At the holiday meal, share a little kindness

Should any topics be off limits at a holiday meal?

 

Every year around this time, I am asked for ideas on how best to navigate discussions around the Thanksgiving dinner table, particularly when you know that there might be some attendees who have strongly divergent viewpoints. And every year, I encourage people to try to find a way to talk to one another civilly and with respect.

 

People’s views on various issues do vary widely and differences are bound to find their way to dinner table discussion. In its third annual “The State of the Sides” report, Campbell’s Soup Company found that 56% of respondents to its survey said they’d prefer eating side dishes to eating turkey. Does this give guests free rein in criticizing the main dish served up on the platter? Certainly not. It is, after all, possible to think positively about one thing without tearing down another. It’s also good to remember to show some grace to the person who put the time into preparing the meal.

 

It's possible, for instance, to extol the virtues of a good stuffing or dressing, the number one choice for a side dish in the 2024 survey, without besmirching the homemade mashed potatoes it dethroned from its first-place perch last year. The report doesn’t distinguish between dressing and stuffing, although I will maintain that there is a clear and obvious distinction even if I am roundly challenged on this by dinner guests each year.

 

And it is still possible for there to be generational mutual respect even if Gen Z seems to be more drawn to the mac and cheese side (number five on this year’s list, down from third last year) than it is to the stuffing and dressing or mashed potatoes preferred by Baby Boomers.

 

While it examines favorite Thanksgiving Day activities including watching football or playing board games, nowhere in “State of the Sides” report is the appropriateness of discussing politics mentioned. Links to recipes for cheddar horseradish mashed potatoes, yes. Opinions on when it’s appropriate to start listening to holiday music, of course. But if you’re looking for insight into what most people talk about during the Thanksgiving meal, you’re on your own.

 

The right thing, of course, is for every family to set the tone or tradition. About 20 years ago, when he was 6 years old, right before dessert, our oldest grandson announced to the table that he thought we should go around and each offer either something for which we were thankful or sing a song. Given that it was also his birthday, that seemed both a timely idea and simple enough to do.

 

When asked, however, I remind people that when it comes to fraught issues like politics, they have the absolute right to change the subject if they’d prefer not to engage. Changing the subject without making the person feel small or like an idiot for bringing it up strikes me as the right way to go. And honoring that person’s request to move on to other topics is the appropriate response. You can’t really have a discussion if the other person doesn’t want to engage.

 

If your family loves a heated discussion, then have at it. Again, every family should set its own traditions. If you’re at a loss, consider showing some kindness with a song or story.

 

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

 

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

 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.

 

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

When yard sale customers pay but don’t pick up their goods

How long must you wait for someone who purchased an item but never picked it up at a yard sale?

Back during the first week of September, a reader we’re calling Alice participated in her neighborhood’s annual neighborhood yard sale. Dozens of houses participate every year and Alice has long enjoyed clearing out her attic, basement and closets of things she no longer needs or wants but that might provide some use to someone else.

Alice lives in a neighborhood in a large New England city that is easy to get to by subway and has plenty of on-street parking, so the yard sale is frequented by people from all over who attend to see if they can find something specific they might be looking for or to be surprised by something they never knew they needed until they saw it for sale.

Every year, Alice finds enough stuff to place out on a folding table in front of her house. She makes about $100, a bit more if the weather is particularly nice, and even more if she has some old pieces of furniture to sell.

The weather this year was perfect, according to Alice. A warmish fall day in New England with no rain in sight. The posted yard sale hours were from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. The steady stream of potential customers began right at the start and continued throughout the day. Because Alice was at the start of her block, every once in a while someone who bought something would ask if they could pick it up later in the day, especially if it was on the larger size and if they were already carrying quite a few items from others’ sales.

At about 11 a.m., Alice sold a set of dishes and a few pieces of glassware to a customer. After he paid, she offered to put the items in a box and he asked if he could pick up the box at the end of the day. She agreed and then he placed a sleeve of plastic drinking cups he had purchased elsewhere into the box and left them on Alice’s front steps.

By the end of the day, the customer hadn’t returned. Nevertheless, Alice left the box on the steps overnight in case he returned the next morning. No appearance. Three days passed and the customer never arrived for the pickup. Finally, on the fourth day, rain was predicted so Alice moved the box to her basement and figured the customer would ring the bell if he ever showed up.

It's been more than two months now and there has been no sign of the customer. Alice wants to know if she’s obligated to hold onto the goods.

I am not an expert in yard sale law, but it seems that if Alice were moving or truly didn’t have space to store the items, she would be OK getting rid of them. But given that the box is not taking up much space in her basement and it contains an item that the customer bought elsewhere, the right thing seems to be to hold onto the item to see if the customer shows up, even if it’s at next year’s sale. If it becomes a burden to do so, then Alice should be clear finding a new home for the goods.

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

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

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin. 

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

What running a light decades ago taught me

Is it OK to take glee in wanting someone who made the same mistake as you did to get caught?

Several decades ago when my parents were still alive and living in Williamsburg, Virginia, the woman I’d eat bees for and I decided to make the drive from Boston to Williamsburg to pay a visit. We decided to break up the trip by stopping overnight in Washington, D.C., to visit some friends and to explore some of the many museums there.

One evening we were driving through Georgetown to meet our friends. I was driving. I approached a stoplight that was turning yellow and soon to turn red. Instead of slowing down and stopping, I proceeded through the yellow light and took a right turn onto a side street. I was greeted by a police offer waving me to pull over next to another car that had apparently already been pulled over for running the light.

As the officer approached my window, I rolled it down, and she began by asking if I knew I had run a red light. Before I could even consider deciding whether to acknowledge the truth or come up with some lame excuse, the driver in a car that had already been pulled over shouted over to her: “Give him a ticket too.”

The officer broke off her conversation with me, looked over the top of my car at the gentleman in the other car, and then waved me on with what I recall was an exaggerated wave of her hand and simply told me: “You can go on.”

My assumption has always been that had the other guy not shouted out at her, I too would have received a citation for running the light. Was she right to give me a pass on my infraction? Probably not. I was wrong and deserved a ticket. Did I argue with her? No.

Certainly, the other driver was upset that he had been pulled over and ticketed. I would have been too. But that he felt the need to vocally make sure that others were punished simply because he had been wouldn’t have made his ticket any less expensive. Sure, the fair thing would have been for me to be treated as he had been and I likely would have been had he let the officer do her job.

That incident from back in the mid-1980s has stuck with me all these years. It reinforced a sense that each of us should try to take responsibility for our own actions rather than make sure everyone goes down with us. Did I know whether his infraction was greater than mine? No. Could the officer simply have decided that a warning for me running the yellow light was enough? Sure. Perhaps she was simply showing me kindness rather than reacting to the berating she received from the other driver.

That incident also made me more careful at stop lights while driving, not just in Georgetown, but anywhere. I’ve not been stopped for running a light since. But if I am, the right thing would be to acknowledge my error, pay my fine and move on.

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

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

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin. 

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

Don’t get angry. Get to work

What is the right way to act when something doesn’t turn out as you would have liked it to?

Most of us have found ourselves in a situation where we would have preferred a different outcome. Often such events don’t rise to the level of calamity, but instead result in a disappointment.

It rains on our walk to work. A favorite sports team loses a close game. We drop a pen between the front cushion of our car and the middle console and can’t fish it out. These and other such incidents rarely result in apoplectic rage.

But there are occasionally events that do seem to fill us with a palpable sense of rage. A tyrannical manager wreaks havoc on our workplace without being called out for his or her behavior. A teacher seems impatient with our inability to grasp a complex topic in the classroom. A politician we claim to loathe wins an election against our favored candidate.

One response to these more severe incidents is to embrace an anger that we carry with us as it festers. Rarely does this anger result in a positive outcome. More often the anger causes us more harm than it does the person to whom it is directed.

A quotation attributed to Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher of the first and early second century, captured how anger may not be the most constructive of emotions: “Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.”

So what then is the right thing to do when things don’t go your way, when you find yourself waking up to a situation that at least for the moment seems untenable?

Rather than allow anger to consume us over an outcome we didn’t like, a different tack might be to double down on whatever efforts we have done to accomplish a task or to fight for a cause and channel any energy born of disappointment into finding new ways to reach those goals.

At the 1980 Democratic National Convention, Sen. Ted Kennedy rose to address the crowd after his rather disappointing run for the presidential nomination against sitting President Jimmy Carter. With the writing help of political operative Bob Shrum and others, Kennedy delivered what turned out to be one if not the most memorable speeches of his career. He ended with these words:

“For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

Those words seem useful to heed when things don’t go as we had hoped. If we were truly concerned about a cause, that cause doesn’t disappear because we didn’t get our way. Rather than stew in anger or regret, the right thing seems to be to double down on any efforts to engage in whatever work is needed to set things straight.

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

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

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin. 

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