The Right Thing

I'm not going to take it anymore

2012-01-22T09:58:00.000-05:00

Several months ago, I wrote about an editor who had been told by his boss that the services of one of the freelancers with whom he had had a long and positive relationship was going to be terminated sometime over the next couple of months.

It was understood that he should not let the freelancer know about his pending demise before his boss decided it was time to tell him. The editor decided to wait.

Once the news was delivered to the freelancer, the editor did recommend names of other potential outlets for his work, one of which did pick up the writer's work. Technically, the editor did nothing wrong. Still, he wondered if he should have let the freelancer know as soon as he learned the freelancer's days were numbered.

I believed the editor displayed professional courtesy and kindness by staying true to the company and by subsequently offering assistance to the freelancer. Any other action by the editor would have meant violating a trust with his boss.

But a reader found my advice to be questionable.

"Usually I agree with the advice you give," he writes, "but I don't think it fits today's reality. Companies aren't loyal to us anymore. In terms of disposability, 'human capital' ranks right up there with toilet paper.

"It is incredible how difficult it has become to find and retain any kind of employment," he continues, observing that it can take months to find even a part-time minimum-wage job.

"If I found out a close colleague had months of lead time on me losing my job and said nothing, my reaction would range somewhere between never speaking to that person again and outright physical assault," he says. "If I were the one with the knowledge, I wouldn't be able to sleep or eat until I had warned the person.

"To heck with the companies - we need to start looking out for each other."

My reader is correct about how hard it is for many people to find work today. The search can be harrowing and wreak havoc on an individual's and a family's ability to make ends meet.

But by helping the freelancer writer make contact with other potential employers, the editor did believe he was doing what he could to look out for the freelancer. Others might have decided to go against their boss's wishes and risked their own jobs to let the freelancer know as early as possible. In either case, it wasn't as if the editor treated the freelancer without compassion.

Granted, you can't eat compassion. And the freelancer could have benefited from those couple of extra months to find a new home for his work. But rather than resort to physical attacks or the silent treatment, he chose to take the editor up on his offer to help him find work elsewhere.

I still believe both the editor and the freelancer did the right thing. Regardless of how warranted it might seem, anger can blind us from responding in a way that allows us to move forward positively. It's our responses in such challenging situations that help us determine if we're capable of being the type of person we always believed we wanted to be.

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 a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2012 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

Readers share stories of sharing

2012-01-15T10:08:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote about people who were trying to give back or show care for others. Whether it was paying off a stranger's layaway bill at a department store or donating through a micro-lending website to nascent entrepreneurs far afield, I noted how people found ways to give back even in small ways. And I asked readers to send me their own stories.

As soon as that column ran, those stories started arriving in my inbox.

A reader from California writes that in addition to her regular contributions to charitable organizations, she takes a small amount of money every month and spends it at a local store where she typically doesn't shop. She buys inexpensive items from these shops - a bookstore, a tea shop, a music store, an art gallery - to give as gifts or to contribute to charity. "I get to know the storekeepers and contribute to their livelihood," she writes.

Fifteen years ago, a family in Ohio decided it was "silly" for the adults in the family to exchange gifts at Christmas any longer. So they pooled the "adult gift dollars" and each year take turns choosing a worthy recipient. Some years the money has gone to a charitable organization. Of late, it has occasionally gone to a neighbor family where a parent has lost a job. Some of the recipients have contributed to the family fund to be donated to someone else the following year.

Another group of 15 "average middle-class Midwestern empty-nesters" decided to pool their resources to provide clean sources of water to people in developing countries. To date, they have contributed more than $30,000. Three of the group plan to travel to Sierra Leone later this year for the dedication of the six wells they helped fund as part of their efforts.

A business owner in northern California contacted a local military coordinator to find out how to buy Christmas presents for the children of local active duty families with a parent deployed overseas. He received the wish lists of eight children from five families, all of which employees at his company filled.

Another man in the Midwest discovered Kiva.org (a micro-lending website I mentioned in the earlier column) just over three years ago. He started out with $300 seed money, doling it out in $25 increments over several months to various small business efforts. He fully expected that some of these loans would never be returned. "I haven't lost a single penny from any recipient defaulting," he writes. He reinvests the money as it gets repaid. He made his 74th loan last week.

Finally, a reader from California worries that such stories reflect a "tokenism." "To 'do the right thing' means caring for your neighbor and demonstrating basic respect without placing a priority on selfish hidden agendas," she writes. "When people do the right thing as part of their daily lives, then they have shown they care."

She's right. The majority of the readers who wrote me their stories asked to remain anonymous. Their giving appears to reflect ongoing and thoughtful efforts to give back or show care, regardless of the nature or size of their contributions. Their stories are strong reminders that there are many people who strive to do the right thing every day with no hidden agenda.

Smart application of comparison shopping

2012-01-08T06:21:00.000-05:00

About 30 years ago, I decided to buy myself a new electric typewriter. I slogged through the snow onto the subway and traveled to an independent retailer that was running a good sale. I chose the box from a stack on the floor, paid the cashier, and headed home. When I unpacked the box, I was surprised that tucked inside was an old manual typewriter that a customer had presumably returned for a refund after buying the newer electric version.

I returned to the store and, without many questions, the customer service department took back the machine and gave me a new one in its place. (This time, they checked out the contents while I was standing there.) A hassle, but a crisis averted by a responsive customer service team.

Large signs over the customer service desk promised customers a 10 percent additional discount if they could find the same item they purchased at a lower price within 10 days of their purchase. Since the store prided itself on its low prices, it was rare to see customers taking advantage of this challenge. But when they did, it was honored.

Those were pre-smartphone days. Today, it would have been simple to scan any item's barcode in the store with any number of price comparison apps to see if the price was better elsewhere.

This past holiday shopping season, the question arose of whether it's fair for customers to use such price-comparison apps at their local retailers. Is it wrong to use a local retailer as a way to sample products you might want to buy, but then buy your product elsewhere, including online, if you can beat the price? Is it wrong, for example, to go to the local bookseller and peruse a book at your leisure and then scan the bar code on the book to see if it can be purchased less expensively from an online bookseller?

There's nothing wrong with shopping around for the best price on a product, even if your comparison shopping is enhanced by the latest technology. Retailers may bemoan customers scanning items, but that's just smart shopping. The challenge is for retailers to remind customers the value they bring to a purchase that online retailers may not - such as not having to wait to receive their product or better customer service.

Online retailers can be just as vulnerable to the peruse-here-buy-elsewhere phenomenon. Just as a customer might buy online after examining a product in a store if the online price is better, customers could decide to download an electronic book for free from their local libraries after perusing its pages on an online booksellers' site.

The right thing is for retailers to do the best they can in providing value and service to their customers and for customers to make the smartest purchasing decisions they can. I'm not sure that personal technology would have made it easier for me to detect the wrong product was in that typewriter box 30 years ago, but it could have helped reassure me that my trek across down to get the best price was well worth the trip.

The better angels of our workers

2012-01-01T09:06:00.002-05:00

To avoid bankruptcy of the U.S. Postal Service, Patrick Donahoe, the postmaster general, announced in early December that the USPS needed to cut $20 billion in expenses by 2015. Among the immediate cuts announced to save an initial $3 billion were closings of thousands of local post offices and hundreds of mail processing centers. The cuts will result in roughly 100,000 employees losing their jobs.

Initially my reaction to these and other cuts such as the possibility of eliminating mail delivery on Saturdays was less than outrage. A day without catalogs and solicitations for donations to not-for-profits or politicians would not kill me. Plus, I wouldn't have to worry about the mail piling up on my front stoop if I had to be on the road for a long weekend.

But in the midst of my indifference, I remember Ed, the guy who's been our local postman for the better part of 15 years. (He took a year or so off to take a desk job at the USPS, but missed the beat and returned.) When Ed is on vacation, his substitutes invariably can't figure out the correct addresses for some of the houses in our neighborhood (our next-door neighbor, for example, has our same house number but lives on a different street) and we end up having to redeliver the mail to the appropriate neighbor.

A couple of years ago, after a shipment of three boxes of books I'd written had been "misdelivered," Ed spent months tracking the package down and finally found the boxes on the porch of a neighbor several blocks away.

My indifference to the USPS is not shared toward Ed, my mail carrier.

Pollsters don't find this disconnect all that unusual. Labeled the "halo effect," it's common for people to loathe the education system but adore their kids' teachers, despise Congress but appreciate their local congressperson, complain about the postal service but appreciate their local postman. The abstract is easy to dismiss. When it's personal, that's a different story.

Of course, it makes sense to try to shore up businesses or agencies when they are bleeding money. But in doing so, it's important to remember the effect that shoring up will have not just on the abstract but on the tangible people involved.

Layoffs happen. Jobs get cut. Economist Joseph Schumpeter observed that the economy consistently rebuilds itself through the process of creative destruction. In the process, jobs are lost, but new companies are launched that ideally will create new jobs.

The right thing, however, is to never forget that the people caught up in this creative destruction are not abstract figures. They are our postal workers, our teachers, our favorite salespeople, our neighbors.

Making layoffs the go-to solution without remembering the individuals who might be affected by the loss of their livelihood makes it too easy to consider before all other options are exhausted. Given the severe financial condition of the USPS, it does seem that it will take many options to right itself.

Ed deserves to be thought of as someone who tries to do good work, day in and day out . . . and so does your mail carrier. And so, too, do the vast majority of workers whose businesses are facing economic challenges.

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 a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2012 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

People can and do show they care

2011-12-25T07:22:00.002-05:00

Several days ago, stories started appearing about anonymous benefactors who were paying off the balances on layaway purchases that customers had made at Kmart.

An Associated Press article written by Margery Beck suggested that these payoffs took various forms. Some benefactors sought to pay off items that were about to be returned to the shelf because the purchaser had missed several payments. Others wanted only to pay off layaway purchases that consisted chiefly of children's items. Still others decided to pay off most of the layaway, but left a few dollars balance on the account so customers would be surprised when they went to settle up their bills.

No questions asked about whether particular items are appropriate for the children. No judging about whether it's right to have $200 worth of toys and clothes on layaway when they might not be able to pay for more essential items at home. No desire to stick around or be identified as the person paying off the bill. No need for a charitable tax break or the thanks of an adoring recipient.

Just one giant Secret Santa effort seems to have blossomed for whatever motivation the benefactors might have had.

Helping others in need gives people the opportunity to show they care. Every year, a number of prominent newspaper columnists devote a holiday column to listing charities seeking donations. And the Web takes such efforts a step beyond the local Kmart and allows benefactors a much longer reach.

Right around Thanksgiving, for example, my son and daughter-in-lawd gave their nephew (my eldest grandson) a gift certificate to Kiva.org, a microlending organization that allows users to loan money to entrepreneurial projects in impoverished areas of the world. He chose to help fund Luciana, a food vendor in Paraguay, and Caroline, a cereals seller in Kenya.

Opportunities exist throughout the year to do some good act to express care or concern. Such acts might not involve cash, but instead involve assisting a neighbor or giving time to a local school or not-for-profit.

If ethics is how we behave when we decide we belong together, then it seems appropriate to reflect on whether or not that coexistence should involve some effort to help others who might be working hard but finding themselves falling a bit short.

Aside from those who believe tithing is an obligation, there's no set prescription on how or how much to give or when. The right thing is to give thought to whether it's important for you to do so and then find a way, even a small way, to express such care for others in the community, whether neighbors shopping at the local strip mall or those further afield connected through the web.

Tell me your stories of how you've decided to give back or to show care for others in your community. What motivated you? And how did you decide it was the right thing to do?

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 a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

A blue uniform is a blue uniform

2011-12-18T07:11:00.001-05:00

The nursing students in a licensed practical nurse program in the Northeast are required to wear a specific color uniform to their classes - a basic royal blue set of medical scrubs consisting of a top and bottoms.

An owner of one of the area stores selling scrubs has discovered that one of the program instructors is telling students to purchase a brand of scrubs only sold at a particular store. The store to which the students are being directed is not the one owned by the reader who found out about the instructor's directions.

"The color is what is important," the reader writes, not the brand. "Our store carries the required color, but we are losing business to the other store as she (the instructor) is partial to that business." Other shops in the area that sell scrubs may also be losing out on sales to these students.

The LPN program takes place as a public school.

"It does not seem ethical that a public employee should be able to influence where a student purchases a uniform," the reader writes. "The scrub shop getting the business has not bid on supplying the uniforms to the school."

The reader believes that students have no idea that other vendors in the area offer medical scrubs and uniforms.

"I have spoken with the head of the nursing program about my concern that, as business owners, we only wanted to be treated fairly," the reader writes. "She did not seem to think there was anything wrong with the instructor being partial to only one local business.

"I have no way of knowing if perhaps this instructor has some sort of vested interest in the store she is recommending. Maybe she does. Maybe she does not. Regardless, we are losing a lot of business because of her, not to mention future sales."

The reader would like to know my thoughts.

If the instructor does have some vested interest, she is clearly out of line and likely breaking some law. But, as my reader points out, there is no evidence that this is the case.

If it truly makes no difference what brand of scrubs the nursing students wear, then the right thing is for the instructor and others in the program to let students know they are free to buy their scrubs wherever they like as long as they are the required style and color. If the instructor truly believes that the quality of a particular brand of scrubs is better, she has the right to let students know this, but it's wrong for her to suggest that there's only one place to buy them if that's not the case.

The right thing for the reader and other vendors in the area is to market their scrubs to the students as aggressively as they desire to let students know that they have a choice in where they make their purchases.

But a recommendation is not a requirement and if the instructor is simply recommending a particular store because she likes the quality of the goods and the service of the sellers, that's her prerogative. It's up to the other owners to convince their prospective customers that their store is a better selection than the instructor's merchant of choice.

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 a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

The work you submit should be your own

2011-12-11T07:45:00.000-05:00

I've been a writer for many years, a writing teacher for several, and an editor for longer than many of my students have been around. Occasionally, particularly at this time of year, current or former students, former colleagues seeking to advance their education, or children of friends applying to college, contact me to see if I can give them feedback on admissions essays they write to academic programs they'd like to attend.

The question invariably arises of just how much advice I should give to anyone writing an application essay. These are, after all, used not just to get a sense of how the applicant answers the questions posed by the academic institution, but also to give the admissions committee a sense of how well the applicant can write.

Granted, there are untold stories of students who use outside services to "assist" them with their college applications. But how far is too far for such assistance to go?

Increasingly, academic institutions are aware of the challenge of making sure that the work someone submits on their application is their own work. Some students might be reluctant to ask for feedback after reading instructions that include a dictum like this: "Your essays may not be written, edited or translated by anyone but yourself."

How much advice is appropriate and still makes sure the work students submit reflects their own writing ability?

In my work as an editor, I don't hesitate to edit someone else's writing for publication so that the final article is as strong a piece of writing as possible. In such cases, it's a collaborative process to achieve the best outcome.

But the case of aspiring applicants is different. The work must represent their best writing efforts - and not been heavily edited by professionals to make it more than the writers would have been capable of producing on their own.

So what's the right thing to do when asked for help on admissions essays?

Advising prospective applicants on where they might trim or where they might address some issues of clarity in their essays is fair game, as long as revisions made are made by the applicants themselves. The right thing is to ensure that the work they submit must be their own. To go any further is both a disservice to the institution to which they're applying, and to applicants who might find it more difficult to succeed academically if admitted on the assumption they're capable of the type of writing reflected in their applications.

Parents who seek out assistance for their children to help them complete their college applications would do well to make sure that "consultation" doesn't give way to ghostwriting. Parents and others providing feedback to prospective applicants would send a clear message about integrity and honesty by reinforcing the notion that whatever is submitted should be reflective of the applicant's own ability.

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 a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

When good products get bad marketing

2011-12-04T06:57:00.000-05:00

Sometimes the companies whose products we love make it difficult for us to love the things they do to sell us those products.

Several months ago, a reader received an unsolicited DVD from a hobby magazine to which he subscribes. It's not a bad DVD. In fact, it seems like one that might have interested him. It's a full-length documentary, apparently the first in a series that the magazine hopes subscribers will purchase.

"The way the magazine is marketing the DVD really angers me, though," my reader writes.

A form letter accompanying the DVD explains that the DVD was sent in hopes that the subscriber will not only send the company $9.95 for it, but will also consent to receive other DVDs in the future for which he will also be charged $9.95 plus postage and handling.

"If I don't want the DVD," he writes, "I'm requested to - get this - remove it from its case and return only the disc in a prepaid mailer." The magazine doesn't want the case back and the subscriber is encouraged to reuse or recycle it. "My guess is that they just don't want to pay the extra postage."

But buried deep in the form letter is a brief acknowledgment that even if he doesn't want to pay for it, the subscriber could opt to keep the DVD and not pay anything for it since the magazine sent it to him unsolicited.

"What really irks me is that a great many recipients -- many of whom are older people who could be confused and think they actually ordered the DVD -- are going to figure what the hey and pay the $9.95 anyway," my reader writes. "I suspect that the magazine's marketing people knew this in advance and are counting on it."

"This tactic is worse than anything a book or record club ever pulled," he writes, referring to clubs that used to rely on people forgetting to decline the selection of the month and end up owing money for items they never really wanted.

So, what's the right thing for my reader to do?

If he returns the disc as requested, he's being dutiful. He's also driving up costs for the magazine since it will be paying the return postage, a cost that is eventually likely to be passed on to him and other subscribers.

But he has absolutely no obligation to return the disc. He never requested it and the magazine should not be deceiving him or others into believing that they owe money for something they never purchased.

After stewing over the matter for a spell, my reader came to several conclusions.

"I'm going to keep the DVD," he writes. "I'm not going to pay $9.95 for it." He is also strongly considering canceling his subscription.

I've written about Stephen Carter's book Integrity (Basic Books, 1996). In it, Carter talks about three steps that are essential to integrity: The first is discernment, the second is to act on what you discern, and the third is to state openly what you have done and why you have done it.

"I am going to write a letter to the publisher and explain why I'm canceling my subscription," my reader writes. By acting with integrity, my reader is doing the right thing.

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 a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

Gift-giving grandmother gets no graciousness

2011-11-27T08:31:00.002-05:00

Every year, as the holiday gift-giving approaches, I begin to receive questions from readers struggling with the season.

This year, a reader from Southern California writes to report on her six grandchildren, "all very bright and excellent students." Her grandchildren range in age from 12 to 19 - three girls in one family and two boys and one girl in another family.

"We all get along," she writes. "No problems there!"

The children in the family with two boys and one girl "appreciate everything I do for them," grandma writes. "Even the 12-year-old sends me beautiful thank-you notes in his own words and handwriting." From these grandkids, she never fails to get a thank you note as well as a verbal thank you for checks, gifts, and "everything" she does for them.

The problem, however, lies in the family of two girls. Well, not in the family, but in the girls themselves.

"I have to ask the girls in the other family if they received their birthday check or gift," their grandmother writes. When the girls respond to her, "it's sort of a ho-hum, 'Yes.'" The ho-hum affirmation is immediately followed with: "I know you want a thank-you note, Grandma." So, after her call, she reports that she gets a two-sentence note, "not even signed with the word 'love' in it."

Over the years, the grandmother has done the same for all of her grandchildren when it comes to gift giving. But her inclination this year, she writes, is to be more generous with the grandkids who actually show appreciation.

"With Christmas approaching," she writes, "I would like to know what you think is the right thing to do."

Whenever I've received questions like this from readers, I've been very clear that a parent or a grandparent has no obligation to treat every child exactly the same when it comes to giving gifts, leaving an inheritance, or anything else that involves deciding how to dole out assets. Most parents and grandparents, however, do try to be as fair as they can be and treat each of their children and grandchildren as equally as possible. Perhaps partly this is to send a message of how none of the children is loved any more than another. It might also be a way to keep from creating a rift among the children brought on by jealousy.

There is no ethical rule, however, that the grandmother from Southern California must give grandchild A the same amount that she gives grandchild B or grandchild C.

But since the grandmother suggests she loves all of her grandchildren equally and maintains good relationships with all, the right thing to do is for her to ask herself if being less generous with one set of grandkids will really accomplish what she hopes to achieve. If the less-grateful grandkids don't know they're getting less, will it really matter all that much to them? If being less generous is designed to make the grandmother feel better, the right thing would be for her to ask herself if she'd really feel better by being less generous.

The appropriate response should be driven by what the grandmother really wants to accomplish. And it wouldn't kill the less-gracious grandkids' parents to remind them that it's a good and appropriate thing to thank people when they do something nice.

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 a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

Your parents or your spouse

2011-11-20T08:03:00.001-05:00

A reader from New York City writes that he believes most of the questions I try to tackle in the column each week are "relatively small scale." He, however, believes he has "a biggie."

"From an ethical point of view," he writes, "whose interests is a married person obliged to place foremost, if they come into conflict: His or her parents? Or his or her spouse?"

My first inclination upon reading his question is to assess who reads my column the most, my father or my spouse. But while such checking might prepare me for reactions from my father and spouse to my response, it doesn't change how I'd answer the question.

"The obligations to one's parents are obviously more comprehensive and of much longer standing," the reader goes on. "On the other hand, one swears a personal vow of loyalty to one's spouse, but not normally to one's parents. The obligations of a son or daughter are more or less imposed on you without consent, consultation or specific articulation. ('Because I'm your mother, that's why!')"

While it's obviously best to honor obligations to both parents and spouse or, if you can't, to find a compromise, the reader recognizes that in some cases the obligations are specific and mutually exclusive.

"What then?" he asks.

I'm not so sure my reader has as much of "a biggie" as he thinks.

Sure, anytime you try to drive a wedge between a spouse and a parent or a spouse and a spouse by introducing a divisive issue, there might be fireworks. In such cases, my own spouse reminds me, it's good to remember that you live with the spouse with whom you are building your own lives together.But my reader seems to forget that missing in his premise is that there's a third player in the equation, presumably with a mind of his own. Not only might a spouse disagree with his parents. He might disagree with both of them.

My own spouse believes that this fellow may just be "looking for trouble," trying to engage a columnist in settling a score between his spouse and his parent, so he doesn't have to take a stand.

But I'm not so sure that's the case.

Instead, like many of us, my reader seems to be looking for a set of rules that apply to any situation all the time. The trouble is that situations differ and so do our responses to them. There is no one set of rules that defines whose side you should take in a disagreement, beyond the rule that you should side with the person you believe is right. If you believe neither side is right, then express that.

The right thing to do when parents and spouse collide is not to arbitrarily side with either, but instead to have a mind of your own that presumably can produce an opinion of your own. But given that you have a committed relationship with your spouse and plan to spend the rest of your life with him or her, it's also the right thing to give a heads up to your spouse beforehand if your view differs rather than launch it by surprise in front of your parents. Such an approach honors loyalty and increases the likelihood that your spouse won't feel betrayed by your contrary views.

Jeffrey L. Seglin is the author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal
Responsibility in Today's Business. Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Don't send money to far-away princes

2011-11-13T09:43:00.002-05:00

My cellphone rang as I was getting off the train to head to my office.

"Did you get Klara's email?" the caller asked.

I had. In it, my relative Klara (whose name I've changed) - or someone purporting to be Klara - said she had been mugged while vacationing in London and needed money wired to pay her hotel bill. Word for word, it was exactly the same email I had received from a business associate months earlier. Neither had been in London. The emails were scams.

My caller asked if he should be concerned. I told him not to be since my wife had already been in touch with Klara and she was fine.

Earlier, I received emails from readers telling me about emails they'd received from people who were trying to get riches out of a particular country, but that they needed money wired to them to help them do so.

"My husband thinks these are from the same people who did the famous Nigerian scams," one reader writes, referring to variations of emails that made the rounds promising to transfer substantial sums of cash to your bank account that would be shared with you. All you needed to do was to share banking information.

Another variation involves a Craigslist poster purportedly in search of a nanny. The poster sends a fake check to nanny prospects and then proceeds to get the victim to send cash or goods to an address. Only later do the victims find out that the check was fake and end up on the hook for the money they spent.

Clearly, the scam artists are behaving unethically. There's no ethical upside to committing fraud and sucking unsuspecting victims into parting with their cash - even if the victim is drawn in by the promises of riches or a job.

But a reader wanted to know if she behaved unethically by initially falling for one of the scams. She just barely fell, mind you, having responded to the ad for nannies, but smartened up before actually sending any cash.

Being gullible is not the same as being unethical. Falling victim to a scam artist might be embarrassing, but it does not reflect a moral failure. Even if the victim's motivation is untold riches (one of the Nigerian email scams promises 20 percent of $23 million for allowing a short-term transfer to the victim's bank account), the victim is only guilty of being a bit too starry eyed at an offer that appears too good to be true.

"Is there somewhere you can go to check out the latest scams and maybe add new ones?" asks a reader from Wisconsin.

There is no central source that gathers all scam efforts. But websites such as snopes.com (http://www.snopes.com) are a great place to check on the veracity of such emails making the rounds. These scams tend to be cyclical and ones that were prominent in the past have a
tendency to pop up unexpectedly years later.

Whenever an email that appears to be a scam alleges to come from a particular organization or mentions an organization in the text of he email, the right thing is to report that email to that organization. Scams will never go away entirely, but if prospective victims are vigilant about reporting them when they do arise, the chances are greater that people will not all victim to the scams in the future.

Jeffrey L. Seglin is the author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal
Responsibility in Today's Business. Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

The things we carry: A POW bracelet, a Medal of Honor recipient, and how the two came together

2011-11-08T14:38:00.002-05:00

In 1998, I started writing a monthly business ethics column for the Sunday New York Times, called “The Right Thing.” In what became a bit of a ritual…well, more of a panic, really…I spent part of each month scouring for ideas for the column. I talked to regular sources, kept an eye out and an ear open for egregious examples of corporate malfeasance, and pored through a collection of newspaper and magazine clips I’d collected in a big pile in my office that might yield some good premise for a column.

In late 2003, I was reading through an article I’d saved from The New York Times about some of the cases that the Supreme Court had declined to hear. One of them struck my eye in particular. It was a case brought on behalf of veterans of World War II and the Korean War who had been promised lifetime medical benefits for themselves and their families by overzealous recruiters in an effort to get them to serve in the military for at least 20 years. The United States Court of Appeals had ruled that these claims were invalid since the recruiters didn’t have the authority to offer them.

It struck me as a bum deal that these veterans were being cheated out of medical benefits because they had been misled and that the government had decided not to step up to the plate and honor the promises made by these recruiters… Great fodder for a column, I thought, looking at how our ethical obligations often go beyond what the letter of the law requires us to do.

But what really caught my eye was the name of the guy who was leading the case – a veteran from Ft. Walton Beach, Florida, named George E. Day. … God, that name – George E. Day – sounds familiar, I thought. … No, actually, it LOOKED familiar, as if I’d read it or seen it before.

So I started doing some digging online and found that George Day was at the time a lawyer in his seventies based in Florida who also was a heavily decorated war veteran who had served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. He had received the Congressional Medal of Honor, was one of the most highly decorated soldiers in United States military history…and, starting at the age of 42, he had been held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam for 67 months, where for a period of time his roommate had been John McCain.

And then it hit me. I looked up from the newspaper clipping over at the basket on my desk in which I keep pens and pencils…and there, hanging on the side of the basket was the nickel-plated POW bracelet I had worn 30 years ago when I was in high school. And there on the bracelet was the name: “Col. George Day” and the date on which he had been taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese – August 26, 1967.

All these years I’d assumed that Col. Day had never made it back since I never saw news of him during any of the prisoner releases that happened during the 1970s. But it turns out that not only did he make it back, he was a bonafide war hero who’d won the Medal of Honor.

For 30 years, I’ve been carrying around Col. Day’s bracelet with me, never knowing what happened to him. I had purchased the bracelet for $2.50 when I was a high school student in Boonton, New Jersey, in 1971. Thousands of people wore the bracelets during the waning days of the Vietnam War as a testament – regardless of their views of the War – that POWs should not be forgotten. As a high school student, I had been against the war, and I wore my bracelet through my freshman year in college and then kept it with me as I’ve moved over the years.

I’d been carrying Colonel Day’s bracelet around for 30 years and, now that I knew he was alive, I felt an obligation to go to Ft Walton Beach, FL and give it to him.

When I meet Col. Day for the first time, he was much smaller than I had imagined. This should have come as no surprise. I’d read his autobiography, called Return with Honor, where he’d written that he was only 5 feet 9. But he’d also written about one of the most harrowing imprisonment experiences I’d ever read – full of torture, defiance, resilience – that in my mind he’d taken on a larger than life stature.

During the 14 days that Col. Day had escaped his initial captors and was trying to find his way to South Vietnam, he was hallucinating, living off a couple of frogs and berries, bleeding from his nose, vomiting blood, nursing a broken right arm, and ultimately only giving in to being recaptured after he was shot in the arm and leg. … And, all of this while he was 42 years old.

When I set up the meeting, I hadn’t told the Colonel why I wanted to meet with him.

During the Vietnam War, I was a high school student who protested the war. I registered for the draft and got a lottery number in 1974, but, lucky for me, that was the year the draft was suspended. I ended up writing my phone number on my draft card to give to a girl I’d met at a college mixer.

While he was in the POW camp, Col. Day’s North Vietnamese captors would play speeches from anti-war protestors in the United States or from those – like actress Jane Fonda – who had visited Hanoi. In his book, he writes that this broadcasted propaganda “diluted the reasoning power of the public, confused the issue of how bad the Communists were, and supported the claims of the peaceniks and pro-Commie anti-war groups. During rational times in other wars,” Col. Day wrote, “such people would have been hanging from telephone poles. A pity these were irrational times.”

Knowing that I was in his office to give Col. Day the POW bracelet that I’d worn as a sign of protest against the war, I was a bit nervous that his hatred of the anti-war protestors will extend to me and that perhaps he thinks that I too, along with my high school buddies who wore similar bracelets with other names on them, should have been strung up as well.

When I finally mustered the courage to tell the Colonel why I’m really there, I reached into my left pants pocket, pulled out the bracelet, fumbled with it a bit, and then handed it to him.

It turns out that Colonel Day has received so many of these bracelets with his name on them that he’s donated the bulk of them to two different art projects, where they were fashioned into POW/MIA statues.

He still received several bracelets every month, but said that most of the bracelets he’s received over the past 30 years have obviously never been worn – they’re almost fresh out of the package, if not still in the original packaging. But not mine.

I didn’t know how the Colonel would respond when I gave him the bracelet. That he responded so warmly was partly due to the fact that he says he never knew that the bracelets were worn by anti-war protestors as a signal to end the war and bring home the POWs.

When Day returned to the States, he was told the bracelets were manufactured and sold by a Los Angeles radio host named Bob Dornan, who would later go on to become a Republican Congressman. And while Dornan did support and promote the wearing of the bracelets on his radio show, the nickel-plated POW bracelets were actually manufactured and sold by a group called VIVA, Voices in Vital America, a student-run organization out of Los Angeles that began selling them on November 11, 1970. The requests for the bracelets quickly reached 12,000 a day. Before it disbanded in 1976, VIVA had distributed nearly 5 million bracelets.

It’s somewhat uncomfortable to be the first person to explain to Col Day that these bracelets were the work of the VIVA students and that, regardless of their original intent, quickly the bracelets became another visceral symbol worn by those opposed to the war.

Col. Day is the most decorated soldier in the Air Force and is one of the country’s most highly decorated war heroes. He holds nearly 70 military decorations and awards. In addition to the Medal of Honor, he holds the Air Force Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart.

He’s been honored at dozens of fighter pilot ceremonies, and was the first president of the NAM-POW association. The airport named in his honor in Sioux City, Iowa, features a 9-foot tall bronze statue of him wearing his fighter pilot’s uniform and his Medal of Honor around his neck.

After returning from Vietnam in 1973, the Colonel stayed in the military until 1977, when it became clear to him that he was not going to be offered the type of top military leadership position he felt he deserved. He’d been a lawyer since 1949, and was admitted to the Florida Bar in 1977, where he established a law practice in Ft. Walton Beach. He also became heavily involved in Republican politics.

Then came the lawsuit that made its way to the Supreme Court. For years, stories of overzealous military recruiters promising lifetime medical benefits to veterans with 20 years of service and their dependents had been circulating. Col. Day was outraged that World War II and Korean War veterans had not received these benefits and in 1996 sued the government for reimbursement of medical costs on behalf of two veterans. The government refused to take responsibility for these overzealous recruiters.

Colonel Day was a huge supporter of John McCain when he ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 and, if you watched closely, you could see him on the stump for McCain when he ran again in 2008. McCain had made the restoration of medical benefits a major campaign promise in 2000. When McCain lost the nomination, Colonel Day dutifully shifted his allegiance to George Bush, who Day says had picked up McCain’s promise of restoring veteran’s benefits. He goes so far as to claim that he and his friends working the campaign personally delivered the election to Bush by giving him the narrow margin he needed with the absentee ballots of overseas servicemen based out of North Florida.

Soon after the election in 2000, Col. Day met President Bush at a gathering for Medal of Honor winners. He cornered the President directly about his promise of medical benefits for World War II and Korean War veterans. It was a disappointing meeting for the Colonel.

What’s been remarkable to me in this whole story is that here was this guy who has spent his life defining himself by his service to military and government – here was this guy who vociferously condemned acts of protest during wartime – and here he was suing his government.

The suit seeking reimbursement of medical expenses was brought on behalf of two veterans. The original suit was rejected in one court, then overturned on appeal, then rejected again on another appeal, before the Supreme Court refused to hear the case in June 2003.

Toward the end of our conversation, the Colonel tells me that the reason he thinks he was spared during three wars and 67 months of grueling captivity in North Vietnam was that God had a higher mission for him … and that that mission was to deliver North Florida to the Republicans and enable him to do the work he’s doing now to get veterans what’s due them.

I’m taken aback anytime someone declares they’re on a mission from God. But there’s something strikingly refreshing and ennobling about Col. Day’s declaration. For himself, he knows why he’s here. He has a clear sense of what his obligations are.

In a small and much less clearer sense, I’ve come to realize that I held on to Col Day’s bracelet all these years not for any profound reason other than the fact that I felt an obligation to carry it with me until I found out what happened to him.

Now that that obligation is fulfilled and I’ve given him the bracelet, I suppose I could have either felt a great burden lifted or a sense of emptiness at no longer carrying it with me. But the truth is, I felt neither. Years have gone by when I gave the bracelet or the man’s name on it little if any thought. If not for the serendipitous encounter with his name in a newspaper article, I never would likely have exerted the effort to find the Colonel.

But I do know that on seeing the Colonel wear the bracelet I’d given him on the final day we spoke and on hearing him ask me if it was okay with me if he and his wife, Doris, hung the bracelet on his Christmas tree, I felt a sense of joy and connection to this man I’d never known.

This essay originally appeared on True/Slant on May 23, 2009.]

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN.

Freeloader or working stiff?

2011-11-06T07:36:00.000-05:00

Several weeks ago, I tried to tackle the question a reader posed about whether those who lack the resources to pay for medical services or who haven't taken the time to donate blood or fill out organ-donor cards should be denied services.

I responded, "No, they should not be turned away."

My reasoning was, I believed, straightforward.

If we've determined, as a society, that it's inappropriate to turn away people who need medical or emergency services that could save their lives, even if they can't afford such services, we should not withhold such services. Such a position reflects an ethical choice we've made about how we're going to live together.

The goal might be for everyone to take responsibility for his or her own heath and to contribute toward paying for such care. But the goal doesn't remove our responsibility of caring for those who might not have been as capable of making the same decisions.

After reading the column, a reader writes to tell me that it really got under her skin.

"What about all of those people who choose to work part time?" she asks. "Those who barely get by, live hand to mouth, and expect the rest of us to pick up the pieces when they get injured or sick?"

The reader reports that she works four jobs to pay her bills, but that "the lazy freeloaders get taken care of with the same care."

What's more, she writes, "we all know people on disability who work under the table and collect money that should be going to people really injured."

"Where," she asks, "is the incentive to turn these frauds in?"

Where to begin.

First, my reader has no idea what the plight might be of the part-time workers who work just enough to qualify for benefits. Although she might be working four jobs, they might have all they can do to work part time and meet their other obligations. Labeling others as "lazy" or "freeloaders" because they don't happen to clock as many hours as we do is to presume we know their entire life story or how hard they work to put food on their table. Often as not, we don't.

My reader's assumption that we all know people who fraudulently take money when they're on disability is false. I don't know anyone who is doing this. Aside from occasional stories you read about such misdeeds, how many do you know?

But if my reader's main question is about reporting fraudulent workers compensation cases, the right thing is for her to report them. Such fraud is not only illegal, it can drive up the costs for the rest of us. So, if she knows "these frauds" and can prove her claims, she should turn them in. If the illegality of the action or the potential expense or her general outrage are not enough incentive for her to turn them in, then she should do it because it's the right thing to do.

But before she does, she should make sure that her assessment is accurate. One person's "lazy freeloader" may be another's hard-working stiff simply trying to get by.

Jeffrey L. Seglin is the author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Whose past is it, anyway?

2011-10-30T09:08:00.000-04:00

How much should our pasts haunt us?

Not long ago, a publication hired the college classmate of a reader to author a regular column on a range of topics.

When the reader saw the announcement about the column, he was "bowled over." Could this be the same person, he wondered, who had been accused of plagiarism back at school and whose friends rallied to his defense until it became clear he was most likely guilty? The same person who admitted to filling out surveys himself to avoid going door-to-door to get answers from the respondents he was supposed to be interviewing for his summer job? The same guy my reader bailed out of jail one summer after he had been arrested for shoplifting?

My reader acknowledges that because these incidents happened decades ago, his memory could be inexact.

He also acknowledges that people's pasts should not haunt them forever. "Youthful indiscretions and even crimes and misdemeanors for the most part should not be held against someone," he says. "On the other hand, does not the type of behavior I've described disqualify him from being a columnist?"

He wants to know if the public deserves to know the past of such an adviser. "Does the publication deserve to have the opportunity to at least review these recollections? Or, since I cannot prove the details, and I fully recognize the faultiness of memory, should I let them all rest?"

In cases like this, it was the responsibility of the prospective columnist to inform his editors about anything - past or present - that could affect the work he is to do for the publication. If the columnist classmate of my reader didn't do this, he should have.

The public does haves a right to know about anything that might create the impression of a bias or conflict in a writer's work. From what my reader has revealed, it's hard to know whether the classmate has such a bias. But I would think that disclosing to his readers the type of experiences my reader relates would make for rich material. If he tackles it honestly, he may very well build trust with his audience.

If the publication doesn't know about its columnist's past, I believe it has the right to know about anything that might affect the credibility of his work.

The right thing? The publication should have adequately done its due diligence and the columnist should have disclosed any information in his past that could call his work into question.

If my reader is truly flummoxed over how such a person landed this job and can't rest without learning the details, the right thing would be for him to call his classmate and ask.

Jeffrey L. Seglin is the author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

What's not mine is not mine

2011-10-23T10:49:00.000-04:00

Several years ago, my best friend went furniture shopping for his tiny studio apartment in Manhattan. He was in the market for a small chest of drawers - well, large enough to store most of the clothes he couldn't fit in the less-than-ample closet, but small enough that he could lug it home five or six blocks from the department store to his walkup.

Having selected the most inexpensive, yet presentable dresser he could find, he picked it out fully assembled, carried it to the checkout stand, and then proceeded to pay. As he reached the exit, the drawers began to open a bit. One of the drawers was loaded with a menagerie of stuffed toy animals.

He'd already paid for the dresser and figured he could high tail it out of the store with no one the wiser. But the temptation was momentary. He returned to the register and informed the clerk. The stuffed animals were removed and my best friend went on his cumbersome way, dresser in tow.

I was reminded of his find after listening to a recent episode of "This American Life," a weekly radio show produced by Chicago Public Media. The story was about a fellow who, after police returned his stolen car (after a surreal ordeal), found the trunk contained a chest full of expensive tools, a big ring of master keys that could open many cars, and other assorted goods the car thieves left behind. It was never reported whether the fellow returned the goods that clearly weren't his and that clearly had been used for illicit purposes.

"Shouldn't he have returned that stuff?" my wife, who was listening to the show with me, asked.

The fellow had already been through quite a bit, having at one point spotted his stolen car being driven by the thieves and tailing them while talking to a 911 operator until the crafty thieves eluded him. (Police caught them later that night.) Surely, he had been through enough and couldn't he construe that the unexpected deposit in his car's trunk made up a bit for his troubles?

Who would be the wiser if he just kept the stuff?

The legality of possessing sets of master keys to other people's cars aside, there's no ethical justification for the victim keeping the goods. Regardless of the fact that the police didn't discover the stolen objects in the car, the right thing would be for the fellow to contact the police and return anything in his car not owned by him.

If character is how we behave when no one is looking, then the "no one would be the wiser" justification holds no weight.

The car owner should return the tools, the keys, and the other contraband and be grateful that unlike some car theft victim,s his vehicle was returned at all - and intact, to boot.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing:Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business," is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

Thankless returns

2011-10-16T09:47:00.000-04:00

Occasionally, I run across someone's lost wallet.

My response has always been to do what I could to find out the name of the wallet's owner and then return it. The response from the rightful owner has ranged from appearing chagrined to have to meet me at a nearby subway station (where I'd found the wallet) to recoup her rightful belongings, to a gentleman who sent my family a gift certificate to a buffet at a Chinese restaurant after he received his wallet in the mail.

Does how people respond dictate whether we should do the right thing? Should it?

Things had not been going particularly well for a reader from Southern California. She had been unemployed for quite a while. Finances were tight and she'd overdrawn her checking account by $196.

As she pulled her car into the bank's parking lot, she found a space that was directly adjacent to the ATM. There, scattered in the space right next to her car were 10 $20 bills. The $200 could not have come at a better time, she figured, so she tucked them in her pocketbook and drove home.

The next day, however, she grew concerned for the person who might have lost the money. She went to the bank and asked its manager if someone had reported any money missing.

"Luckily," she writes, "they had gotten a call." The customer had described exactly how much and where the money had been lost.

At the manager's request, my reader left her name and number with the bank. With her permission, the manager was going to forward the money to the customer along with a note containing the name and number of the woman who had found it and returned it to the bank.

"I didn't return the money expecting anything," my reader writes. "But a thank you would have been nice. The woman never even called to say 'thank you.'"

My reader grew angry over the lack of an acknowledgment for her good deed.

"Especially given my own financial dire straits," she writes, "I was seriously regretting my decision to give the money back."

Returning found cash can be trickier than returning a lost wallet, since cash rarely has any identifying characteristics on it. Still, my reader went out of her way to see if she could get it to its right owner.

Sure, she could have used the cash herself and no one would have been the wiser. But she knew that the money's owner might be agonizing over the loss. Clearly, the owner was concerned and notified the bank.

My reader did the right thing by trying to find the rightful owner of the money. The owner was wrong not to express her thanks.

A small courtesy to acknowledge an act of kindness would have gone a long way toward reaffirming my reader's faith in people's goodness. She can rest easy knowing that her own act is a reflection of the quality of her character.

Does society have a responsibility to care?

2011-10-09T09:20:00.001-04:00

A reader was taken aback while watching the Republican presidential debate in Tampa, Fla., recently. During the debate among contenders for the Republican nomination for the U.S. presidency that was sponsored by CNN, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul made clear he didn't believe it was right to let sick people die, but he argued that those who are sick should take responsibility for themselves.

As the exchange between Paul and moderator Wolf Blitzer continued, Paul was asked if a young man who might fall into a coma should be left to die. A handful of audience members at the debate shouted "Yeah."

My reader was motivated to write because of "the disgraceful cheering that took place" at that debate. Still, the reader believes the question was a fair one: "Does society have the obligation to care for someone who shows up at a hospital room without medical insurance? Does society have an obligation to care for him?"

But my reader would like to reframe the question a bit. "If a person possibly expects society to give him medical care sometime in the future, is he obligated to prepay in some way?"

He explains that one way this might manifest itself is whether someone is obligated to donate blood if he expects society to be able to provide it for him at some point in the future. He argues that since the current system of voluntary blood donation seems to supply enough blood, a person who doesn't donate could say he shouldn't have to because there is no shortage.

"But," my reader continues, "that's not the situation with organ donation." He notes that there is a shortage of organs available for transplantation and people die waiting for them. "Therefore," he asks, "shouldn't a person who expects or hopes that society will find an organ suitable for him if he needs it sometime in the future be obligated to be an organ donor if he should die suddenly?"

Absent the vitriol, my reader circles back to the question similar to the one raised at the Republican debate: "Is a person who expects society to give him medical treatment obligated to make arrangements to pay for it?"

Yes, of course, we'd like to think that people would be able to take responsibility for their health care and pay for the services they use. We'd also like to think that those who might draw on particular services in the future choose to give back if the opportunity arises so that others can draw on similar services.

But if the underlying question my reader poses is whether those who don't have the resources to pay or those who haven't taken the time to donate blood or fill out organ-donor cards should be denied services, the answer is no.

We've decided that, as a society, it's inappropriate to turn away those who are in need of medical or emergency services that could save their lives, even if they can't afford such services. That decision reflects an ethical choice we've made about how we're going to live together. Those who shouted "Yeah!" to a suggestion that we let folks die rather than provide health care fall distinctly outside of the agreed-upon norms.

A goal of having everyone take responsibility for their health and contribute to those efforts of which they might afford themselves in the future is a good one. But having such a goal doesn't remove the responsibility of caring for those who might not have been as prescient, responsible, or capable to make the same decisions before they find themselves in need.

Many happy returns (Y2K edition)

2011-10-02T09:35:00.001-04:00

Eleven years ago, the world was in a bit of a tizzy overthe prospects of the calendar turning from 1999 to 2000. Predictions litteredthe landscape of a major technology meltdown that resulted from chips incomputers somehow finding themselves baffled as the old century gave way to thenew.

Business folk loaded up on stuff that enabled them toback-up their data. Consumers, worried the year switch might result in themeltdown of the municipal power grids, stocked up on flashlights, foodstuffs,and portable electric generators.

Doing my own part, I decided to prepare for the Y2Kmeltdown by avoiding my laptop for the month and instead pecking out my writingon a 1916 portable Corona typewriter. My findings? Slower writing, but fewerinterruptions . . . essentially a wash.

But questions linger for many about how some peopleprepped in the wake of the hype and fear and dire predictions about thecollapse of industries and services.

A reader in Ohio is still wondering about the actions afamily member took to gird his loins against the ravages of Y2K. "Fear ledmy brother-in-law to take actions I considered unethical," he writes."He disagrees."

A few weeks before 2000 hit, the brother-in-law bought aportable generator from a local merchant. He made the purchase knowing that themerchant had a 30-day return, full-refund policy. His plan was to keep thegenerator in its box unopened and then return it for a full refund if he hadn'tneeded to use it.

A week after 1999 gave way to 2000 without incident, thebrother-in-law returned the generator and received a full refund.

"I told him his actions were unethical because hebought the generator in bad faith," my reader writes. "Moreover, hedenied the merchant the opportunity to sell the generator to a legitimatecustomer."

My reader asks: "Was his behavior ethical? I saynot."

If the merchant offered a 30-day return, full-refundpolicy, the brother-in-law did not do anything wrong. Just like his customers,the merchant knew that Y2K was upon him and that there might be some folks whowould load up on stuff only to return it after the year turned, they didn'tneed the stuff, and they were still within the 30-day period. If the merchantdidn't want to risk such returns, he could have changed his policy.

The brother-in-law's actions are decidedly different fromthe practice of purchasing, say, an expensive item of clothing, wearing itonce, but leaving the label on so the item can be returned the next day. Insuch a case, the item is used and the customer is trying to disguise this factto get a full refund. The brother-in-law, however, never opened the item andtherefore could return it under the agreed-upon policy with absolutely noguilt.

My reader questions whether his brother-in-law's intentchanges the situation. No more than the intent of the merchant in not changinghis return policy during the 30 days leading up to Y2K. Perhaps the merchantthought the risk of getting returns was worth it since some of his customersmight decide to hold onto their purchases even when Y2K-ageddon never struck.

It doesn't matter. What matters is that the customer andthe merchant each honored his side of the deal and could enter the new centurywith a clear conscience.

When bad driving happens to good customers

2011-09-25T08:36:00.003-04:00

Stacks of bagged mulch, stone and gravel sit in the parking lots of a regional chain of small hardware stores. It's common for customers to park close to these heaps to make it easier to load the goods into their trunks.

"It's just a neighborly gesture the hardware store makes by accommodating this parking," writes a reader. "Or so I thought."

After two clerks from the hardware store loaded his car's trunk with the bags of mulch he had purchased, he began to drive away. When he heard an awful scraping noise that is all too familiar to those who have been in fender benders, my reader realized that his car had grazed a pallet of bricks that were sticking out near where he had parked.

"The manager did nothing but shrug and say I was not supposed to park next to the bags of mulch," writes my reader. "I asked him where the signs were telling people this. Where were the ropes and pylons and other things directing us where to park? Why didn't the employees who loaded up my car say anything?"

Ultimately, my reader had to ask the manager to get a forklift to remove the bricks so he could get his car out of the parking lot.

"I contacted a police officer, who followed me back to the hardware store," he writes. "As the officer was writing up the accident and my car was again in the 'mulch' lane, another worker came up and asked which bags we wanted loaded into my car!"

My reader's car repair cost him about $400. He figures that equals about two years' worth of products from the hardware store that in the past he might have purchased. "Perhaps I will visit the store again in two years," he writes.

Has the business since changed the signage? "When my temper settles, I may drive by to look."

Was the hardware store in the wrong here? He wants to know.

Sure, the hardware store should have posted signs in the parking lot near the mulch if it didn't want customers to park there. And if they didn't want customers parking there, they certainly shouldn't have instructed workers to encourage them to park there when they needed bags of mulch loaded.

But my reader isn't entirely off the hook. The pallet of bricks was in the parking lot when he arrived. He was responsible for being aware of his surroundings as he left the parking space, whether that meant avoiding the piles of mulch and gravel, the other parked cars, or pallets of goods parked there.

The right thing would have been for the manager to offer whatever assistance he could after the accident, but not to lay blame upon the customer for doing something that was customary and encouraged by the store's employees. And the right thing for the customer was to acknowledge that he made a mistake in banging up his car, and to take responsibility for his own fender bender.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing:Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business," is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

Dogged by a pet's death

2011-09-18T12:11:00.000-04:00

A woman in the Northeast owned two dogs. After deciding to take a short trip, she arranged to have a caretaker tend to the dogs she planned to leave at home. A neighbor agreed to do the job, and the owner intended to pay her for providing this service.

The owner wanted the dogs to remain in her house while she was away. She left very specific instructions for the dogs' caretaker.

Twice a day, she was to take the dogs outside, on leashes, so they could "do their business." Once a day, they were also to get a walk, again while on leash. The leashes "were a must" because the woman and her dogs lived on a very busy road.

While she was still on her trip, the owner received the devastating news that one of her dogs had been killed by a car on the busy road outside of her house.

It seems the caretaker had decided to take the dogs to her own house, on the opposite side of the busy road. So the dogs wouldn't run away, she had tied the collars of two rather large dogs with ropes to a lawn chair and then went inside. The larger of the two dogs broke loose and ran toward home and into the street and was struck by a car. The smaller dog was trying to run home, too, but didn't get far because she was pulling the lawn chair behind her.

Another neighbor found the critically injured dog and informed the caretaker.

The caretaker then took the dying animal to an animal hospital and permitted the veterinarian to try to save the dog's life to no avail. As a result of the veterinarian's work, a sizable bill was run up.

A friend of the owner who learned of the incident wrote to me to provide me with the details. She asks: "Should the owner pay the caretaker back for the vet bill?"

There are at least two reasons I believe that the owner bears no responsibility in repaying the caretaker for the bill.

The first reason is that the caretaker did not contact the owner to let her know that her dog had been hit by the car. If she had, she could have told the owner about the efforts the veterinarian was willing to make and the owner could have agreed to those efforts.

The second reason is that the caretaker clearly violated the agreement she had with the owner to care for her dogs. The deal was never to tie the dogs to a lawn chair in her own backyard. The owner explicitly asked the caretaker to agree to care for the dogs in their own home and to keep them on leashes whenever she took them out. Her violation of this agreement resulted in the dog's death.

It would have been right for the caretaker to honor her agreement with the owner. It also would have been right for her to seek permission from the owner to take extraordinary efforts in reviving the dog after it was struck by the car. It's too late for either.

Now, the right thing is for the owner to be allowed to mourn the loss of her pet without the added burden of worrying about whether she owes the caretaker anything for her haphazard behavior.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing:Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

Does the baby factor into the business deal?

2011-09-11T08:56:00.001-04:00

"Guilt is supposed to guide us back to our moral compass I had always thought," writes D.C., a reader from the Midwest. She feels "inexplicably really guilty" and is concerned that she may have done something wrong in recent business dealings with the owner of a property she is leasing to run a lodge that will open later this year.

D.C. agreed to the lease back in February. She has paid half of the cost of the lease already (tens of thousands of dollars, she indicates) and is "wholeheartedly committed to setting up the lodge." She is committed to finding lodge guests by investing in marketing and advertising.

Sometime after they'd agreed on the details of the lease, but before all of the paperwork had been signed, D.C. found out she was pregnant. It was unplanned, she writes, a "miracle" that has her over the moon about what will be her first child after a long wait.

"I chose not to tell the property owner about my pregnancy for two reasons," she writes. "First, it was my private health information, and second, pregnant women and mothers have the right to work and I did not want her to give her a chance to discriminate against me."

With just a few months to go before the hotel is to open and the final paperwork still not complete, the owner of the property somehow found out about the pregnancy and is outraged.

"I don't know how she found out," writes D.C. "It is possible she may even try to negate our agreement."

When she found out she was pregnant, D.C. hired an au pair and two extra staff members because she intended to keep on working and thought it prudent to hire the child care assistance she knows she'll need.

"I intend to work just as hard and do just as great a job now that I am going to have a child," writes D.C. "It is my reputation and my dream. I have standards and take them seriously. I hope to be able to tell my daughter I still followed my dreams even though she was coming and that even though it was hard, I provided for her and did it doing what I loved."

She wouldn't have told an employer about the pregnancy, but she reminds me that this woman is the owner of the property she is leasing, not an employer. Still, D.C. has an outstanding financial obligation to her since one half of the lease payment is still due during the term of the lease and doesn't want anything to sour her relationship.

"Did I do something wrong?" asks D.C.

Absolutely not.

D.C. did the right thing by taking steps to ensure that she could honor her business agreement once she learned of her pregnancy. The pregnancy itself should not be of any concern to the property owner as long as D.C. meets her obligations.

Any guilt D.C. might feel is likely the result of the property owner's outraged response that caught D.C. off guard. It's normal to question your own actions when someone feels something so viscerally in response.

But D.C.'s moral compass led her to be responsible and do everything she could to meet her obligations. Someday, her daughter can respond with pride about how her mother acted.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing:Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

Put your hands on the hood and your shopping bags in the car

2011-09-04T07:27:00.000-04:00

As she and her daughter were returning to their car in a Southern California mall's parking lot in, E.O. writes that she saw a woman near an SUV speaking very loudly to her young children.

"I thought it was a bit much when she told them to put their hands on the car and not to move until she got all of the things they had purchased into the car," E.O. writes. The mother's tone "kind of reminded me of a cop saying the same thing to a criminal."

E.O.'s 15-year-old daughter also witnessed the incident and said: "Mom, if you ever treated me like that, I'd probably run away." They laughed and E.O. assured her she couldn't ever treat her that way.

Still, she never considered calling the mother out on abusing her children, and believes others should wait and observe before doing anything. "If you think someone is abusive, you will see it in those minutes watching them carefully," E.O. writes. "If you don't, you could be dead wrong."

Perhaps, E.O. figured that since she witnessed the event around Christmastime, this mother might have been just another frustrated parent who had had a bit too much holiday shopping that day. "Or was it a mom who had truly lost all of her senses and needed to be picked up by authorities?" she asks.

"I didn't notice anything further that was potentially damaging to the children, so I did nothing."

E.O. recalled that her method of controlling her daughter and son when they were younger and shopping together was to hold their hands throughout the store. If that proved impossible, they left the store regardless of whether they had finished shopping.

"My best success would be telling the kids there would be a candy or ice cream stop after the store trip," she writes. "They were well behaved with that technique, believe me. They knew we'd go home without the treats if they weren't!"

The loud lady with the kids got into her car and left without further incident. E.O. and her daughter left just about the same time.

"People nowadays want to call abuse on everyone," writes E.O. "Wait and observe. You can't judge by one action alone, I say."

Still, she asks "What should someone else in my place have done to that lady?"

When E.O. writes that "she did nothing," that's not entirely accurate. After witnessing the unusual parenting of the mother, she waited and observed. Had she seen any truly abusive behavior, she then could have either decided to intervene or to call for someone to help. Because she didn't, she took no further action.

All parents find their own way to manage their children's behavior. E.O. held hands. The parking lot mother wanted to know where her children's hands were, as well, albeit in a less-nurturing manner. Ultimately, she may just have been trying to keep her children safe in a busy mall parking lot.

E.O. did the right thing by not jumping to any conclusions and instead trying to discern if there truly was a problem that placed the other mother's children in danger. We shouldn't turn a blind eye when we witness others who are in need of help, but we shouldn't jump to conclusions about people's behavior either based on one odd, but ambiguous action.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing:Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

He shoots, he scores, he comes clean

2011-08-28T10:05:00.001-04:00

[UPDATE TO STORY: "No $50,000 prize for boy who made 'miracle' shot." (THANKS TO READER WILLIAM JACOBSON FOR THE LINK.)

On Thursday, Aug. 11, 11-year-old Nick Smith's name was called out during half-time at a charity hockey game in Faribault, Minn. His father had paid $10 for the chance of a lifetime. If Nick could shoot a 3-inch-diameter hockey puck 89 feet into a target whose opening was 3.5 inches wide by 1.5 inches high, he would win $50,000.

The trouble was that Nick was hanging around with his friends at the time his name was called. So his identical twin brother, Nate, heeded the call, took to the ice and made the long shot long shot.

To most everyone's surprise -- including the professional hockey players who witnessed the shot -- Nate got the puck through the goal. But everyone -- except for Nate and his dad -- still thought that it was Nick, the brother whose ticket had been selected, who had made the shot.

Because the brothers are identical, it was unlikely the promoters would notice that the brother was the one called to make the shot.

Later, the twins' father, Pat, called one of the hockey promoters to let him know that it was the other twin who had made the goal, not the one whose name was on the ticket.

"You've got to do what's right," the dad told a reporter from Reuters. "You don't want to teach kids to lie no matter how much money is involved."

An old friend of mine, Dr. Rick Kenney, an associate professor at Florida Gulf Coast University who teaches media law and ethics, alerted me to the Smith saga shortly after it was reported. Kenney, like most everyone else, would like to see the insurance company still pay out the $50,000.

But for this situation not to be unethical, Kenney says, at least two conditions must exist. First, there was no intentional walking out of the arena to dodge the challenge by the original ticketholder. And second, there was no intent to deceive by their "twinness."

It doesn't appear as if anyone left the arena to avoid taking the shot. But it does seem like the twinness was taken advantage of.

The right thing would have been for Nate to have simply said to those who called him (or for his father to say on his behalf): "My brother isn't here, but I have his ticket. May I take his place?"

If the organizers agreed, they might have run into issues with their insurer who was paying out the money, but Nate and his dad would have been in the clear ethically.

"After he had time to think about it, the father figured out it was wrong," Kenney says. "Still, there's no taking back the original deception."

Does the family deserve to keep the $50,000 because the father decided to come clean after the fact that he has fudged on the rules of the game? He may have sent a strong message to his sons that you need to do what's right even when there are consequences, but it doesn't negate the fact that one brother pretended to be the other. The organizers may decide to pay the family some prize for the amazing shot or for the honesty after the fact or for all the publicity the incident is garnering them.

But there's no ethical obligation for them to do so. Sometimes it's just doing what's right that is the feel-good part of the act.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Let's move honestly with our kids

2011-08-21T08:49:00.001-04:00

Let's Move! was launched in February 2010, by Michelle Obama to address childhood obesity in America. The goal of the organization is to wipe out rampant childhood obesity within a generation.

By involving kids, schools and parents with a variety of educational and physical activities, Let's Move! is committed to reversing the trend toward overeating and underactive kids. While arguments can be made over what constitutes overweight, particularly in a very active child with healthy eating habits, the goal of sending a message of how important diet and exercise are to maintain health is a good one.

The effort's website is full of statistics that will likely raise any reader's concerns about just how sedentary childhood life has become. The volume of junk food consumed and television watched and video games played in place of outdoor activities is staggering. On average, Americans consumes 31 percent more calories and 15 more pounds of sugar a year than they did 40 years ago.

There's no question that finding a way to reverse this trajectory is important. And parents are a primary group targeted by Let's Move! to get the job done. Parents are encouraged to share tips online with other parents and are provided with healthy menus to feed their families.

There are also a slew of public service announcements (PSAs) that run online and as television advertisements to make the case. And it's in one of these PSAs that Let's Move! seems to have gone off cue in helping parents share the values with their children that may lead to a healthier, more active lifestyle.

I first saw the PSA when I was pumping gas and viewing those short videos that are displayed on a screen at the top of the pump. Inthe PSA, a young girl runs downstairs shouting to her mother in the kitchen that she wants a dollar. The mother glances at her purse on the counter next to her and starts to say, "Sure, it's right..." and then stops. "I think my purse is upstairs on the bed." The daughter shouts back that it's not there and then the mother suggests she try the dining room, her sister's room, and basically gets her to run around the house looking for the purse.

Eventually, the daughter comes to the kitchen, the mother laughs, and gives her daughter the dollar while the voice announces: "Moms everywhere are finding ways to keep kids active and healthy."

In the scheme of things, it may not seem a big deal. But while we're trying to get parents to instill good eating habits in their children, wouldn't it make sense to suggest they do so without lying to their kids? A small lie, perhaps, but a lie nonetheless and one that suggests to the kid that it might be appropriate to use a similar tact when she is trying to get someone to do something she wants her to do, say, her mother.

It shouldn't take a good parent much effort to find ways to keep their kids active without resorting to lies to get them to do so. Let's Move! has a terrific mandate. The right thing is for its PSAs to match the integrity of the program.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing:Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

Paying for picture-perfect referral

2011-08-14T10:58:00.000-04:00

While at a Las Vegas conference for wedding photographers, P.A., of Columbus, Ohio, decided to attend an open forum one evening.

One topic high on everyone's mind was how to market their services. A high-end wedding photographer joined the conversation by talking about how she worked with bridal salons to secure recommends.

As the high-end photographer talked, P.A. was reminded of a bridal salon in Columbus that had set a policy about 10 years earlier that required all photographers to pay for referrals. P.A. declined to participate in such a program.

"I felt that the referral would not be an honest one because the salon would only be referring people who paid them to do so," she writes.

During the discussion in Las Vegas, P.A. asked the high-end photographer if she paid salons in her area. She and several others said that they did and saw no problem with it. They likened it to paying for ad space.

P.A. has no problem paying a salon for ad space in its store or newsletter. But the paid referral feels different to her. "A bride would not know the salon had paid for this referral, and would think it was a vendor the salon trusted, not just someone who paid for the referral."

Many of her fellow wedding photographers in Las Vegas disagreed. When P.A. asked if any of them asked for a referral fee from salons for recommending brides to them, all said, "No."

While she knows that a salon would likely have a lot more clients to refer to photographers than the other way around, P.A. also believes "it is unfair for someone to ask for money from us, but not be willing to pay for the same service from us."

"I feel the kickback taints the referral," writes P.A. "If the salon wants to do it that way, it should tell its clients somehow, perhaps by calling it a list of 'preferred vendors' or something, but not call it a 'referral.'"

There are many instances in business where a premium is paid by a product or service provider for better placement or mention. For years, supermarkets have charged food distributors slotting fees for premium shelf space. Book publishers have paid extra for having their titles featured on the end caps of bookshelves or on spotlighted tables throughout the bookstore.

Whenever there are many product or service providers vying for the same consumers, an opportunity arises to charge more for better access to those consumers.

So, it's no surprise that such a practice occurs within the bridal industry.

But my reader is correct to suggest that the right thing is to let consumers know what's behind such referrals. The married-couples-to-be should be allowed to judge for themselves whether it matters that a photographer has paid to be mentioned by a bridal salon. If it's more important to them that they get a recommendation unsullied by a financial transaction, then they can solicit such opinions from friends or other service providers that don't charge referral fees.

There's nothing wrong with the practice as long as everyone involved knows the practice is going on.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing:Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

When and when not to take employer to task

2011-08-07T09:49:00.000-04:00

Companies that don't give prospective employees who've been brought in for interviews the courtesy of some sort of response even if they don't get the job are wrong. That's what I wrote a few months ago and I believe it as strongly today.

But that column generated a letter from the Columbus, Ohio, mother of a college freshman. When her daughter was home over Christmas break, her parents encouraged her to start sending out her resume and filling out applications for summer work.

Her parents knew jobs were becoming more difficult to find before "those who had lost their jobs would also be competing with all the students in the area."

The daughter applied to three places. By late spring, only one prospective employer had responded. The daughter was invited in for an interview. At the end of the interview, the daughter was offered the job.

"As for the other two employers," her mother writes, "I was disappointed and frustrated, as was she, that they did not respond to her follow-up emails and phone calls."

The mother says that she herself has applied for many jobs in her lifetime. Almost always, she was given the courtesy of at least a letter when the employer chose not to interview her or hire her for a position.

"My daughter was ignored and I found this rude," she writes. "This is not teaching our younger generation any good lesson about proper etiquette and common courtesy."

The mother points out that my column "makes the case that employers owe their applicants this kind of respect."

"What is your recommendation about how the applicant should politely point this out to employers when this respect is not shown?" she asks. She hopes such a letter would force employers to "make the necessary improvements" for future applicants, but she also wouldn't want her daughter to "burn any bridges" by writing it.

Tempting as it might be to write that letter to "politely" let prospective employers know about their rudeness, this might not be the best route.

In his book, Leading Quietly: An Unorthodox Guide to Doing the Right Thing (HBS Press, 2002), Joseph Badaracco makes a case for the use of restraint when faced with such circumstances. If the goal is to get the company to change its practices, then receiving a letter from someone about how disrespectful it was not to call her back might not do the trick. The potential downside (closing the door on future possibilities, for example) may outweigh the upside (feeling better about getting a slight off your chest).

The right thing is to figure out how best to get a desired message across as effectively as possible. Rather than write the businesses to point out their shortcomings, the daughter might consider writing a letter to each of the companies that didn't give her the courtesy of any response to let them know that since she'd applied, she wanted them to know that while she hadn't heard back from them yet she was offered and took a position at another company. By politely letting the companies know of her changed employment situation, she also lets them know that another company not only got back to her, but offered her a job. She stays positive, gets her message across, burns no bridges -- and gets to enjoy the summer working.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing:Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

Setting things right when things go your way

2011-07-31T10:05:00.000-04:00

It doesn't take much to figure out that when a business overcharges you or doesn't get you the right products you ordered that the right thing is to make the business set things straight. But what about when a company errs in your favor?

Let me tell you about D.G., a reader from Connecticut. Some time ago, D.G. wrote me to let me know how important it was not only to correct businesses when they overcharge a customer, but also to let those companies know when they have mistakenly given you "something extra or not deserved."

In such instances, D.G. writes: "You have an obligation and duty to try to make things right."

D.G. isn't just talking a good game.

While he says that he writes "many letters complaining about poor service," he is also quick to write a letter when he has received something by mistake or that he does not deserve.

He leaves it up to the recipients of his letters to decide what to do once he has sent off his correction.

After D.G. had rented a car in Colorado for three days, for example, he received a bill that only charged him for two days. A letter went off to the rental car company informing it of the mistake. He has not heard back from the company.

When he used accumulated frequent flier miles to take a free trip, D.G. received mileage credit for that free trip he shouldn't have. "I wrote and pointed this out, but it was never corrected," he writes. In the same letter, D.G. had thanked the airline for getting him to his destination during a major snowstorm. He wonders if the airline receives so few letters of thanks that it just let him keep the miles.

Several years ago, when D.G. was in Japan, he ran up a hotel bill of roughly $2,000. Because the bill was delayed for more than three months, the total shot up to $2,300 because of currency rate changes. He refused to pay the extra $300 and disputed the bill for almost nine months, arguing that had the hotel processed his bill in a more timely fashion he would not have been assessed the extra charge. Eventually, the hotel sent him a letter telling him it planned to write off the entire $2,300 as a loss.

"I wrote back and sent a check for the $2,000 I felt I owed," writes D.G. "It would have been completely unethical to do otherwise."

D.G. wasn't trying to get out of paying his bill. He merely wanted to be charged fairly. When the hotel caved on its demands, D.G. wanted no part of it. He owed what he owed, he figured, and he was obligated to pay up.

"To be truly ethical," writes D.G., "I believe people have an obligation to correct mistakes that fall to their favor or against them."

D.G. is right. In each instance, he did the right thing by alerting companies when they made a mistake in his favor. How those companies choose to respond is up to them, but it would be good practice to let customers like D.G. know how much they appreciate their honesty.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing:Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

Friendship can help erode barriers

2011-07-24T09:23:00.000-04:00

A reader in Ohio has muscular dystrophy.

There are more than 30 diseases that fall under the categorization of muscular dystrophy, but roughly 50 percent of all cases of childhood muscular dystrophy are reported to be Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Currently, there is no cure and a person's muscular dystrophy grows worse as his muscles weaken. According to the Centers for Disease Control, about 400 to 600 boys born in the United States each year are born with Duchenne and Becker (which typically occurs later than Duchenne) forms of muscular dystrophy.

For years, my reader writes that he was able to get around without the aid of a wheelchair. But over time, his muscles have deteriorated to the point where he is beginning to need his wheelchair full time to get around.

"My friends and family mean everything to me and I depend on them a great deal," my reader writes. "My friends and family are doing whatever they can to make their homes accessible for me so I am not left out of activities."

But my reader knows that his wheelchair can be unforgiving when he tries to navigate around doorways or across hardwood floors. He knows that rubber tires might sometimes leave marks on rugs or carpeting. Inevitably, he says that he knows that he will damage something in someone's home.

"I will feel terrible about any damage I cause," he writes.

He wants to know what he should do when he damages something. Complicating matters is that many times, he will have no idea that he's damaged something unless someone points it out to him.

"I want to be invited, and I also want to be a good guest," he writes. "But I can't fix every scratch I may make or clean every tire track I leave on the rug."

He wonders what he should do.

The right thing for my reader to do is to enjoy the company of his friends and family as much as he possibly can.

Like anyone else, he should take care not to mindlessly damage or dirty wherever he happens to be visiting. But it's clear that he already is considerate and knowledgeable about the havoc a wheelchair might cause in an area not built to accommodate wheelchairs.

Because he has a good relationship with his friends and family, when he is invited to their homes, he should let them know -- if they don't already -- that his wheelchair may leave a scuff mark or two and that it's challenging for him to navigate through narrow doorways or tight turns. Any accommodations they can make without going to great expense would reflect their desire to continue to have him be part of their gatherings.

If he does notice that any damage has been caused, then, like any gracious guest, the right thing is to apologize for any inconvenience caused.

As his disease progresses, he will likely have many challenges facing him. With the support of his family and friends, worrying about whether or not he can be at ease in their homes should not be one of those challenges.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Driving high and paying the consequences

2011-07-17T10:10:00.000-04:00

A reader in Ohio is at a loss about what to do.

A friend of a friend of hers, writes my reader, drives while "being impaired by marijuana." She's worried that the driver, who lives in her neighborhood is endangering the life of her friend, who sometimes rides with her, and her family, who share the same roads.

Apparently, the fellow has already caused an accident that injured another driver, but, "clearly that wasn't a wake-up enough call to stop."

My reader says she has considered speaking with the impaired driver's wife to share her story about one of her relatives who is serving jail time for a fatal drunk-driving accident and the impact it has had on her family. She'd emphasize the possible consequences for the wife: "death (since impaired drivers tend to kill people riding in their cars), injury, possible lawsuits and loss of a breadwinner." The driver and his wife have three children.

Since the wife does not seem to object to her husband's behavior, my reader considers the odds of this approach being successful to be very low.

She also has considered calling in and reporting his behavior to the authorities, which, she reasons, "could result in additional legal action that could also cost the family its breadwinner."

But calling in to report the driver worries my reader, since it might lose her the friend who sometimes rides with the dope smoking driver if the friend finds out she reported the driver.

"Are there other options I have available to me?" she asks. "Ethically, I feel I need to do something."

My reader's concern about her friend's safety should trump her worry that she will somehow annoy her by calling attention to the impaired driver's actions. The safety of her friend, her own family, her neighbors and anyone else who comes across this fellow's driving path trumps other concerns she's raised.

While the reader doesn't believe the driver's wife will act on her concerns, my reader should exercise whatever routes she can reasonably and legally undertake to try to get this fellow off the road when he is under the influence. She should also stress to her friend that she risks her own life every time she rides as a passenger with this fellow when he is high.

Of course, she has no way of knowing for certain when the driver is operating under the influence. Calling the authorities to register a complaint that she suspects a neighbor of hers sometimes operates under the influence of marijuana is not likely the most effective approach to solve this neighborhood problem. But if she sees him driving erratically in her neighborhood, the right thing is to call the authorities and register her concern. Again, safety trumps concerns about hurt feelings.

But concern about safety sometimes also trumps fearing that you will come off as preachy or judgmental for trying to right some wrong. The consequences of doing nothing in this situation far outweigh the alternatives.

"I don't want to do nothing and later wish I had after someone is harmed," writes my reader.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business," is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Flying high with integrity and honor

2011-07-10T08:57:00.001-04:00

I'm not the most confident airline passenger. Regardless of how many times Bernoulli's principle is explained to me, I'm still a nervous flier.

So I'm not one to complain about long security lines. I figure anything that results in delaying my having to set foot on an aircraft is not a bad thing. Besides, I'm all for the Transportation Safety Administration folks doing whatever they can to make my flights safe.

I was a bit surprised, but not displeased, to learn awhile back that as part of its "competency development activities" in the area of integrity and honesty, the TSA recommends two of my books, one a collection of early "The Right Thing" columns.

The TSA defines integrity and honesty reflected in someone who "behaves in an honest, fair and ethical manner," someone who "shows consistency in words and actions" and someone who "models high standards of ethics."

Does knowing that the TSA uses my books as part of its training diminish my fear of flight? Not really. I've yet to see a TSA operative on break thumbing through the pages of one of my works, and even if I had, I'm not certain the most ethical TSA agent in the country has anything to do with ensuring the mechanical workings of the planes I'm about to board.

But its use of the books reminded me that some time ago, I learned that Microsoft also lists "The Right Thing" book as a recommended title on its education site in the integrity and trust competency area.

When I first learned this some years ago, I found it curious since one of the columns in the book calls into question Microsoft CEO's admonition to his employees to act with consistent values. In a message to the company's employees, the CEO wrote values "must shine through all our interactions -- in our work groups, across teams, with partners, within our industry, and, most of all, with customers." At the time I wrote the column, Microsoft was embroiled in antitrust issues that called into question its own consistency with what it claimed to value.

Do I have a responsibility to check with Microsoft to see if it knew it was recommending a book that questioned the company on the very issue for which it was recommending my book? Perhaps I'd be surprised that this was precisely why the company chose the title. Then again, it's the last chapter in the book, so whoever chose the title might not have gotten that far.

It's a question that's gnawed at me for some time. The right thing, I figured, was to let the folks who read the book decide for themselves if it was useful in spite of or because of that Microsoft chapter.

If the contents of the book provide TSA workers or Microsoft employees with any insight into behaving with ethics and honesty, that would be a good thing. It might not comfort me about the reliability of my computer software or the safety of being 35,000 in the air, but it might reassure me about the character of the people building the software and working the front lines of safety.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

It's not the gift, it's the equity that counts

2011-07-03T09:27:00.000-04:00

"I need your advice," a reader from Southern California, writes.

Since my reader raised her two stepchildren from the time they were 7 and 5 years old, she considers them her kids. "So I am grandmother to seven and great-grandma to five."

One of her granddaughters has three children and, after the first of the year, is planning to marry a man with three children of his own. For the past five years, while her granddaughter has been going to school, my reader has been helping to support her and her children.

"I have been Santa to them also," she writes. She gives her granddaughter's three teenage children $200 and a gift at Christmas.

Her granddaughter's fiance's three children are about the same age, but she has only seen them four times since they live about 100 miles away from her.

"My question is: Should I give them the same $200?"

If not, she wants to know if she should give it to them after her granddaughter's marriage early next year.

"I have tried to keep things even with my grandchildren and great grandchildren unless there is a special need," she writes. She always asks the parents of the kids if it is OK for her to give a gift of any sort.

Clearly, my reader is quite generous to her granddaughter and her granddaughter's children. What's also clear is that, from early on, she hasn't made a distinction between children and stepchildren. So it would be in keeping with the way she's led her parental life to treat her granddaughter's stepchildren just as she does her granddaughter's children.

For my reader to start drawing a distinction now between stepchildren and biological children when it comes to gift giving would seem to fly in the face of how hard she seems to have tried to avoid such distinctions in the past.

There is no reason that she must start giving the same types of gifts to her granddaughter's fiance's children until after the wedding. Of course, children talk, so it would be understandable if my reader wanted to avoid any awkwardness around gift-giving time. While it's her call, if she does decide to give such sizeable gifts to her granddaughter's fiance's children, my reader might want to clear it with their father, just as she clears such things with the parents of her own grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Even after the marriage, while she may be committed to treating all the children equally, there is no reason that she must continue to give each of the kids $200. How much she decides to give, or whether she decides to gives gifts instead of cash, is totally up to her.

In the past, I've made clear that I believe there is nothing inherently unethical about a parent doing more for one child than for another if the parent believes it appropriate to do so. Such decisions are totally at the discretion of the parent.

But to my reader, "keeping things even" is an expressed goal. The right thing is for my reader to be true to her convictions and not draw any distinction among her great grandchildren.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Speaking up to bad public behavior

2011-06-26T10:30:00.000-04:00

We've all witnessed bad behavior in public.

Dave H., a reader from Sacramento, Calif., is perplexed about an appropriate response to the many such incidents of "boorish behavior" in public he has witnessed.

A few weeks ago, just before he pulled up to a stoplight at an intersection, the passenger-side door of a car in the lane next to him opened up. The woman inside the car reached out and emptied a bag full of garbage onto the street -- fast-food wrappers, banana peels, tissues, and "who knows what else," he recalls.

"I gave her my best look of stern disapproval," Dave H., writes. "But as we sat there waiting for the light to change, I wanted to do something else, perhaps a short teachable moment lecture, but I could think of nothing."

Dave has had similar feelings in the past when witnessing other bad public behavior such as people talking in a movie theater or people sneaking unpaid samples of fruit or nuts at the market.

"When one observes these types of behaviors," Dave asks, "is it ethical to allow such incidents to go by without comment?"

My neighbor, Ray, wouldn't likely think so.

Last summer, when we were at the movies, a distracting glow emanated from several seats in front of us. It took a while to become clear that the glow was the light coming from a young man's cellphone on which he was texting.

Many moviegoers noticed, but it was Ray who got up, tapped the fellow on the shoulder, and asked if he could take his phone outside the theater if he needed to use it so the rest of the audience wouldn't be disturbed. The young man slunk down in his seat and turned off his phone for the rest of the movie.

Ray wasn't aggressive in approaching the texter. But he refused to allow one person to disrupt the rest of the audience without saying something to the disrupter.

Ethics is "how we behave when we decide we belong together," write Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers in their book, A Simpler Way (Berrett-Koehler, 1996). Dumping trash onto public streets and texting in the movie theater are not widely accepted ways of "belonging together." Each incident reflects unethical behavior.

In addressing the texter in the movie theater, Ray acted ethically to address the wrong-headed behavior. But those who didn't speak up were not wrong, just as Dave H. was not wrong in not giving his litterer a "teachable moment."

When faced with many possible right choices, the challenging part of doing ethics comes in figuring out what is the best right thing to do. Giving a stern look at the litterer may have been the best right choice Dave H. could muster at the time. Given a few minutes to reflect -- as Ray had time to do after witnessing the texter's glow -- Dave might have come up with an even stronger right response.

He did the right thing though by signaling his disapproval to the litterer. Sure, the litter remained on the road and the likelihood that the culprit will strike again is strong, but as long as there are people who are willing to address inappropriate behavior as it occurs, there's hope that the majority of us will continue to refrain from boorish behavior . . . and recognize it when we see it.

Jeffrey L. Seglin is the author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be defaulters

2011-06-19T10:02:00.000-04:00

His intentions were good. About seven years ago, a father, then 60, wanted to help his son, then in his late 30s, finance the small business he had started. Against his wife's advice, the father took out a home equity loan and borrowed just over $330,000 in his and his wife's name to loan their son.

During this time, the mother says, their son used the money to maintain "a very lavish lifestyle."

Initially, the son made a few payments on the borrowed money, but then he stopped. Soon, however, the son stopped making monthly payments on the debt. The bank sold off the debt to a collection firm.

The father and mother were on the hook for the money, since it had been borrowed against the value of their home.

The couple paid a lawyer roughly $2,500 to negotiate with the collection firm, which agreed to settle the $330,000-plus debt for $100,000. The couple paid off the $100,000 this past spring.

The son has tried, unsuccessfully so far, to get a loan under his own name, so he can pay back $100,000 to his parents.

The father, now in his late 60s, and the mother, now in her early 60s, are still working, but find themselves with a depleted nest egg and a tarnished credit rating because of their son's failure to honor his commitment to them to pay back the home equity loan.

The mother asks if their son owes them the $330,000 originally borrowed, or the $100,000 that the couple negotiated as a settlement.

Her husband keeps telling her that his accountant tells him that legally the son only owes them the $100,000. But she disagrees and wants to adjust his inheritance by the $330,000, "which would mean he would get very little."

"What is the fair and right thing to do?" the mother asks.

It's clear the mother is very upset with her son's behavior. But since she and her husband will only be out of pocket the $100,000 plus the $2,500 in legal fees, the right thing is for their son to repay them those amounts.

Granted, by defaulting on the loan payments, their son wrecked his parents' credit rating. But sadly, that's a risk they took by agreeing to put their house on the line for a loan they gave him on his fledging business.

His mother is upset that her son used the $330,000 in part to sustain his lavish lifestyle. But since she and her husband are only liable for $100,000 of that debt, that plus the legal fees are what they're owed.

If the parents want to adjust their son's inheritance, they can do that. They have the right to do whatever they want with their money.

But when they entered into the agreement with their son to borrow against the equity in their house to help him financially, they knew the risks they were taking when they did that. No adjustment to an inheritance will get their credit rating back or change how their son behaved once they loaned him the money.

Thankfully, the mother has gotten her husband to agree not to loan their son any more money to help him with his business.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@omcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Prospective employers should break their silence

2011-06-12T08:53:00.000-04:00

As newly graduated college students hit the job market, they'll find themselves eager to get their foot in the door to secure interviews for prospective jobs. They've been counseled by their college career offices and former professors to get themselves in front of as many prospective employers as possible since you never know what might result from a positive interview experience.

At the same time, recently laid off workers are vying for new jobs that they'll only be able to find by first finding someone willing to interview them for a possible position.

And with mandatory retirement ages disappearing in Canada and full-retirement calculations for Social Security in the United States being raised to 67 by 2027, more and more older workers are likely to be keeping old or vying for new jobs, as well.

There's a lot of interviewing for new employment that going on and it's unlikely that the volume of activity is going to stop anytime soon -- even if the interviews don't always lead to a job.

Too often, I've noted in the past, prospective employees are left in the dark after an interview without ever getting a letter or a call to let them know they haven't been chosen for a position. Even when they're given a standard, "We'll be in touch," too often no word follows.

PJB, a reader in Southern California, took me to task awhile back for arguing strenuously that employers owe it to prospective employees to let them know if they don't get job for which they have been invited in for an interview.

"It's always better to say nothing than to say something that might cause a problem for the company," writes PJB. "Never send a job rejection in writing which contains a rationale for the decision. Several of my HR and recruiter friends have told me this is the case."

While it might be helpful for a prospective employee to know where he or she fell short of the mark, I have no illusions that most companies will take the time to give a rationale for why they didn't make a hire. But companies should take the time to tell people they brought in for an interview whether or not they got the job.

Not doing so as a precaution against potential liability seems to fall in the category of human resource departments and their attorneys spending too much time looking at whether a behavior is legal vs. whether it is right.

If every business relationship is based on any fear of potential liability that every labor lawyer or human resources director ever had, it's hard to believe anything would ever get accomplished in business. It certainly wouldn't reflect a workplace conducive to productivity.

If they're going to take the time to call someone in for a job interview, then prospective employers should make it their business to notify all interviewees who didn't get the job. Silence accomplishes little but to initially get a prospect's hopes up and then to breed ill will when no word ever comes.

Notifying prospective employees who came in for an interview is both the right thing and the civil thing for any prospective employer to do.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Appreciating those who make ends meet

2011-06-05T08:17:00.000-04:00

It took two weeks for a nurse who recently lost her job to find a new position. Complicating matters was that in addition to the two weeks she was without a paying job, she had to wait until the end of her first month on the new job to receive her first paycheck from her new employer.
With no savings to speak of, the former nurse needed some short-term cash to make ends meet.

"I personally had to make some money and did not know what to do," she writes.

Desperate for cash, and unable to think of other options, she decided to go through her neighborhood and collect refundable cans from her neighbors' recycling bins.

"I collected six garbage bags full of crushed cans that brought $17.50 at the local recycling center," she writes. "This was enough money to make sure I could eat for a week."

She is quick to point out that she is neither homeless nor someone trying to steal identifying information from others' trash. But she reports that the dirty looks she got from several people was enough to take any amount of pride she had left, "which, given that I was going through others' garbage, wasn't much."

"There are times in life when you just have to do what you have to do," she writes.

The experience has made her reflective. "It's sad that big companies make all the money and get rich off these discarded products, but a person who walks the neighborhood collecting cans, crushes them, and drives them to the recycling center trying to eat for a week gets ridiculed."

In the past, I've written about people who comb neighborhood recycling bins for returnable cans and bottles. Some readers have wondered whether it's wrong to do so. My take has been that as long as the property owners don't object, the recyclables are fair game.

On occasion, when I notice the gentleman who makes the weekly rounds of recycling bins in my neighborhood, I bring him a bag of cans and bottles to add to his collection.

Readers have pointed out that some municipalities count on the money from recycled cans and bottles to offset the cost of municipal recycling programs. That's true, but I still believe strongly that the right thing is for the property owners to do whatever they want with their recyclables, whether it's to recycle them themselves, leave them for pickup by the town, or encourage neighbors scavenging for cans to take them.

"Just try not to judge," the former nurse writes. "You never know when it could be you trying to make the few extra dollars just to survive."

My reader is right. Judging people who are trying to make ends meet for whatever reason they may have found themselves having to do so accomplishes nothing but to make them feel worse about what might already be a miserable situation. It's better to simply decide whether or no you want to help without passing judgment.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Send me your questions and stories for The Right Thing column

2011-05-31T19:46:00.000-04:00

For the weekly newspaper ethics column I write for the Tribune Media Services Syndicate called "The Right Thing," I am always looking for stories of ethical challenges, dilemmas, and perplexing situations. If you have such a story or question based on an incident and would like it to be considered for the column, please email it to me at rightthing@comcast.net.

Please make sure to include enough details about the story, the issue that you're wrestling with, and your name and the city and state or province where you are located. Include a way for me to contact you.

If you know of others who might have interesting stories, please forward this on to them by clicking on the envelope below.

Thanks in advance for your stories.

Cake incident leaves bad taste

2011-05-29T10:25:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a representative from a small PC repair business who assisted me when I called frantically looking for help in getting my seemingly dead laptop working. The fellow walked me through a few procedures on the phone, helped me get things up and going, and refused to take any payment for his phone advice.

Many readers took me to task for not mentioning the PC business by name.

"I applaud you for even mentioning the customer service things that we small businesses do to keep customers loyal," writes Ken Elie, president of Outdoor Pro Shop Inc., in Cotati, Calif. "You would have been my hero if you had mentioned the man and his business."

Jim Armstrong of Potter Valley, Calif., notes that while the PC repair guy might revel in his newfound business relationship, "I'll betcha he would rather you had made finding him possible for others in your situation."

And Paul Klonsky of Rohnert Park, Calif., writes that the way he rewards a company "that acts ethically like they did with your situation," is to write a review of it using social media, whether it's a tweet, a post on Facebook, or a review on Yelp or Google Places. "More and more, I check these social media sites to verify if a business is worth its salt," he writes. "Yours certainly was!"

They make excellent points. The right thing would have been to mention Cape Coastal Computers of Falmouth, Mass., by name when I wrote about them. Good works deserve notice.

More often than not, however, customers don't take the time to report good news online. When something bad happens, that's a whole other story.

After a recent incident with a bakery just outside of Minneapolis, a customer took to the Web with a vengeance. She detailed how she had ordered a $300 cake for her daughter's wedding. Initially, she was told there would be a $20 delivery fee. But when she went to the bakery to make the final payment, she was informed that all deliveries cost $40.

The customer insisted she had been promised the lower rate and wanted it honored. The clerk insisted policy was policy. The customer was told she could pick up the cake for free or pay the extra $20. Those were the only options, she was told. Ultimately, the owner of the bakery apologized that whoever quoted them the $20 fee was incorrect. The discussion continued and grew increasingly heated. Ultimately, the customer canceled her cake order.

"She lost a $300 sale over $20," the customer says, "and lost a lot of potential great referrals."

The right thing would have been for the bakery to honor the original delivery price. A commitment is a commitment. Honoring the price would have indicated that the bakery stood by its word and it would have built good faith.

So will I name the bakery? No. Good deeds deserve a good mention, as my readers have wisely pointed out. No good deeds were engaged in by the bakery in this particular case which may or may not be an aberration. Be advised, however, to check your local online review sites if you are in the market for a wedding cake.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

When customer service goes bad

2011-05-24T07:26:00.000-04:00

Customer service, when done well, can create loyal customers. Done poorly, it can wreak havoc on a business' reputation that goes far beyond the initial bad encounter.

Given the vast abundance of websites that allow customers to review their consumer experiences, good word can spread quickly about employees who go beyond expectations to help customers.

But bad word can spread even more rapidly. A musician whose guitar is damaged on a flight might, for example, take to YouTube with an original song detailing his instrument's travails and find more than 10 million people viewing his melodic complaint.

Good news travels. Bad news explodes.

Many spurned customers take some solace in going as far as they can to share their shopping pain. But some customers just want to know how far they should go in trying to set things straight. Is it enough to correct a bad transaction? Or should extra steps be taken to make sure the poor customer service provider is held accountable?

P.B., a reader from Charlotte, N.C., recently made a purchase using one of his credit cards. He approached a sales associate to make the payment.

"The associate wasn't eager to help," writes P.B., "rendering no greeting, exhibiting no eye contact, and taking the card rather flippantly."

On the associate's first attempt to swipe P.B.'s card, the associate told him that the transaction failed.

P.B. asks if there is a problem. Silence from the associate.

A second swipe of the card also fails. Now, P.B. is growing concerned, particularly because a third swipe of his card follows. Finally, the associate indicates that transaction was successful and he returns P.B.'s credit card. P.B. leaves frustrated by the experience, but figures at least his objective of paying for his goods has been reached.

A few weeks later, P.B. receives his credit card statement. Apparently, all three of his credit card swipes went through and he is being charged three times for the single transaction.

He calls his credit card company, which corrects the error without any fuss.

Now that he's done that, P.B. wants to know if he should notify the company directly about the errors and its associate's indifference. "Or should I take no action, chalking it up to poor customer service and apathy?"

Anyone who has worked in retail knows how challenging working with belligerent customers can be. But providing good customer service for routine transactions should always be the norm.

Had P.B.'s situation just involved a rude associate, he might chalk it up to bad experience and take his business elsewhere. But given that his encounter resulted in incorrect charges made to his credit card, the right thing is to notify the business. It not only puts the company on notice that one of its employees is risking its reputation, but also lets it know that the same associate may be exposing the business to financial problems down the road if his inability to process credit card payments continues.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Appreciating the gift of arts

2011-05-15T09:05:00.001-04:00

A reader in Boston says he is "troubled" by a question regarding art and the public interest. "On the face of it," he writes, "the answer is simple, though I disagree with it completely."

Two museums that he regularly visits are made up of art from a single collector: The Barnes Museum in Philadelphia, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

"They share hallmarks lauded by many," he writes, "which I find repugnant. In each museum, the works have been arranged on the walls according to the whims of the collector and the wills of each collector stipulate that the works must be kept so in perpetuity."

He points out that the works in each museum represent tremendous milestones in art history, but that they are displayed in rooms that are "often dim, and at angles or heights which prevent adequate viewing, much less careful study."

What's more, the paintings and sculpture in each museum, he reports, lack titles or any text that might indicate their context or place within artistic timelines. "Furthermore, the works are forbidden to travel at all, thus robbing many large exhibitions of works which establish the full range and development of the artists on which they focus."

Based on all of these facts, he wonders if there is "any point in time at which the wills of the original collectors should, in furtherance of the education of artists and students and the enrichment of the public, be broken." To put it another way, he writes: "Could there be an ethical justification for artistic eminent domain?"

When art collectors donate paintings, sculpture or other pieces of art to museums, the museum staff likely has more control over how art is exhibited on the museum walls. When the museum itself is owned by the collector, the stipulation of how he or she wanted the art to be exhibited on the walls of their former homes is likely not as flexible.

Granted, there are bound to be as many art aficionados who love the quirk of museums like the Gardner and the Barnes precisely because of the unusual stipulations placed upon their holdings. (The Frick Collection in Manhattan is another such jewel that's among my personal favorites.)

There may come a time, as the reader notes, when there is mounting pressure to alter the stipulations of the wills of those whose collections are on display at a particular locale. It is possible that a good team of lawyers might be able to attack the original provisions of these wills.

But it might be good to remember when bemoaning the organizational choices of these benefactors, that they each also had the choice of willing the art to other private collectors upon their death. They also could have decided to break up their collections before their deaths selling off the individual pieces to other collectors. That they chose instead to leave their collections to be open for public viewing shouldn't be lost in determining what the most appropriate venue for viewing should be.

The right thing, I believe, is to honor the wishes of collectors who leave their homes and collections for public viewing without allowing others to take ownership because they "know better" how the art should be used. Like most gifts, of course, we can choose to take them or leave them.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Fixing a PC without a charge and building loyalty

2011-05-08T09:16:00.000-04:00

The main computer I use for writing and other projects is a laptop. It often travels with me when I am on the road. It's a sturdy model, four years old with plenty of memory. It's one I'm likely to replace with a similar model when this one passes its useful lifespan.

Rarely has the laptop given me trouble. If I'm traveling, when I get to my new location, I boot the computer up, find the wireless signal, and get to work.

All went well until a few Fridays ago, when I arrived at my destination, opened up the laptop, tried to boot it up, and . . . nothing. None of the lights indicating it's getting power of any sort came on. Thinking I might have drained my battery without knowing it, I got the power cord and plugged that in. Nothing.

Deadlines loomed. Needed files sat locked on the laptop.

I tried taking the battery out and putting it back in. Still nothing.

Without Internet access to go online to seek assistance, I found the local area's Yellow Pages located in a drawer. Under "computers," I found an advertisement for a nearby PC service business. I called the number, found out they were open until 5 (giving me an hour until closing) and then open from 9 to 2 on Sunday.

But then the fellow on the phone asked me what was wrong.

"Have you tried taking the battery out?" he asked. I told him that and proceeded to answer similarly to other questions he posed.

"Could the computer be kaput?" I asked him.

"Not likely, but it's possible."

He told me I could bring it in for a diagnostic and that they'd get it back to me the following morning. "But before you do that," he said. "Try something for me." He then proceeded to give me instructions that involved removing all power from the machine and trying to turn it on.

I was dubious. How could doing anything when no power was going to the computer fix anything, I wondered.

But failing other options, I did as he instructed. Unplug, remove battery, press power-on, reinstall battery, plug in . . . and then, within seconds, the power lights came on. And upon pressing the power-on button, the computer booted up.

The fellow at the computer store reassured me that my computer would be back to working normally now. He attempted to explain why the computer had appeared dead and how the steps he gave me restored it.

I gushed thanks and asked him if I owed him anything for his advice.

"No," he said. "I'm just glad we got it working."

Some marketers might believe that the right thing would have been for him to tell me to come into his store and then charge me to do what he had just instructed me to do for free over the phone. Some owners might scold employees who fail to capture income over such transactions.

But in terms of showing compassion for a clearly distraught caller, even though he might not have made any money on this particular transaction, he built a business relationship that is not likely to be forgotten soon.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Websites that have links should disclose them

2011-05-01T06:48:00.000-04:00

It's tough for all but those with the largest audiences to make any significant money from their blogs. Add-on ad pages that pay based on click-throughs or orders don't generally generate enough to replace a salary you'd get at a more traditional job.

Increasingly, there are efforts to help bloggers tap whatever income they can from outfits that seek to capitalize on that tapping as well.

Affiliate marketing has been around for a quite awhile. It enables website owners to make money if viewers buy products through links on the site. To really make these affiliate-marketing relationships work financially as requires a website owner to sign up with a plethora of individual affiliate programs.

A reader writes that she used to work for a website that built itself on an affiliate model. But it concerned her that her website never disclosed that it was earning a commission on things you bought through links on the website that the website just happened to write about.

"I find this pretty sketchy," she writes, "and it's one of the reasons I stopped working for the company . . . particularly because part of my job was to write the most glowing reviews for the companies that were paying us the best commissions. Ugh!"

Now, she notes, there are companies that enable you to automatically create affiliate links without having to sign up for each account individually. Instead, you sign up with these companies and if you write about how great a company is, a link in your post is automatically created to direct readers to the site you wrote about. If someone buys something from that site after going there through your link, even if the purchase happens much later, the sending website owner makes money -- thanks to "cookies" that continue to track users for days after their initial visit. The buyer would not likely know that the referring site was making money from the company where they made their purchase, unless they were seasoned enough to recognize what an affiliate link looks like.

"So what's the ethical verdict on affiliates and sites like this that allow you to sign on with multiple affiliates as one time?" my reader asks. "Do sites need to disclose if they're making money off of visitor clicks? Or, if visitors would be willing to buy a product anyway, is it A-OK for referring sites to benefit financially without them knowing?"

My take is simple. The right thing is that if a website or blog could receive money based on what it writes about, this should be disclosed to visitors. An exception might be products produced by the website owners themselves, since it should be obvious that people generally make money off the things they make and sell. But if links are embedded in website write-ups that drive a reader to a site to buy something and the linker can make money off the purchasers, such relationships should be clearly disclosed to a reader.

Full disclosure of such relationships is the honest approach. It also helps readers know if there are potential biases in any reviews on the site. If they know that someone might make money from the things he reviews, it's up to the reader to decide how trustworthy such a review is.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

When it comes to recommendations, write on

2011-04-24T06:51:00.000-04:00

A reader poses what he identifies as a real "ethics puzzler." His former partner's son -- his self-identified "de factor former stepson" -- is finishing up his undergraduate degree and is now applying to graduate school.

In the past, even after the relationship with his mother had ended, the former stepson had occasionally asked his former stepfather to write reference letters for him for various academic or service programs. "He got into all of them," his stepfather writes. The stepson would always ask him to write the letters not from the perspective of a parent but as "someone who had assisted in homes schooling him and had been a family friend nearly all his life."

Because his stepfather is a college professor, his stepson figured his academic credentials would lend credibility to the letters he wrote.

"But I always told him that I would preface any letter with a full transparency statement indicating that I had been in effect his stepfather for a period of time."

The relationship with his former stepson's mother is now almost 15 years behind him. Still, he and his former stepson "speak pretty regularly, rendezvous when convenient, and in a pinch, with good news or bad, still connect as family."

Now that the former stepson is applying to graduate school, he still wants to help, but he wonders if at this higher level of education his relationship with him might be "too close."

"On the other hand," he writes, "I know him better than almost anybody, and I think I actually can evaluate his potential quite clearly.

"What do you think?" he asks.

It is unusual for a parent to write a recommendation letter for his child. Even when they do, they might not be considered as strongly as those that come from teachers or others outside of family. Clearly, a family member has an inherent bias and is unlikely to write anything but a letter teetering on being a panegyric for the candidate.

But there's nothing unethical about a parent writing a letter if he chooses to do so, as long as he does precisely as my reader has done in the past, and identifies his relationship to the candidate clearly from the outset of the letter.

Does it make any difference now that the former stepson is applying to graduate school? No. If his former stepfather feels that he can shed light on his academic abilities as well as his character in a way that no one else can and that he feels is important for the prospective graduate school to know, the right thing is for him to write that letter with as much transparency and conviction as he has done in the past.

From a practical standpoint, many graduate schools are likely to place more weight on recommendations that come from those who are not family members or former family members. But that doesn't mean they won't look at all of the candidate's submitted material as part of what paints an overall picture of the candidate's character and potential.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Making bad calls

2011-04-17T09:02:00.001-04:00

Is allowing employees to be treated badly unethical?

A reader's mother has worked for a large Midwestern retailer for many years. The mother spends her days on the phone handling a variety of tasks: enrolling customers in bridal and baby registries, signing up customers for store credit cards, processing returns, issuing gift cards, and, when business is slow, managing the switchboard.

"People are just plain rude," her daughter reports. "They swear at her and call her names and she has no recourse." In fact, her company monitors the calls and if she is anything but polite, she gets into trouble.

The mother also fields calls from employees working in the retail stores. "On one occasion recently," her daughter writes, "an employee called with a question but dialed the number for my mother's group rather than a different number she really should have called." When her mother explained to the employee that she should have called a different number, the employee was rude and ended up filing a complaint.

As a result, the mother was placed on probation. She was not asked to explain the situation or allowed to discuss the matter any further. "If she gets another complaint in the next three months," her daughter writes, "she will be fired and there's nothing she can do."

"It seems wrong, but is it unethical?" she asks, adding: "I wish my mom would get a new job."

It's unfortunate that there are some jobs that regularly place employees on the receiving end of upset customers. Anyone who works in an IT department knows that it's rare to get a call thanking you for keeping a computer system running smoothly or commenting on how well the email functions since a recent upgrade. But if there's a glitch with the company's technology, the outpouring of venom upon the IT folks can be swift.The same often holds true for those who work in various telephone customer service functions. Helping users or customers address and solve problems can be trying to even the most patient of souls.

A company's management is wise to try to make sure that its representatives treat callers with respect, regardless of how upset a caller might get.

But no employee should be expected to withstand an onslaught of abuse. It's one thing to try to calm an upset caller, quite another to expect that she should listen as vulgarities and personal insults are strewn her way.

The right thing for the mother's manager to have done was to give her the opportunity to respond to the complaint that the errant caller from one of the company's stores made to her. Even if it still resulted in a reprimand, there's no fairness is assuming the worst without trying to understand the facts of the situation.

It's one thing to expect an employee to show patience when angry customers (within or outside of the company) call with problems. It's quite another to expect that the employee should receive similar treatment from her managers.

There's no ethical justification for assuming the worst of employees. The value from a management standpoint is questionable as well. If the business environment becomes so toxic that few good employees wish to remain, the company and ultimately the customers suffer.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Breaking the rules and winning a fan

2011-04-10T08:10:00.001-04:00

Is it ever OK to break the rules?

Late in March, my two grandsons lost their other grandfather, who died suddenly and unexpectedly. The death was a blow to the family and the loss of a lovely man.

Before my son-in-law told his two sons about his father's death, he called to ask if I would attend an autograph signing not far from my home in Boston that my oldest grandson was to attend the night of the wake in Chicago. My son-in-law wanted to be able to tell Evan that I would go to the event for which he had saved his money for months.

The rules of the autograph event were that you had to pay a separate fee for every item you wanted autographed. Evan had purchased an official NHL puck so he could have it signed by Boston Bruins center Patrice Bergeron.

I, of course, agreed to go, as did my wife.

The morning of the event, Evan called from Chicago. He asked me if he thought it would be OK to call me on my cellphone from the funeral home when I was scheduled to get the autograph.

"Maybe Patrice Bergeron will say hello to me," Evan said.

I reminded Evan that 500 tickets had been sold for the two-hour event, so we were likely to be rushed through. But I told him that I would try.

Being no hockey fan, I had no idea who Bergeron was. After Evan's call, I figured I should find out. In addition to playing for the Bruins, he had won a gold medal on the Canadian Olympic team. And buried in a sports reporter's blog was a reference to the fact that he had missed a game early in March because of his grandmother's death.

I called my son-in-law to tell him of the coincidence in Bergeron and Evan each losing a grandparent recently.

Figuring the phone call between Evan and Bergeron wouldn't happen, I printed up a sign that said, "Hello, Evan" as well as Bergeron's name and jersey number. (It's 37. I looked it up.) I figured my wife might hold the sign next to Bergeron when he was signing Evan's puck and we could snap a photo.

I also wrote to the owner of the shop where Bergeron was appearing explaining my grandson's loss and seeing if there was any possibility Bergeron would get on the phone with Evan. Terry Fox, co-owner of P&T Sports Cards, called me back, told me how moved she was, but that it was unlikely there would be time for a call. Still, she said she'd print out the email and give it to Bergeron's agent.

As expected, the event was packed. When we were third in line to get the autograph, Evan called. Someone grabbed the puck, ushered us up the line and, as Bergeron was signing it, I started to ask if he might talk to Evan. Without hesitation, he asked for the phone. He had seen the printout of the email and knew the story.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Bergeron said. "Hang in there." My wife's eyes welled up. And then Bergeron's eyes welled up too as he continued to talk. His agent put the sign I had made in front of Bergeron and asked him to "sign it for the kid." He did that too, breaking the rule about having to pay separately for each item signed.

Evan called later to thank me.

"What did you say when he told you he was sorry for your loss?" I asked.

"I told him I was sorry for his loss, too," Evan said.

Did Bergeron do the right thing by breaking the rules to sign an extra autograph? I'm biased, of course, but I like to think he did. I also know that he has new fans for life.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

An employee with a flight of hand

2011-04-03T09:02:00.001-04:00

An upper-level employee travels regularly for his company for his job in sales. His company's policy is to let employees book and pay for their own fights and then fill out an expense report to get reimbursed.

The company tries to reimburse its employees in a timely manner, usually within a week of when they submit their expense report.

The employee has regularly been submitting forms from an online travel website that he's printed out, presumably reflecting the cost of the flights he's been taking. These forms have the actual flight information including date, time, and airfare on them.

He's been operating in such a manner without incident and getting repaid for these tickets for months.

The trouble is that what he says he's been paying for tickets is not what he's actually been paying for tickets.

A reader who helps process the expense reports for employees writes that the employee has, in fact, been flying at "buddy rates" which are much lower. (Apparently, he has a family member who works for one of the airlines.) So, for example, instead of it costing $400 for a round-trip ticket to Las Vegas, he pays $50 at the buddy rate, and submits a printout from the website that suggests the flight cost the full $400.

"The only reason we caught this is sloppy paperwork," my reader writes. The accounting department found a standby buddy ticket rules sheet inadvertently attached to his expense reports. Upon further investigation, they found other documentation to suggest what the employee had been doing.

"I need help in explaining this to this upper level employee," my reader writes. "He is a long-term employee who does a very good job. I think he feels entitled . . . but I also believe it is dishonest and it is stealing from our company."

There should be no doubt in my reader's mind that what his employee is doing is wrong. He may feel entitled, but for him to overcharge his employer for a service he doesn't pay for is indeed dishonest and fraudulent. If the employee felt entitled to be reimbursed the full fare rather than his discounted fare, the right thing would have been for him to talk to his employer about this rather than make that decision for himself.

The employer can't require the employee to use the buddy rate he gets, but it can and should insist that he not fabricate expenses on his report.

The right thing is for my reader to be direct with this employee and tell him to stop misreporting his expenses and to reimburse the company for any amounts he's been overpaid. It doesn't appear that the company wants to fire this employee for his actions, but any employer would be within its rights to do so.

The company would be wise to start insisting that actual receipts (either printed out from an airport kiosk or submitted from a credit card bill) be submitted with expense reports rather than printouts from a travel website.

But that's a management decision. The ethical choice here is clear: Insist that your employees not falsify the reimbursable expenses.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

When a spouse strips the assets

2011-03-27T07:53:00.000-04:00

For 20 years, a married couple kept a joint investment account with a well-known brokerage firm. In addition to their investment portfolio, there were liquid funds in a checking account each could use for expenses. They didn't use this checking account as their primary checking account, but each from time to time wrote a check on the investment account for major expenses.

Earlier this year, however, the wife discovered that her husband had been regularly writing checks made out to "cash" for thousands of dollars. During a 10-year period, her husband wrote checks for more than $350,000 made out to "cash."

The husband admitted that he used a significant portion of the funds to go to strip clubs. "He was pretending to go to work every day, when in fact he was either driving around waiting for the strip clubs to open, or spending the day in the clubs," his now ex-wife writes.

The couple divorced in June.

You might guess that my reader's question might have to do with the ethics of a husband who spends joint funds on such endeavors. It's not.

"Did our financial adviser have an ethical obligation to advise me about this activity?" she wants to know.

The couple only met with their financial adviser -- the broker for their investment account -- once a year.

Since her discovery, the wife decided to change brokers. When her former broker asked her why, she told him that she felt he should have given her a heads up about all the checks made out to "cash." She says that even a comment from him that they might want to restructure their investments to accommodate their new spending pattern would have sufficed. His response, she writes, was simply to say, "Oh."

My reader has every right to be furious with her ex-husband for spending their joint account funds on personal expenses about which she apparently had no knowledge.

But her beef is with her ex-husband, not her ex-broker. Unless he gave them advice that went against their instructions or if he failed to make note that they were living beyond their means when he assisted then in creating a financial plan, it was not his business to keep tabs on what they were using their checking account for.

The checks her husband wrote were written over a decade. Both of their names were on the account and each had access to the funds. That her husband used the money for a purpose his wife found objectionable is clear, but that's an issue between the two of them.

It's unfortunate that no red flags arose for my reader during the time her husband was spending their money on his extracurricular activities. But in a relationship presumably built on trust, it's not unusual that she would not have suspected such behavior.

The right thing is for my reader to cast responsibility for her husband's behavior squarely on his shoulders.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

If the diaper fits, pay for it

2011-03-20T09:50:00.001-04:00

A reader just outside of Boston and his wife recently became parents for the first time. To help make sure they remain stocked with goods they need for their new baby, the couple has a standing order for diapers with Amazon.com. They use the site for a number of other purchases, as well.

Recently, my reader’s wife ordered a new sheet for their baby’s bed and two sippy cups. A few days later they received two boxes, each with a bedsheet and a two-pack of sippy cups in it.

“Our initial thought was that my wife had probably double-clicked on her order, but in checking we found that it was probably an Amazon error,” my reader writes. Their credit card was only charged once, and the invoice slip in each box carried the exact same order number. Amazon seems to have filled their order twice, but charged them only once.

My reader tells me that while he was all for keeping both orders, his wife was more concerned with doing what was right. They agreed that it was probably right to let Amazon know about the mistake and ask for the company to send a mailing label so they could return one of the orders.

His wife agreed, but she was still upset about an earlier flap they had had with their standing diaper order. Amazon had shipped the wrong size diapers and it took several e-mails to get the issue sorted out. When the correct shipment finally arrived the couple sent back the incorrect shipment. A few weeks later they got an e-mail from Amazon claiming it hadn’t received the returned diapers and was therefore going to re-charge their credit card for the amount.

Before his wife had time to deal with this charge error, the double order mistake occurred.

Because the prices of the bed sheet and cups and the shipment of wrong-size diapers were about the same, my reader’s wife wants “to call it a wash.”

“This seems fair enough to me,” my reader writes, “but I’m guessing that it’s not strictly the right thing to do.”

The impulse to assume all’s even because the value of the wrongly shipped goods and wrongly charged goods are roughly equal makes sense. But strictly speaking, that doesn’t resolve the issue.

For one, Amazon still wrongly charged the couple and should know about it. What’s more, the couple received goods for which they didn’t pay and they should let Amazon know that.

Just as it wouldn’t be kosher to not report income on income tax forms because you hadn’t taken an equivalent amount of deductions, it’s not OK to assume that the two wrongs with Amazon equal out. (Granted, Amazon doesn’t have the foreboding power of the IRS.)

The right thing would be for my reader or his wife to contact Amazon to let it know of the error and to ask the company if they can just keep the wrong shipped goods to make up for the error, if that’s what the couple would like to do. They could also use this opportunity to let Amazon know that if the error isn’t resolved swiftly that they will consider dropping their standing order with the company. (The little publicized toll-free customer service number at Amazon is 800-201-7575.)

By doing this, the couple not only does what’s right by acknowledging they received goods for which they didn’t pay, they also put Amazon on notice that if the company can’t get the order and charging straight, it will lose a valued customer.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today’s Business, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

Let the ring shine for you

2011-03-13T09:35:00.001-04:00

When England’s Prince William proposed to Kate Middleton, he used the blue sapphire and diamond ring that had belonged to his mother, Princess Diana. The cost of that ring originally ran around 30,000 pounds.

It didn’t take long for those inspired by the ring to put a less-costly knockoff on their or their intended’s finger.

Almost immediately after the engagement was announced, a manufacturer in China began replicating the ring and selling it online for under 20 bucks. Of course, the replica doesn’t contain sapphires or diamonds. And the band on the finer versions of the replica is made of silver-coated copper. But still, for those who loved the design of the ring, it’s relatively cheap to put their fingers on one.

Few soon-to-be engaged couples are likely to find a Kate Middleton knockoff ring to be the jewelry that seals their marriage deal. But many might be inspired by the look of a ring they happen to see and like that is either too costly or not the just-right design.

When a reader and her fiance were shopping for engagement rings at a shopping mall, they found a setting they liked by an artist. It wasn’t, however, exactly what they were looking for. “We wanted a metal at a different price point,” my reader writes, “and we wanted a setting that would accommodate a different shape of stone.”

The couple didn’t know the name of the artist who designed the ring. “It didn’t occur to us at the time to try harder to find who he was” so he could do a custom design. Instead, they used his setting design as an inspiration, then made the changes they wanted and commissioed a local jeweler to make the ring for them.

Later, when she thought more about it, my reader began to feel badly about using the artist’s design as a jumping-off point for her engagement ring and having someone else make it. So she went back to the store in the shopping mall to see if the original setting was still there so she could try to find out who the artist was “to perhaps buy something else from him to make karmic amends.”

Alas, the ring was no longer for sale and neither was anything else from the artist.

“I feel solidly that it was not the ethical thing for us to do,” my reader writes, “and I would not do it again if I had a chance.” She asks: “Is there a point at which using an artist's design as ‘inspiration’ is OK, or is it just stealing?”

My reader is being too hard on herself. Sure, it would have been nice if she had tried to contact the artist whose design she originally liked to see if he might be able to design something inspired by that design but more to her liking.

But unless she and her fiance replicated the design exactly, no harm, no foul. Finding inspiration in a piece of art is far different from commissioning someone to make a cheaper exact knockoff of the original.

The right thing is for my reader and her husband to enjoy their rings and the design they came up with to reflect their new life together. If that shopping mall store ever does get in more jewelry from that original artist, good on them if they choose to buy a little something from him to reward him for inspiring them.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today’s Business, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

When written agreements don’t reflect the truth

2011-03-10T05:48:00.000-05:00

About a year ago, a reader from Boston who is a freelance consultant started doing work for a new client. The client sent her a contract, part of which has the consultant agree that the client will be her only client for the duration of the contract. The contract is renewable every three months.

In a face-to-face meeting when they were first talking about doing business together, my reader told her client that she would not be giving up her regular existing clients, but the new client put the exclusivity clause in the contract anyway.

My reader signed the contract even though she knew she already had several other clients for whom she planned to continue doing work.

“They don’t have room to complain because I deliver all of their work on time and they like what I give them,” my reader tells me. “I wasn’t willing to let go of long-term clients whose work is intermittent but regular.”

My reader acknowledges that her workload gets “crazy at times,” but she always gives this contracted client priority. “They ask a lot of me,” she says. “It’s nice getting a regular monthly paycheck, but it’s not enough to warrant dropping my other clients.”

All has been going well between my reader and her client over the past year. No questions have come up about my reader’s other clients.

But now the CEO of her client company wants to connect on LinkedIn, a business-oriented social networking site. Many LinkedIn members list their work experience and current work projects. My reader’s LinkedIn page includes copious details about her extensive body of current work.

In a perfect world, listing professional relationships on a site like LinkedIn could be a boon to someone’s business. Such listings can let the world of prospective clients know how highly your work is in demand.

But my reader now finds herself worried about what her client will learn when she sees her page.

“She’s going to see all of my present clients and work I do, which is a lot!” my reader says.

Still, she says she’s going to accept her client’s request on LinkedIn, but not say anything and just see what happens.

It’s a worry that didn’t need to happen.

My reader did the right thing by telling her client right off the bat that she had existing clients with whom she planned to continue working. But by not requesting that her contract be corrected to reflect this by excising the exclusivity clause, she now finds herself in a predicament. By signing the contract, she agreed to something she knew did not accurately reflect what she planned to do.

Since the contract comes up for renewal every three months, the right thing would be to make sure that the language in it is corrected to reflect her work reality. She’d be wise also to try to rectify this before she agrees to link up with her client on LinkedIn because it would be better for my reader to clear the air before her client discovers that the agreement she thought she had with my reader does not reflect reality.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

That’s the way the basketball bounces

2011-02-27T10:28:00.001-05:00

The girls high school basketball game was turning into a blowout. My reader’s daughter’s team led by more than 30 points.

As the fourth quarter began, the team still had three starters in the game. On the bench, however, were six girls who had yet to hit the court at all. Finally, the coach substituted in five of the players who hadn’t seen court time yet.

Less than 10 seconds later, however, the coach quickly called a time out and put one of the starters back in. “This player was hot,” my reader writes, “and the coaching staff realized that she had a chance to tie or break a school record for three-point baskets.”

The coach wanted to make sure she hit the record. So he instructed the other four girls on the floor — the ones who had just gotten into the game — to get her the ball for a three-point shot.

“It took her four more team possessions to get her record-tying three-point basket,” my reader writes.

“There were kids on the bench who had played minimal minutes all season,” he writes. “Here was a game in which they could have gotten some quality playing time. A few may have even scored their first baskets of the year. Yet this coach found it more important to try to have one player break a record of another kid whose record was a good one against a good quality team.”

My reader’s faith in her daughter’s coach and his values has been challenged. “When did crushing another team become more important than playing your whole team?”

“Maybe a daily reminder of what his job is really supposed to be would be helpful,” my reader writes. He is contemplating getting the coach a plaque that reads, “Men do not embarrass young women.”

My reader wants to know if it is ethical or right as a high school varsity coach to put the needs or wants of one child ahead of her teammates.

Clearly, my reader is upset. But I’m not convinced that the coach can be condemned for wanting to “crush the other team” if he replaced his starters and then took four more team possessions to get the one girl her record-tying basket. If he really had been trying to crush the other team, he likely would have kept all of his starters in for the duration of the game.

That still brings up the question of whether it was right to want to feed the ball to this one girl to give her a shot at the record rather than giving the other girls on the team a chance to get game time and simply have a shot at the basket.

The game was already sewn up and the coach’s decision to give a star player a chance to achieve something extraordinary seems a reasonable decision. Does it send the message that every player should get an equal chance? No. Does it reinforce the importance of teamwork in winning a game? Probably not.

If the coach insisted in every game that this one player be given the ball to shoot, that might cross the line into unfairness and simply be bad coaching. But on this one occasion if the coach decided that the girls might work together to give a teammate the chance to accomplish something truly remarkable, that seems a perfectly ethical choice to make.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today’s Business, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

© 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

How sick is the new sick policy?

2011-02-20T08:58:00.000-05:00

Most of us have had the odd occasion when we decided to go to work even though we felt slightly under the weather. Perhaps not with a full-blown case of the flu, but a nasty bout of hay fever or a dalliance with stomach upset that might not be enough to keep us from our appointed rounds.

But as irreplaceable as we might view ourselves, is it responsible to go to work when you are sick enough to spread whatever you have to co-workers?

A reader from Huntington Beach, Calif., believes her company may be unintentionally causing employees to come to work when it would be in their own interest and those of their colleagues to stay home and get healthy.

Her company recently changed its sick-leave policy because it wanted, she writes, to discourage the use of sick days for financial and staffing reasons. “They have reallocated the number of hours each employee is allotted for sickness each year and they do not allow accrual of sick hours.”

What’s worse, she argues, is that the company’s management is also incentivizing employees to not use their sick days by rewarding them with a day off for every six months they have perfect attendance. “So now colleagues come in sick and spread their sickness to others,” she writes.

Clearly, she believes this policy is not only shortsighted, but also pits coworkers against each other. “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.”

Is the company wrong to want to encourage its employees to take as few sick days as possible by rewarding them when they don’t?

There may be a variety of reasons why my reader’s company came up with its policy of rewarding employees when they take few sick days. Perhaps management believed that employees were misusing sick days to get time off when they weren’t actually ill. Short of requiring a sick note from a doctor, the company would have to take the employee’s word about their health status. Or perhaps, rather than allowing employees to accrue sick days from one year to the next that they could use for long stretches or be compensated for when they leave the company, it seemed a better idea to reward an extra personal day for every six months of perfect attendance.

If a company enacts a policy because it doesn’t trust its employees when they say they’re sick, then no change in sick-day policy will cure that lack of trust. If it’s a trust issue, a company would be wise to look deeper at the root of the problem.

But even if the company trusts its employees and enacted the new policy out of a desire to be more efficient, it still has the responsibility to make sure that the new setup doesn’t result in the unintended consequence of encouraging an office full of sick co-workers.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with changing a sick- or personal-day policy. But the right thing to do is to make sure that in your effort to make things better, you haven’t unintentionally made things far worse for everyone involved.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today’s Business, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

© 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

Sales that end with an ugh

2011-02-13T09:32:00.000-05:00

I’m not what you would call a fashion plate. It’s rare that I’m up with whatever the latest fashion trend happens to be. The first time I heard of Ugg boots was when a writing student of mine wrote a column for a local alternative weekly about how overexposed and ugly the boots are. Uggs were apparently reaching saturation just as they first crossed my awareness.

It was fortunate, though, that I learned of them when I did since it prepared me for an e-mail from A.C., a reader from Ohio. She had bought a pair of Ugg boots for her daughter from a website. The retail price, she reports, would have been $160, but she paid $85,which included shipping.

“The boots came and, unfortunately, they were two sizes too big,” she writes. Since there wasn’t any method to return the boots indicated on the packaging, my reader decided to cut her losses and sell them to a resale store. “If not for the size, we would have been happy to have kept them.”

The store’s buyer paid her $40 for the boots and marked them for resale at $80.

That night on her local news broadcast, my reader saw a clip warning consumers about purchasing counterfeit Ugg boots off of the Internet. She went online to get some tips on how to recognize a knockoff. Since she didn’t have the boots with her, it was difficult for her to remember the fine points of the boots. But she did recall that the box her boots came in did not mirror the description of what a genuine Ugg boots box should look like. “My box’s lid was simply a lid,” she writes, “whereas the genuine Ugg boots box is hinged.”

My reader called the resale store the next day to explain how she had purchased her boots and that she was no longer confident they were genuine. She didn’t explain why she believed this, but she did offer to buy them back so that someone else wouldn’t purchase them believing them to be “the real deal.”

The sales clerk she spoke with assured her that the staff at the resale store is trained to spot fakes, and then thanked my reader for caring.

“She never really gave me a chance to speak about why I thought they might be fakes,” my reader writes. She decided that if they passed the store’s staff trained eyes, then perhaps they were made in the same manufacturing plant as the genuine Uggs.

Still bothered by all of this, my reader returned to the store two days later and found that the boots had already been sold. Now she’s left wondering whether she did the right thing. “Should I have called them back and explained about the difference in the box?”

Once my reader grew concerned that she might have purchased a knockoff pair of boots, she did the right thing by calling the store to let it know of her concern. She’s right that it would be unfortunate if someone bought them thinking they had a genuine pair, but my reader had no obligation beyond telling the store that they might have fake goods on their hands. It might have been good for the clerk she spoke with to have taken her concerns a bit more seriously, but once my reader alerted the store of the possible issue, it was its responsibility to investigate and make sure it wasn’t mislabeling products for sale.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today’s Business,” is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

© 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

Praise the Lord and pass the application

2011-02-06T09:53:00.000-05:00

The second short essay question on the admissions application for a master’s degree in education reads: “What do you see in your life that might indicate that you are walking with the Lord?” This is preceded by a question asking you to explain how you came to know Jesus as your savior as well as the scriptural basis for your salvation.

The private college based in the Pacific Northwest makes it clear on its application that it expects its students to adhere to a “lifestyle commitment” which holds, among other things, that “learning and the Christian faith are inseparable.” On the online application, students are asked to check off a box that indicates their agreement to abide by the “lifestyle commitment.”

As applications go, this one is pretty clear in its expectations of applicants.

A reader from Portland, Ore., believes that this college “offers what seems to be the perfect program” for her. She already has a master’s degree in English, but believes that more career opportunities will open up for her if she adds a graduate degree in education. She especially likes this program because it offers a specialty in curriculum design.

The problem is that she finds the religious questions posed on the application “rather intrusive.”

“Even if I were not an atheist,” she writes, “I would feel uncomfortable talking about my relationship with God.” She does write that she would gladly take any religion courses that might be required if she is admitted. What’s more, the program is offered completely online so she won’t have to move or even commute to classes.

There are two other graduate programs in my reader’s area, neither of which requires answers to such questions on the application. But neither is as convenient an option as the school that asks the religious questions.

“Is it unethical to lie on these essays?” she asks. “I certainly know enough about religion to create these responses, but the thought of that much lying is off-putting,” she writes, telling me that she grew up in the South surrounded by Baptists, the religion with which this college is affiliated.

The fact that the thought of “that much lying” is off-putting should give my reader the clue that something is wrong for even contemplating faking a story about her strong relationship with God to get into a convenient master’s program.

Even if there were no other options available in her area, lying on the application in an effort to gain admission would not be justified. Little good comes from any relationship that begins with a lie. A relationship to a graduate school is no exception.

If she’s honest on the application about her atheism, it’s very likely she will not be admitted. But such knowledge still doesn’t justify lying.

The right thing is for my reader to find a graduate program that matches her needs whose culture does not prohibit her from telling the truth about herself. She should not lie about her beliefs to get into a program that’s more convenient for her.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today’s Business, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

© 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

The great toy train robbery conundrum

2011-01-30T07:07:00.000-05:00

When my now-12-year-old grandson, Evan, was a toddler until he was 6 or 7, he was heavily into wooden Thomas the Tank Engine trains. He knew the names of all of the trains — and it seemed as if there were an endless number of them — and he knew which ones he wanted to add to his collection next.

Evan would save up his money and, when he had enough, he would buy another train. For years he was focused on these trains and rarely was distracted by other toys he wanted to buy for himself. He was also riveted to a series of videos we kept on store for him called “I Love Toy Trains.” His family once took a trip to Steamtown, a National Historic site in Scranton, Pa., that featured real steam engines and train cars on its grounds and a museum chock full of everything you could imagine dealing with trains.

Trains, it seemed were his passion.

Evan’s devotion to trains at that age was not unique. An e-mail from a reader near Boston reminded me of Evan’s once consuming devotion.

“We already own a ton of trains,” my reader wrote. “Mostly through Craigslist, we have scored unbelievable trains.” When last Christmas rolled around, she did not want to buy her son any more trains. He had enough, she figured.

But she broke down and went to Toys R Us with a 20 percent-off coupon she had received in the mail with the intention of buying him the GeoTrax Christmas Deluxe Edition that retailed for $129. It was on sale for $99. With the coupon, it would run her $80. “OK,” she figured, “that’s not too bad. I’ll do that for him.”

She brought her one huge item up to the register where the cashier scanned it, took her coupon, and asked for $21.94. “I just swiped my card, took the box, and walked out of there.” The cashier was talking to a co-worker “and not paying attention either,” my reader writes.

She put the package in her car and settled into the front seat. It was only then that she read the receipt: “Ken & Barbie Accessories” that scanned for $19.99.

“I realized it was totally not my error,” she wrote. “It was theirs, but I don’t quite know what I was supposed to do.”

Even though it was the store’s mistake, the right thing to do would have been to point out the error to the store. Clearly, it’s the store’s error, but my reader knows that — rather than having been some extra-special Christmas-time discount — the price she paid was for a less expensive item. Just as if she had been handed back too much change from a cash purchase, the right thing is to set matters right. It presented little hardship to do so, particularly since she was still sitting in the store’s parking lot.

Given that the store made the error in coding the prices for its products, it’s unlikely that my reader was the first person to be charged $19.99 for a $99 item. The store management would have been wise to recognize this, acknowledge its error and offer to honor the price that was erroneously charged. After all, she’d be pointing out an error that would save the store bundles on any further errant ring-ups. It’s rarely a bad idea to reward customers for their honesty — particularly when it’s your mistake.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today’s Business, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

© 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

"Ordinary Ethics" on "All Sides with Ann Fisher" WOSU

2011-01-25T12:43:00.001-05:00

"All Sides with Ann Fisher" discussing Joshua Edwards, the naked man who begged for shelter and froze to death in Columbus last week. Joe Blundo's column give background on the story. Joe appears on the show. I join the discussion around minute 14.