How hard to push back when a car dealer comes up short

A young couple we’re calling Jim and Jane was in the market for a new used car. They already owned two cars since they lived beyond the reach of public transportation and each needed transportation to get to work.

One of their cars was in great shape and had many miles left on it, but their second car was 11 years old, had more than 160,000 miles on it, and was beginning to show its age. The amount of money they would need to spend to service their second car to get the air conditioning fixed and to keep it roadworthy led to their decision to look for a new car. They also wanted to trade the old car in for a newer pre-owned model car that was slightly bigger so they could haul stuff or fit their camping gear when they set off on an occasional adventure.

They spent some time looking online, but ultimately visited a lot where they had purchased a car many years earlier. There they found a smaller, four-year-old SUV with low mileage that they liked. The car had been owned by a dog owner and the inside had a significant amount of fur and crumbs littering it. The salesperson promised them that the car would be extensively detailed and look almost new inside and out by the time they picked it up if they went ahead with the purchase.

The dealer also told the couple that they could trade in their 11-year-old car for $700 providing it was checked out by the service department and didn’t have issues other than the air conditioning. But since it was early evening and the service department had closed for the day they would need to bring the car back at another time to have it checked out.

The couple agreed to buy the car on a Monday and the salesperson told them it would be detailed and ready for pick up by Thursday of that week. They agreed to meet the salesperson on Thursday to have the old car checked out and to pick up the new car.

When they arrived on Thursday, they were told that the salesperson had taken the day off and still needed to complete the paperwork for their car.

“We never received a call from the salesperson telling us not to show up on Thursday to get the car,” said Jim. He finally connected with her by cellphone on Friday morning and told her he would pick up the car on Saturday morning.

The salesperson told Jim that before they could get the $700 for their trade-in they would still need to have their car checked out.

“That didn’t seem right,” said Jim. “We lived up to our end of the deal and she didn’t show up. Shouldn’t the dealer just honor the $700 offer and not make us show up again to wait to have the car checked out since they screwed up the date?”

While the dealer has no obligation to offer the $700 without examining the car, it seems both the right and the smart thing to do. Honoring the $700 trade-in rather than risking a roughly $20,000 sale seems wise particularly since the customer was inconvenienced by the salesperson’s no-show. Jim and Jane are right to ask and the dealer would be wise to agree. 

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

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

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin. 

(c) 2021 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Does Ohio's million-dollar COVID-19 vaccine lottery cross ethical lines?

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced that the state is creating a lottery in which Ohio residents who have received the COVID-19 vaccine will be eligible to win $1 million in a series of five weekly drawings. Five scholarships to the Ohio State University that will cover tuition, room and board will also be auctioned off to students aged 12 to 17 who become vaccinated.

As I am writing this column, approximately 37% of Ohioans have been fully vaccinated, while 42% have received at least one shot. As of now, nearly 60% of all adults in the United States have received at least one shot. DeWine's goal is to incentivize as many Ohioans as possible to become vaccinated.

Almost immediately after DeWine's announcement I began to receive emails from readers questioning the gambit. "Seems like this could be an ethics topic," wrote a longtime reader from Pittsburgh. "I'm not anti-vax and have received the Pfizer vaccine myself, but I wonder about governments using tax dollars to entice people to take something that has been approved under emergency status."

It's a great question. I found myself torn between thinking that this was an incredibly odd move by DeWine and believing that it might be yet another, although far more extreme, example of offering incentives to people to become vaccinated. White Castle, the hamburger chain, is offering butter cakes on a stick to the newly vaccinated. Cleveland's Major League Baseball team is offering discounted tickets. But DeWine's $1 million lottery elevates the enticements to a whole new level.

As DeWine pointed out in his press conference, he has wide latitude in how he uses federal COVID-19 relief funds. "I did not go into this and make this decision thinking everybody was going to say this is a wonderful idea," DeWine said. But so far, no one has proved that the move breaks any laws or regulations.

Even if it breaks no laws, is it ethical?

If DeWine truly believes it will work to make his constituents safer, then a case could be made that his ethical motivation is solid. Of course, we might hope that becoming vaccinated to increase personal and public safety should be enough motivation, but clearly that has not seemed to be the case.

But do such lottery enticements work? Todd Rogers, a colleague of mine at Harvard Kennedy School who is a behavioral scientist, points to studies that suggest that "lotteries are effectively overvalued financial incentives." But he points out that "lotteries can be fun, can garner attention, can generate earned media."

Rogers observes that a lottery could "crowd out" intrinsic motivation to get a vaccination. But since getting an emergency vaccine during a pandemic is rare, "maybe we can be less worried about crowding out intrinsic motivation for future behavior by offering extrinsic rewards now."

In other words, DeWine's unusual ploy might work. Who knows?

If the right thing is to encourage as many people to become vaccinated as possible, then DeWine's million-dollar lottery might raise a few eyebrows, but it doesn't strike me as crossing ethical lines. In an ideal world, people who are capable of doing so would become vaccinated in the interest of their own and their neighbor's well-being. But in an imperfect world, perhaps it takes cakes on a stick and a chance at a million bucks or a free education to get them to do so. 

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

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

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin. 

(c) 2021 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Are we too polarized to show kindness one sip (or slice) at a time?

Are we too polarized to consider doing something nice for someone in need if we don't know the person in need?

A couple of months ago I wrote about the head of police in Naples, Italy, who was accompanying the actor Stanley Tucci on his eating tour through the country in his show Searching for Italy on CNN. The police officer caught my attention when he ordered "due caffe e un caffe sospeso" which translates to "two coffees and a suspended coffee."

As I explained, the tradition of the suspended coffee, where a customer pays for one more coffee than is to be consumed reportedly began in Naples ages ago. It was a charitable act from those who could afford to pay now to be claimed later by someone who couldn't afford a cup. If you're thirsty, you just ask the coffee seller if there is any sospeso available. If it is, it's poured with no additional charge.

I wondered why caffe sospeso or anything else "sospeso" couldn't become a local tradition in our own neighborhoods whether we live in a big city or a small village. Readers from around the country responded.

"I'm afraid too many people would be horrified to realize that an undeserving wretch of the opposing political party might be the lucky recipient," wrote longtime reader Phil Clutts from North Carolina, only "partially in jest."

But Pat Maloney, a reader from California, thanked me for bringing the sospeso concept to folks and immediately took to the Apple App Store to look for a sospeso app that would enable him to start paying it anonymously forward. Unfortunately, neither of the two apps listed in the store were active. "Hopefully, someone reading your article will produce an app that actually works!" he wrote.

And finally, there's Kate and Alec Goodman, twin brother and sister who are 16-year-old 10th grade students in Port Washington, New York. The siblings wrote to tell me that in January they had launched their community service program "Port Pays It Forward" to promote a similar "ripple effect of kindness" as the caffe sospeso.

Kate and Alec arranged with Carlo's Pizza in Port Washington to allow people to pay an extra $3 for someone who might not be able to afford a slice. Their mother keeps track of Venmo donations made through their Facebook account and Carlo's co-owner, Daniel Cenatiempo, keeps track of the donations made directly at the restaurant which are posted as Post-it notes on Carlo's wall. Since launching, they tell me that more than 1,600 slices have been purchased through $5,000 in donations.

They have also worked with local agencies serving area residents in need to get donations of pizza pies delivered for lunch and dinner. They say they were touched after receiving personalized thank you cards and drawings from some of the recipients.

"The community has really come together," they wrote. "We plan on making Port Pays It Forward part of the community forever."

Even if Phil Clutts was only partially joking about the fear of committing an act of kindness to someone of an opposing political party, I'd like to prove him wrong. I'm pretty certain that pizza has no political affiliation nor does coffee. Nor, for that matter, does hunger. If you want to join Kate and Alec and many others who enjoy doing something for someone in need, then the right thing is to commit to kindness wherever you can.

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

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

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin. 

(c) 2021 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

How sensitive to my audience should I be?

I regularly get questions about whether I’ve felt the need to stop using the examples I use in writing or in teaching based on an increased awareness about a particular issue or about the alleged behavior of someone featured in an example. I have always believed that if I’m about to read or teach something that the reader or student might find offensive or challenging that I have an obligation to prepare them for what is to follow.

Whenever I’ve used a video clip called “Tea and Consent” put out in 2015 by the Thames Valley Police in the United Kingdom, I preface it by warning viewers that the video uses a lighthearted metaphor for sexual consent, a clearly serious topic. I also alert people when a reading will include particularly violent or vulgar language.

Giving someone a heads up about something they might find challenging seems a gesture worth making to prepare them for what’s to follow.

But there have been times I’ve stopped using examples to make a point if the example includes someone whose behavior has been called into question. Often there are alternative examples that can be used and the alleged behavior not only risks offending people but also risks distracting their attention from the point I was trying to make.

There was a short clip from a movie, for example, that I previously used to make a point about the importance of fact-checking by going to the source whenever possible when writing something. In the clip, the main character gets into an argument about an author’s opinions with the guy in line behind him at a movie theater. Rather than prolonging the argument, the main character reaches behind a movie placard and pulls the real author out to tell the guy behind him that he knows nothing about his work. I’d been using the example for years when reports of the actor who portrays the main character allegedly committing sexual abuse surfaced. I made the call to stop using the film as an example to minimize the potential harm caused by seeing an accused sexual abuser on screen. That example was not essential to making my point. It was easily replaced by reinforcing the idea with the old journalist’s admonition that “if your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”

When Bob Steele headed up ethics training at the Poynter Institute, he wrote some guiding principles for journalists. One of them was to recognize that reporting information could cause discomfort and to choose alternatives that still maximized the goal of truth-telling. In other words, if there are multiple ways to get to the truth of something and one of those ways is less distressing than others, the ethical choice is to choose that less harmful way.

When asked if I ever change the examples I use when writing or teaching out of concern of causing trauma for readers or students, my answer is that I do so if I truly believe there is an equally strong or stronger way to get my point across that doesn’t risk causing as much harm. I don’t change everything. Sometimes a heads up about what’s to follow is the best I can offer, but when an equally strong example is available to make a point I seize it because it’s the right thing to do.

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

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

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin. 

(c) 2021 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Putting off college doesn't have to define you

Last fall, more students than ever put off going to college. The decline in newly enrolled undergraduate students across institutions was 3.6% from the fall of 2019, which translates to roughly 560,000 fewer.

For students graduating from high school in 2020, the decline was even steeper, falling by 21.7% compared to the prior year according to a December 2020 report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Overall enrollment in college had already been declining over the past decade but not nearly at as steep a rate. Between 2011 and 2019, 11% fewer students were enrolled in college, NPR notes.

The precipitous drop likely can partly be attributed to the onset of the pandemic and the move of many colleges to conducting their classes virtually. It’s too soon to tell whether students who put off going to college for the 2020-2021 academic year will choose to enroll come fall 2021.

Putting off college is not always a bad thing. While it may cause parents to leap into bouts of free-floating anxiety about their children’s futures, there are times when necessity or opportunity makes delaying college a sensible or necessary choice.

Granted, according to the Brookings Institution, college graduates still earn far more than those who don’t graduate. The median annual earnings over their career for a college graduate are $68,000, compared to $49,000 for an associate degree, $42,000 for some college, and $35,000 for a high school or GED diploma. There are certainly notable exceptions. Neither Bill Gates nor Mark Zuckerberg nor Lady Gaga reportedly finished college. (Oprah dropped out just shy of finishing her degree but apparently finished up more than a decade later after being invited back as a speaker at her alma mater.) But a college education still results in an income boost and, perhaps more importantly, a chance to engage in a life of critical thinking.

It’s wrong to think of anyone who chooses to put off or ignore college altogether as a failure. After my cousin received her college degree at 60 years old, my daughter commented that when someone doesn’t earn a degree in her 20s she’s often viewed as a failure, but when she earns one in her 60s she’s viewed as an inspiration. What the former fails to account for is that all of those decades between someone’s 20s and their 60s are often filled with highly productive years and experiences.

Over the past few weeks, prospective students will likely have received acceptance or rejection letters from colleges. Many take to YouTube to share their experiences of opening the email letting them know their decisions. Others bask in the news in silence. Still others have decided to work or to take a gap year to engage in public service or to go to school part-time while taking care of responsibilities tossed their way.

This is not a column to reassure students who didn’t get into their college of choice that life is just as likely to turn out OK as if they had been accepted. There are plenty of colleges or graduation speeches or parental reassurances that already do that.

Instead, this is a column to reassure those who have decided to put off college for however long that they are no less likely to do something inspirational if the circumstances allow and the support exists. It seems like it’s the right thing to acknowledge this whether someone is 20 or 60. 

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

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

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin. 

(c) 2021 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.