or dishonesty, then they should be prosecuted."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
"It's part of a CEO's job to evaluate the risks of how the economy or other factors ... might affect operations," writes Phil Clutts of Harrisburg, N.C. "If the company has done poorly because of misfortune or planned losses, the top dog is not entitled to a bonus."
"In these times when companies are receiving huge amounts from the U.S. government, that money should be used in total to revive the company, not the executives or employees or shareholders," writes George Zahka of Bradenton Beach, Fla. "If the company's condition is due to malfeasance or dishonesty, then they should be prosecuted."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, April 12, 2009
SOUND OFF: WHOSE CHILD IS THIS?
The singer/actress Madonna is in the news again with another attempt to adopt a child from Malawi. In 2006 her adoption of a Malawian boy drew press scrutiny, and the public's ire, amid suggestions that the adoption process might have been unfairly expedited due to her celebrity status and to lavish gifts she had given to the country.
When I asked my readers about the propriety of that first adoption, some were outraged that the adoption process might have been speeded up because it was Madonna applying. Others believed that because the cause was virtuous -- "saving that child from poverty and disease," one reader wrote -- any criticism was unwarranted.
The press coverage this time around has been equally vigorous, and at this writing it seems that she will be unsuccessful in a second adoption.
So here's my question for you: Regardless of her celebrity status, in a matter such as this -- the adoption of a child -- should Madonna's privacy be respected? Or do the press and the public have a right to the inside scoop on her adoption?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
When I asked my readers about the propriety of that first adoption, some were outraged that the adoption process might have been speeded up because it was Madonna applying. Others believed that because the cause was virtuous -- "saving that child from poverty and disease," one reader wrote -- any criticism was unwarranted.
The press coverage this time around has been equally vigorous, and at this writing it seems that she will be unsuccessful in a second adoption.
So here's my question for you: Regardless of her celebrity status, in a matter such as this -- the adoption of a child -- should Madonna's privacy be respected? Or do the press and the public have a right to the inside scoop on her adoption?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: THE CHIME OF THE CENTURY
"Have you tackled wind chimes?" a reader from Watertown, Mass., asks me in an e-mail.
My reader's choice of a verb is no accident. Her neighbor's wind chimes are driving her nuts, and she's on the verge of violence against either the chimes or the neighbor.
"I know that, if this is my biggest problem, I should count myself lucky," she adds.
She recently moved into a new neighborhood, and the wind chimes hung at the house next door clank round the clock. She knows this, because she works from home and is therefore subjected to the noise day and night.
"I am trying to talk myself into liking wind chimes," she writes, "because I can't bear to approach my neighbor. I know some communities ban them."
She knows this because she has spent some time researching the issue on the Internet. She has sent me links to stories, including one from Denver about a lawsuit that forced a resident to take down his wind chimes by nightfall and not rehang them until 9 a.m. There are countless stories of homeowners waking to find their wind chimes duct-taped together to keep them from chiming.
"Am I in the right to not want my neighbor to subject everyone to wind chimes 24-7?" my reader asks. "It seems cowardly to go to the city to ask for a solution, rather than to approach my neighbor first."
My reader is wise to recognize that, if the wind-chime nuisance is the biggest problem she's faced since moving into a new home, she's fortunate.
Still, as anyone who has ever been kept awake by neighborhood noise knows, sleep deprivation can magnify the urgency of even the pettiest nuisance.
While she would be within her rights to call the city about the noise, it's good that my reader is reluctant to make that her first step. Calling the authorities on a new neighbor is not a good way to cultivate warm relations over the picket fence. It would be the best way to go if she had reason to fear that her neighbor might respond violently to her request, but since that is not the case -- there is no direct correlation between rage and wind chimes of which I'm aware -- contacting him directly is the civil and sensible thing to do.
As for the options, willing herself to like wind chimes seems futile, and is likely only to increase her frustration at the unwanted clanging. A judicious duct-tape strike by dark of night would be trespassing, and in any event wouldn't convey the message she wants to send. Her neighbor would be more likely to think it a children's prank than a request by a nearby adult for abatement of the noise.
The key point here is that the neighbor probably doesn't realize that the wind chimes are bothersome. He hung them, presumably, because he enjoys the sound. If my reader doesn't tell him that he's annoying her, he may never know. It's quite possible that, upon realizing that he's disturbing her, he'll voluntarily take them down altogether.
The right thing for my reader to do is to approach her new neighbor, introduce herself and ask him, as civilly as possible, if he would mind bringing in the wind chimes after dark. Granted, she may not get the results she wants, but she may also be surprised by how effective an honest and direct approach can be.
She might be doing the whole neighborhood a favor.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
My reader's choice of a verb is no accident. Her neighbor's wind chimes are driving her nuts, and she's on the verge of violence against either the chimes or the neighbor.
"I know that, if this is my biggest problem, I should count myself lucky," she adds.
She recently moved into a new neighborhood, and the wind chimes hung at the house next door clank round the clock. She knows this, because she works from home and is therefore subjected to the noise day and night.
"I am trying to talk myself into liking wind chimes," she writes, "because I can't bear to approach my neighbor. I know some communities ban them."
She knows this because she has spent some time researching the issue on the Internet. She has sent me links to stories, including one from Denver about a lawsuit that forced a resident to take down his wind chimes by nightfall and not rehang them until 9 a.m. There are countless stories of homeowners waking to find their wind chimes duct-taped together to keep them from chiming.
"Am I in the right to not want my neighbor to subject everyone to wind chimes 24-7?" my reader asks. "It seems cowardly to go to the city to ask for a solution, rather than to approach my neighbor first."
My reader is wise to recognize that, if the wind-chime nuisance is the biggest problem she's faced since moving into a new home, she's fortunate.
Still, as anyone who has ever been kept awake by neighborhood noise knows, sleep deprivation can magnify the urgency of even the pettiest nuisance.
While she would be within her rights to call the city about the noise, it's good that my reader is reluctant to make that her first step. Calling the authorities on a new neighbor is not a good way to cultivate warm relations over the picket fence. It would be the best way to go if she had reason to fear that her neighbor might respond violently to her request, but since that is not the case -- there is no direct correlation between rage and wind chimes of which I'm aware -- contacting him directly is the civil and sensible thing to do.
As for the options, willing herself to like wind chimes seems futile, and is likely only to increase her frustration at the unwanted clanging. A judicious duct-tape strike by dark of night would be trespassing, and in any event wouldn't convey the message she wants to send. Her neighbor would be more likely to think it a children's prank than a request by a nearby adult for abatement of the noise.
The key point here is that the neighbor probably doesn't realize that the wind chimes are bothersome. He hung them, presumably, because he enjoys the sound. If my reader doesn't tell him that he's annoying her, he may never know. It's quite possible that, upon realizing that he's disturbing her, he'll voluntarily take them down altogether.
The right thing for my reader to do is to approach her new neighbor, introduce herself and ask him, as civilly as possible, if he would mind bringing in the wind chimes after dark. Granted, she may not get the results she wants, but she may also be surprised by how effective an honest and direct approach can be.
She might be doing the whole neighborhood a favor.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Podcast of Weikel Lecture at University of Wisconsin (Madison) Business School
You can find a podcast of the Weikel Lecture at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) by clicking here.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: `WE'LL CUT YOUR PAY TO SAVE HIS JOB'
During a minor economic downturn in the early 1990s, a former employer of mine was seeking ways to save money.
For years the company had staged lavish holiday parties around Christmas, often renting out a museum or a large catering hall for a sit-down dinner and party. Because money wasn't flowing as freely this year, however, he took a different approach.
Each department was allocated a modest budget to stage an event in its offices to which the rest of the company would be invited. One department hired a photographer to shoot group photos. Another hired a tarot-card reader. Employees brought food and drink to share with colleagues. Our department ordered pizzas and hired an accordion player from the North End of Boston who took requests.
I don't remember much about the more expensive offsite parties, but the self-made, in-house party sticks with me more than a decade later. I haven't forgotten the accordion player, who didn't know Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" (1971) and instead broke into the Gershwins' classic "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" (1922).
In other words, sometimes saving money actually produces a better result -- a heartening thought at a time when the economic troubles of the early 1990s seem quaint compared with what we face now. A party of any sort feels extravagant when you're facing the prospect of job cuts.
In March the heads of 13 medical departments at a Boston-area hospital each contributed roughly $27,000 from their salaries so that the hospital could avoid layoffs. That was a voluntary decision. At other companies, however, employees are being asked to consider taking salary cuts to avoid having co-workers laid off.
When faced with such a question, is it wrong for an employee to respond that he or she would prefer not to take the cut? And does it matter how other employees decide?
Some management experts believe that it's foolhardy to ask employees to stick around at a diminished salary and expect them to be motivated to perform at their highest level. Better, they say, to lose a few employees while allowing those who remain to be fully compensated to do their jobs.
It seems to me that seeing your co-workers begin to drop like flies can be equally demoralizing. Besides, who wants to be the guy who argues against making any sacrifice at all to keep jobs? "I'd hate to see you go, Lenny, but if it's between you and 1 percent of my salary, see ya."
There is no ethical obligation, however, for any employee to offer to take a pay cut or, given the choice, to agree to one if she doesn't want to. The right thing for each employee to do is to weigh all the factors involved in the choice: If I agree to take a pay cut, will it be difficult to meet my family's financial obligations? If I don't agree and others are laid off, will my additional workload diminish the time I have to spend with my family? And so on.
Of course, even if an employee doesn't agree, he has no assurance that across-the-board pay cuts won't be made anyway, leaving him with only the option to quit or not to quit. And, of course, if he turns down the pay cut, it's possible that it will be his job that is cut to make ends meet. There are no good options in this situation, and thus no easy choices. There is no ethical obligation to accept a pay cut for the benefit of others, however, and someone who refuses to do so isn't falling short ethically, even if others decide to accept the cut.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
For years the company had staged lavish holiday parties around Christmas, often renting out a museum or a large catering hall for a sit-down dinner and party. Because money wasn't flowing as freely this year, however, he took a different approach.
Each department was allocated a modest budget to stage an event in its offices to which the rest of the company would be invited. One department hired a photographer to shoot group photos. Another hired a tarot-card reader. Employees brought food and drink to share with colleagues. Our department ordered pizzas and hired an accordion player from the North End of Boston who took requests.
I don't remember much about the more expensive offsite parties, but the self-made, in-house party sticks with me more than a decade later. I haven't forgotten the accordion player, who didn't know Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" (1971) and instead broke into the Gershwins' classic "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" (1922).
In other words, sometimes saving money actually produces a better result -- a heartening thought at a time when the economic troubles of the early 1990s seem quaint compared with what we face now. A party of any sort feels extravagant when you're facing the prospect of job cuts.
In March the heads of 13 medical departments at a Boston-area hospital each contributed roughly $27,000 from their salaries so that the hospital could avoid layoffs. That was a voluntary decision. At other companies, however, employees are being asked to consider taking salary cuts to avoid having co-workers laid off.
When faced with such a question, is it wrong for an employee to respond that he or she would prefer not to take the cut? And does it matter how other employees decide?
Some management experts believe that it's foolhardy to ask employees to stick around at a diminished salary and expect them to be motivated to perform at their highest level. Better, they say, to lose a few employees while allowing those who remain to be fully compensated to do their jobs.
It seems to me that seeing your co-workers begin to drop like flies can be equally demoralizing. Besides, who wants to be the guy who argues against making any sacrifice at all to keep jobs? "I'd hate to see you go, Lenny, but if it's between you and 1 percent of my salary, see ya."
There is no ethical obligation, however, for any employee to offer to take a pay cut or, given the choice, to agree to one if she doesn't want to. The right thing for each employee to do is to weigh all the factors involved in the choice: If I agree to take a pay cut, will it be difficult to meet my family's financial obligations? If I don't agree and others are laid off, will my additional workload diminish the time I have to spend with my family? And so on.
Of course, even if an employee doesn't agree, he has no assurance that across-the-board pay cuts won't be made anyway, leaving him with only the option to quit or not to quit. And, of course, if he turns down the pay cut, it's possible that it will be his job that is cut to make ends meet. There are no good options in this situation, and thus no easy choices. There is no ethical obligation to accept a pay cut for the benefit of others, however, and someone who refuses to do so isn't falling short ethically, even if others decide to accept the cut.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: EIGHT IS MORE THAN ENOUGH
In an unscientific poll on my column's blog, 88 percent of my respondents thought that there was something wrong with Nadya Suleman, a Californian mother of six, being allowed to receive fertility treatments that resulted in her giving birth to octuplets.
It didn't matter to 55 percent of my respondents that Suleman was unmarried, but 85 percent said that it did matter if she was on public assistance. Only 15 percent believed that the whole issue should be a private decision between the mother and her doctor.
Californians seemed particularly outraged.
"There appears to be a profound lapse in judgment by everyone involved," writes Bill Wotring of Fullerton, Calif.
"Everything was wrong with her decision," writes Carole Heston of southern California.
"The doctor blew it," writes Carroll Straus of Orange County, Calif. "Big time."
"Basically it comes down to what is best for the child," writes Merrilee Gardner of Irvine, Calif. "There is nothing I see in this that was best for the children."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, March 29, 2009
SOUND OFF: START SPREADING THE NOT-QUITE-NEWS
Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," is quick to stress that his program, though styled after a television newscast, is actually "fake news" played for comedy.
Nonetheless, in a 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Stewart was named by 2 percent of respondents as the journalist they admired most. That doesn't sound like much, but no single journalist was named by more than 5 percent of the public, and at 2 percent Stewart was tied with Tom Brokaw, Anderson Cooper and Brian Williams.
Does the fact that he is regarded as a journalist by so many people impose any ethical obligations on Stewart -- say, to offer his send-up of the news in an accurate and well-researched manner?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: `WITHOUT YOU, WE WOULDN'T BE WHERE WE ARE TODAY'
Years ago I wrote an article for a business magazine about the CEO of a company that remanufactured engine parts for jets. He had received word that 11 airline jets, some of which contained parts supplied by his company, had been grounded. The groundings were due to engine problems, the causes of which were at that point unclear.
When he received word of the groundings, the CEO was about to sign his annual financial-audit papers. These papers, which the CEO must sign, include a statement that he does not know of any issues that would adversely affect the financial condition of the company.
Should he sign the audit papers or not? All he had, after all, was incomplete information on the jet groundings. What if it turned out that it wasn't his company's parts that had caused the problems, but he caused a panic among his lenders by raising the subject at all?
The first lawyers he consulted advised him to note the jet grounding in the statement. Dissatisfied with this response, however, he consulted another set of lawyers. This time he got the answer he wanted: Don't report the incident and go ahead and sign the papers.
While many readers disagreed with me, I thought then -- and think now -- that the CEO had made the wrong decision. If there was the remotest cause for concern about other jets which used his company's parts and were still in the air, I believed, he had an obligation to make passenger safety his highest priority, even if that meant raising an alarm by reporting the groundings.
His ability to find lawyers who would give him the advice he was looking for strikes me as particularly salient in light of the recent brouhaha over the $165 million in bonuses that have been paid to AIG executives, despite the fact that the company would have collapsed if it hadn't received almost $200 billion in federal bailout money.
The bonuses had to be paid to retain top employees who could turn around the company, one explanation ran, ignoring the fact that 52 of those employees, people whose bonuses had totaled more than $33 million, had already left the company.
Last fall, shortly after the initial bailout money -- a now-trivial $85 million -- had been doled out to AIG, it was reported that the company had spent $440,000 on a California spa retreat for its executives. Strong public outrage greeted the revelation. The sequel, the bonus blowup, has proven even more controversial, enough to draw personal criticism from the president of the United States.
It need hardly be said that to accept a hefty bonus when the company's performance has been so dismal as to place it on the verge of bankruptcy is unethical on the face of it. Virtually nobody at AIG had the kind of year that merits a bonus.
The unethical conduct does not necessarily stop there, however. Apparently the bonuses were a matter of contractual record, and anyone running a company in financial trouble -- and the federal government now owns 80 percent of AIG -- should make it his or her business to be aware of proposed outlays of this magnitude.
The bailout was intended to keep a major company afloat as it found a responsible way to right its business affairs. It wasn't meant to buy new country houses for its executives. Those in the federal government who didn't care, didn't know or made it their business not to know how AIG intended to spend the money fell short of their ethical obligations to AIG, to the Congress and to their ultimate bosses, the taxpayers.
Mind you, like the airplane-parts executive I wrote about, the bosses of AIG ought to have reported this potential problem rather than waiting for it to hit the newspapers and splatter even more egg on their faces. In the current climate, it didn't take a business wizard to tell that people weren't going to be very pleased with the idea of failed executives taking home huge bonuses.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
When he received word of the groundings, the CEO was about to sign his annual financial-audit papers. These papers, which the CEO must sign, include a statement that he does not know of any issues that would adversely affect the financial condition of the company.
Should he sign the audit papers or not? All he had, after all, was incomplete information on the jet groundings. What if it turned out that it wasn't his company's parts that had caused the problems, but he caused a panic among his lenders by raising the subject at all?
The first lawyers he consulted advised him to note the jet grounding in the statement. Dissatisfied with this response, however, he consulted another set of lawyers. This time he got the answer he wanted: Don't report the incident and go ahead and sign the papers.
While many readers disagreed with me, I thought then -- and think now -- that the CEO had made the wrong decision. If there was the remotest cause for concern about other jets which used his company's parts and were still in the air, I believed, he had an obligation to make passenger safety his highest priority, even if that meant raising an alarm by reporting the groundings.
His ability to find lawyers who would give him the advice he was looking for strikes me as particularly salient in light of the recent brouhaha over the $165 million in bonuses that have been paid to AIG executives, despite the fact that the company would have collapsed if it hadn't received almost $200 billion in federal bailout money.
The bonuses had to be paid to retain top employees who could turn around the company, one explanation ran, ignoring the fact that 52 of those employees, people whose bonuses had totaled more than $33 million, had already left the company.
Last fall, shortly after the initial bailout money -- a now-trivial $85 million -- had been doled out to AIG, it was reported that the company had spent $440,000 on a California spa retreat for its executives. Strong public outrage greeted the revelation. The sequel, the bonus blowup, has proven even more controversial, enough to draw personal criticism from the president of the United States.
It need hardly be said that to accept a hefty bonus when the company's performance has been so dismal as to place it on the verge of bankruptcy is unethical on the face of it. Virtually nobody at AIG had the kind of year that merits a bonus.
The unethical conduct does not necessarily stop there, however. Apparently the bonuses were a matter of contractual record, and anyone running a company in financial trouble -- and the federal government now owns 80 percent of AIG -- should make it his or her business to be aware of proposed outlays of this magnitude.
The bailout was intended to keep a major company afloat as it found a responsible way to right its business affairs. It wasn't meant to buy new country houses for its executives. Those in the federal government who didn't care, didn't know or made it their business not to know how AIG intended to spend the money fell short of their ethical obligations to AIG, to the Congress and to their ultimate bosses, the taxpayers.
Mind you, like the airplane-parts executive I wrote about, the bosses of AIG ought to have reported this potential problem rather than waiting for it to hit the newspapers and splatter even more egg on their faces. In the current climate, it didn't take a business wizard to tell that people weren't going to be very pleased with the idea of failed executives taking home huge bonuses.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, March 22, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: SLIPPING A DISK
In the world of movies, the big heist isn't always on the screen.
A few weeks ago a reader from southern California wrote to ask if she was doing anything wrong by accepting DVDs of current movies given to her by a friend, if she knew the DVDs to be illegal, bootlegged copies.
"I was happy to get the DVDs," she writes. "I watched and enjoyed the movies. And I thanked my friend who gave them to me."
The ethics of accepting bootlegged movies never crossed her mind until another of her friends told her that she "could not have even watched them, knowing that."
"Am I wrong to accept these DVDs, even from a second party?" she asks. "I do not want to get anyone in trouble. I am just wondering what your opinion is of my participation in it."
My opinion is that, legally, it stinks. Making, selling or buying bootleg movies is illegal everywhere in the United States.
I'm not a lawyer, so I can't say how much legal trouble my reader might be in, but I'd guess not very much, since she didn't pay for the movies and I doubt that watching them is illegal. At most, I suspect, she's guilty of failing to report a crime or something of that nature.
Some things are illegal but not unethical, however, the same way that many things are legal but not ethical. Setting aside the legalities, how does my reader's situation stack up?
My opinion: It still stinks. Ethically speaking, bootleg films -- and all other illegal replicas of copyrighted books, CDs, software and so forth -- are stolen goods, pure and simple. The person who made them was stealing from the rightful makers and distributors of the film, and anyone who knowingly watches them is aiding and abetting the crime.
From an ethical standpoint, it doesn't matter that my reader didn't pay for the movies she watched. Surely watching them made her less likely to pay to see them in a theater, and that's as good as taking money from everyone involved in the film.
Does it matter if she wouldn't have gone to the theater or paid for a legitimate DVD, whether or not she had seen the bootlegs? No. The viewing of a copyrighted film is not a human right, but rather a privilege with a cost associated with it. Because neither she nor anyone else involved in the bootleg paid anything to the rightful owners of the film, any viewing of it -- except by law-enforcement people trying to track down the bootlegger -- is unethical. Simple as that.
Granted, I have a vested interest in this issue: I make my living partly through royalties from my books and this syndicated column. Understandably I am loath to blithely accept that it is OK for people to make copies of my material without my permission.
Longtime readers of my column know that I always have taken a strong stance against illegal copies of copyrighted material, regardless of who's doing the copying or what their motives may be. Parents who make multiple copies of DVDs or videotapes to give to their children's friends set a terrible example. So too do professors who Xerox large portions of books or articles for their students' classroom use, without obtaining permission from the publisher or author.
People's work should not be stolen, whether by a bootlegger or by private citizens downloading or otherwise making illegal copies of DVDs, CDs or printed material for their own use. Those who own the rights to goods should decide who gets to use them and how. If it's wrong to steal a dress without paying, and thus depriving the dressmaker and the store owner of the fruits of their labor, then it's wrong to steal a movie and rob the filmmakers and distributors.
That one is a physical object and the other an intangible work of art is irrelevant. The movie is equally intangible in the theater, yet most people who buy bootlegs would probably feel it was wrong to sneak in the theater's back door and see the movie for free.
Are DVDs too high-priced? Does little of the purchase price actually go to the creators? No matter. This isn't a Robin Hood situation, and movies aren't essentials like food or shelter. If you don't like the business model, don't buy DVDs ... and don't watch them.
The right thing for my reader to do, should her friend offer her any more illegal DVDs, is to refuse to accept them and to tell her why: Doing so is both illegal and unethical, and she doesn't care to have any part in condoning such activity.
In the meantime, my reader should destroy any bogus DVDs, whether bootlegged or copied illegally, that she may have in her possession. If she wants to see a movie, she should go to the theater or, alternatively, wait until it's legally released on DVD and then either buy it, rent it or borrow it from her local library.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
A few weeks ago a reader from southern California wrote to ask if she was doing anything wrong by accepting DVDs of current movies given to her by a friend, if she knew the DVDs to be illegal, bootlegged copies.
"I was happy to get the DVDs," she writes. "I watched and enjoyed the movies. And I thanked my friend who gave them to me."
The ethics of accepting bootlegged movies never crossed her mind until another of her friends told her that she "could not have even watched them, knowing that."
"Am I wrong to accept these DVDs, even from a second party?" she asks. "I do not want to get anyone in trouble. I am just wondering what your opinion is of my participation in it."
My opinion is that, legally, it stinks. Making, selling or buying bootleg movies is illegal everywhere in the United States.
I'm not a lawyer, so I can't say how much legal trouble my reader might be in, but I'd guess not very much, since she didn't pay for the movies and I doubt that watching them is illegal. At most, I suspect, she's guilty of failing to report a crime or something of that nature.
Some things are illegal but not unethical, however, the same way that many things are legal but not ethical. Setting aside the legalities, how does my reader's situation stack up?
My opinion: It still stinks. Ethically speaking, bootleg films -- and all other illegal replicas of copyrighted books, CDs, software and so forth -- are stolen goods, pure and simple. The person who made them was stealing from the rightful makers and distributors of the film, and anyone who knowingly watches them is aiding and abetting the crime.
From an ethical standpoint, it doesn't matter that my reader didn't pay for the movies she watched. Surely watching them made her less likely to pay to see them in a theater, and that's as good as taking money from everyone involved in the film.
Does it matter if she wouldn't have gone to the theater or paid for a legitimate DVD, whether or not she had seen the bootlegs? No. The viewing of a copyrighted film is not a human right, but rather a privilege with a cost associated with it. Because neither she nor anyone else involved in the bootleg paid anything to the rightful owners of the film, any viewing of it -- except by law-enforcement people trying to track down the bootlegger -- is unethical. Simple as that.
Granted, I have a vested interest in this issue: I make my living partly through royalties from my books and this syndicated column. Understandably I am loath to blithely accept that it is OK for people to make copies of my material without my permission.
Longtime readers of my column know that I always have taken a strong stance against illegal copies of copyrighted material, regardless of who's doing the copying or what their motives may be. Parents who make multiple copies of DVDs or videotapes to give to their children's friends set a terrible example. So too do professors who Xerox large portions of books or articles for their students' classroom use, without obtaining permission from the publisher or author.
People's work should not be stolen, whether by a bootlegger or by private citizens downloading or otherwise making illegal copies of DVDs, CDs or printed material for their own use. Those who own the rights to goods should decide who gets to use them and how. If it's wrong to steal a dress without paying, and thus depriving the dressmaker and the store owner of the fruits of their labor, then it's wrong to steal a movie and rob the filmmakers and distributors.
That one is a physical object and the other an intangible work of art is irrelevant. The movie is equally intangible in the theater, yet most people who buy bootlegs would probably feel it was wrong to sneak in the theater's back door and see the movie for free.
Are DVDs too high-priced? Does little of the purchase price actually go to the creators? No matter. This isn't a Robin Hood situation, and movies aren't essentials like food or shelter. If you don't like the business model, don't buy DVDs ... and don't watch them.
The right thing for my reader to do, should her friend offer her any more illegal DVDs, is to refuse to accept them and to tell her why: Doing so is both illegal and unethical, and she doesn't care to have any part in condoning such activity.
In the meantime, my reader should destroy any bogus DVDs, whether bootlegged or copied illegally, that she may have in her possession. If she wants to see a movie, she should go to the theater or, alternatively, wait until it's legally released on DVD and then either buy it, rent it or borrow it from her local library.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: DON'T BET THE HOUSE
In an unscientific poll on my column's blog, 92 percent of readers who responded said that people who contracted for mortgages which they couldn't afford, and should reasonably have known that they couldn't afford, should not be entitled to expect relief from the government when they're faced with foreclosure.
"The government should not bail out former homeowners in these instances," one reader writes. "My husband and I scrimped and saved and bought a little house. Where is our reward for not putting America into this crisis?"
But 63 percent of my respondents believe that people who signed for mortgages which they could afford, but then lost their jobs, are entitled to such government relief.
People who committed to a mortgage that they couldn't afford shouldn't be given relief, writes Debbie of Corona, Calif., but those who are facing foreclosure because of job loss or other life disaster "should be able to renegotiate their mortgages."
"I do not feel that the government should bail out homeowners who wanted to buy into the American Dream but couldn't afford it," says Deanne Dillenbeck of Cypress, Calif. "Nor do I feel that those who have lost their jobs should be bailed out ... The decline, and in some instances the lack of, ethics, morals and personal responsibility has in large part contributed to our current and dire circumstances."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, March 15, 2009
SOUND OFF: BONUS QUESTION
Here's a seemingly straightforward question for you. Assuming that it is legal and consistent with company policy for a CEO to be given a sizable bonus, is it right for the CEO to receive a bonus in a year when the company hasn't meet the predetermined expectations for earnings, profits and overall company performance? Does it matter that the shortfall may be due to overall economic conditions over which the CEO has no control? Does it matter if bonuses are typically part of the standard compensation for the job? Does it matter if executives in comparable positions at other companies are receiving comparable bonuses?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll with this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: A DRINKING PROBLEM
The other day Marty Haynes, a reader from Plancentia, Calif., was enjoying a hamburger with his wife, Julie, at a Carl's Jr. restaurant in Yorba Linda.
"Due to the current economic situation," Haynes writes, "I succumbed to my wife's insistence that it was OK to share a small fountain drink from the self-serve fountain."
What made Haynes uncomfortable was that the restaurant offers free refills on drinks, meaning that, when he and his wife finished their small-sized beverage, they could refill the cup and continue sharing.
"There is no sign saying `One per customer, please' or `Only one refill, please' or anything like that," he writes. "I think it is assumed that each consumer should purchase their own drink."
Later that day, Haynes mentioned his concern to his son and to his daughter-in-law. They told him that they frequently shared a drink in similar situations and saw nothing wrong with it.
But Haynes sees a slippery slope here, since he doubts that anyone would agree that it would be OK for, say, a family of eight to share one small soda with many free refills.
"So what do you think?" he asks. "Is it OK for a couple to share a small drink and take advantage of the free-refills policy?"
My initial impulse was to consult the person with whom I would be most likely to find myself in a similar situation.
"I don't think there's anything wrong with it," my wife said, "as long as you buy the drink and are willing to drink it out of the same cup."
She reminded me that she rarely finishes her beverage when we go to a shop with a self-service fountain. Since she typically gives the drink to me to finish, we often buy only one drink instead of two.
"How is this any different?" she asks.
But nonetheless something about the practice still felt a bit hinky to me. Surely the restaurant didn't intend its policy to allow for multiple drinkers from the same refillable cup, I thought. The right or wrong of the situation had to be based, in part at least, on the intent of the offer.
Instead of trying to guess, I checked the Carl's Jr. Web site. No guidance there, though there were some coupons for a free drink if I wanted to buy the new Crisp Burrito. I didn't, so instead I called the company's toll-free customer-service hot line. There a customer-service representative looked up the refill policy for me.
"You have to purchase a drink to get a refill," she told me.
She kept looking through the guidelines.
"There is nothing in our policy about limiting how many people can drink from that same refillable cup," she said.
"So it would be OK for me to buy a drink, share it with my wife and then refill it?" I asked.
"Unless a local franchisee sets its own rules not allowing that," she said, "there is no written company policy against that."
From a strictly ethical point of view this practice passes muster only if you ask first. Rather than trying to guess the intentions of others, the right thing is simply to ask them. As for the restaurants, if they want to place limits on their refill policies, the right thing for them to do is to let customers know as clearly as possible.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
"Due to the current economic situation," Haynes writes, "I succumbed to my wife's insistence that it was OK to share a small fountain drink from the self-serve fountain."
What made Haynes uncomfortable was that the restaurant offers free refills on drinks, meaning that, when he and his wife finished their small-sized beverage, they could refill the cup and continue sharing.
"There is no sign saying `One per customer, please' or `Only one refill, please' or anything like that," he writes. "I think it is assumed that each consumer should purchase their own drink."
Later that day, Haynes mentioned his concern to his son and to his daughter-in-law. They told him that they frequently shared a drink in similar situations and saw nothing wrong with it.
But Haynes sees a slippery slope here, since he doubts that anyone would agree that it would be OK for, say, a family of eight to share one small soda with many free refills.
"So what do you think?" he asks. "Is it OK for a couple to share a small drink and take advantage of the free-refills policy?"
My initial impulse was to consult the person with whom I would be most likely to find myself in a similar situation.
"I don't think there's anything wrong with it," my wife said, "as long as you buy the drink and are willing to drink it out of the same cup."
She reminded me that she rarely finishes her beverage when we go to a shop with a self-service fountain. Since she typically gives the drink to me to finish, we often buy only one drink instead of two.
"How is this any different?" she asks.
But nonetheless something about the practice still felt a bit hinky to me. Surely the restaurant didn't intend its policy to allow for multiple drinkers from the same refillable cup, I thought. The right or wrong of the situation had to be based, in part at least, on the intent of the offer.
Instead of trying to guess, I checked the Carl's Jr. Web site. No guidance there, though there were some coupons for a free drink if I wanted to buy the new Crisp Burrito. I didn't, so instead I called the company's toll-free customer-service hot line. There a customer-service representative looked up the refill policy for me.
"You have to purchase a drink to get a refill," she told me.
She kept looking through the guidelines.
"There is nothing in our policy about limiting how many people can drink from that same refillable cup," she said.
"So it would be OK for me to buy a drink, share it with my wife and then refill it?" I asked.
"Unless a local franchisee sets its own rules not allowing that," she said, "there is no written company policy against that."
From a strictly ethical point of view this practice passes muster only if you ask first. Rather than trying to guess the intentions of others, the right thing is simply to ask them. As for the restaurants, if they want to place limits on their refill policies, the right thing for them to do is to let customers know as clearly as possible.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, March 08, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: VOTE FOR THE NAME YOU (SORT OF) KNOW
Several months ago I received an e-mail from an acquaintance who is the head of a certain organization. She wanted me to vote for a young entrepreneur, an alumnus of her institution, who had been nominated as a leading young entrepreneur.
"Please log onto the link below and vote for him as this year's best young entrepreneur," she wrote in a mass e-mail to seemingly everyone she knew.
She was pulling for the young man to win the contest, regardless of her e-mail recipients' perception of the other candidates, and it was clear that his winning would yield significant bragging rights for her organization.
I was reminded of her e-mail when a reader from Tustin, Calif., wrote to tell me of an e-mail he had received from a friend of a distant friend. This friend-of-a-friend wanted him to vote for a video created by his son's first-grade class, which had been entered in a contest to win $25,000 in technology equipment for their classroom. The class was one of five finalists in the competition.
"I would like to ask that you take time to sign up and vote for their video," the friend-of-a-friend wrote.
At first my reader thought that this was a good way for the boy's class to benefit from new technology. Thinking it over, however, and realizing that he hadn't seen the other four videos, he wondered how he could cast a vote saying that theirs was the best.
Examining the e-mail more closely, my reader found an attachment: a note from the class teacher explaining how to view all five videos on a Web site and then vote for his class's video. So my reader could in fact view each video and then vote based on their merits.
"But clearly that is not the intent of the parent who sent me the e-mail or of the teacher," he writes. "What kind of lesson does this send to those 6-year-olds? If they win because the voting has been padded, and not on merit, then they will have won fraudulently. How should the other classes feel if they lose because `well-meaning' parents sought to manipulate the vote?"
Many years ago, when I was in graduate school and an election for house council was being held, a classmate of mine -- now a minister -- explained it to me this way: "You vote for your friends."
That point is more reasonable than it may seem at first glance. We know our friends, after all, and have a clearer window into their values and integrity than we do with strangers. It's therefore possible to support them with greater conviction than it is with someone we don't know. But of course our knowledge of that person might also provide incentive not to vote for them, if we think that they aren't up to the job or don't deserve it.
Supporting a child's class is a noble goal, but the right thing to do in any election is to understand your choices and vote only for the person or idea that truly most deserves your support. That's true whether you're voting for a bunch of 6-year-olds or for the prospective leader of your country.
If my reader deemed two of the class videos to be of equal merit, there would be nothing wrong with him using the personal connection, admittedly a tenuous one in this case, as a tiebreaker. But it would be irresponsible to vote for one video without having seen them all. And if one of the other four videos truly outshines the others, the only honest choices are to vote for that one or not to vote at all.
As for the "young entrepreneur of the year" contest, I did not vote for any candidate, since I didn't know them well enough to judge. The candidate my acquaintance was promoting nonetheless was one of the winners.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
"Please log onto the link below and vote for him as this year's best young entrepreneur," she wrote in a mass e-mail to seemingly everyone she knew.
She was pulling for the young man to win the contest, regardless of her e-mail recipients' perception of the other candidates, and it was clear that his winning would yield significant bragging rights for her organization.
I was reminded of her e-mail when a reader from Tustin, Calif., wrote to tell me of an e-mail he had received from a friend of a distant friend. This friend-of-a-friend wanted him to vote for a video created by his son's first-grade class, which had been entered in a contest to win $25,000 in technology equipment for their classroom. The class was one of five finalists in the competition.
"I would like to ask that you take time to sign up and vote for their video," the friend-of-a-friend wrote.
At first my reader thought that this was a good way for the boy's class to benefit from new technology. Thinking it over, however, and realizing that he hadn't seen the other four videos, he wondered how he could cast a vote saying that theirs was the best.
Examining the e-mail more closely, my reader found an attachment: a note from the class teacher explaining how to view all five videos on a Web site and then vote for his class's video. So my reader could in fact view each video and then vote based on their merits.
"But clearly that is not the intent of the parent who sent me the e-mail or of the teacher," he writes. "What kind of lesson does this send to those 6-year-olds? If they win because the voting has been padded, and not on merit, then they will have won fraudulently. How should the other classes feel if they lose because `well-meaning' parents sought to manipulate the vote?"
Many years ago, when I was in graduate school and an election for house council was being held, a classmate of mine -- now a minister -- explained it to me this way: "You vote for your friends."
That point is more reasonable than it may seem at first glance. We know our friends, after all, and have a clearer window into their values and integrity than we do with strangers. It's therefore possible to support them with greater conviction than it is with someone we don't know. But of course our knowledge of that person might also provide incentive not to vote for them, if we think that they aren't up to the job or don't deserve it.
Supporting a child's class is a noble goal, but the right thing to do in any election is to understand your choices and vote only for the person or idea that truly most deserves your support. That's true whether you're voting for a bunch of 6-year-olds or for the prospective leader of your country.
If my reader deemed two of the class videos to be of equal merit, there would be nothing wrong with him using the personal connection, admittedly a tenuous one in this case, as a tiebreaker. But it would be irresponsible to vote for one video without having seen them all. And if one of the other four videos truly outshines the others, the only honest choices are to vote for that one or not to vote at all.
As for the "young entrepreneur of the year" contest, I did not vote for any candidate, since I didn't know them well enough to judge. The candidate my acquaintance was promoting nonetheless was one of the winners.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS TAKE THEIR JOBS
"Friends don't let friends drive drunk," writes a reader who continues, "Friends don't steer a conversation about a friend's references to their own qualifications for the job."
My reader agreed with 71 percent of respondents who responded "no" to an unscientific poll on my blog that asked if it is OK to talk about your own qualifications if a friend's prospective employer pursues this line of conversation.
"Don't say this `friend' didn't steer the conversation," another reader writes. "The qualifications being discussed were clearly those of the job applicant. Just how did this supposed `friend' insert his or her qualifications into the conversation?"
However, 29 percent of readers responding thought it perfectly fine to answer such questions.
"Isn't it possible that the prospective employer wants to know if you are qualified enough to judge your friend's qualifications?" one of them asks. "If you get asked about applying for the job, you can simply say, `No, thank you."'
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
My reader agreed with 71 percent of respondents who responded "no" to an unscientific poll on my blog that asked if it is OK to talk about your own qualifications if a friend's prospective employer pursues this line of conversation.
"Don't say this `friend' didn't steer the conversation," another reader writes. "The qualifications being discussed were clearly those of the job applicant. Just how did this supposed `friend' insert his or her qualifications into the conversation?"
However, 29 percent of readers responding thought it perfectly fine to answer such questions.
"Isn't it possible that the prospective employer wants to know if you are qualified enough to judge your friend's qualifications?" one of them asks. "If you get asked about applying for the job, you can simply say, `No, thank you."'
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, March 01, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: IF THE SHOE FITS ...
A reader from Miami took a part-time job selling women's shoes in a department store. After being on the job for five weeks, he sold a pair of shoes to a woman who, after the sale, saw that a friend of hers was also working in the shoe department that day.
"According to the rules of working on commission," my reader writes, "once a customer is yours, he or she stays yours from start to finish. It is the salesperson's responsibility to ask the customer whether or not he or she has already been helped. I always ask, because I want to avoid any confrontations with my co-workers."
Once the customer saw her friend, however, it was the friend whom she had help her find two more pairs of shoes.
"I rang her up for the one pair I got for her," my reader writes. "And then her friend rang her up for the other two.
"There is a way for one employee to ring up another employee's customer," he adds, "and still give the commission to the employee who brought them the shoes, but it is
"According to the rules of working on commission," my reader writes, "once a customer is yours, he or she stays yours from start to finish. It is the salesperson's responsibility to ask the customer whether or not he or she has already been helped. I always ask, because I want to avoid any confrontations with my co-workers."
Once the customer saw her friend, however, it was the friend whom she had help her find two more pairs of shoes.
"I rang her up for the one pair I got for her," my reader writes. "And then her friend rang her up for the other two.
"There is a way for one employee to ring up another employee's customer," he adds, "and still give the commission to the employee who brought them the shoes, but it is