The Right Thing

Sunday, February 08, 2026

Can I leave without saying goodbye?

Is it wrong to leave an event without saying goodbye?

There’s a longstanding discussion in my family about the best way to leave a gathering. Apparently, I am guilty of lingering a bit longer than needed, trying to make sure to say goodbye to as many people as I know before I hit the door. The woman I’d eat bees for, however, is a big proponent of the Irish goodbye, particularly at larger gatherings.

The term “Irish goodbye” refers to making a quick exit from a gathering without saying goodbye. It’s also known as the “French exit” or filerà l'anglaise, which kind of translates to “leaving in the English style,” although those who know the French phrase know it means “to leave quietly.”

The rideshare company Lyft had Wakefield Research survey 1,000 people older than 21 celebrating St. Patrick’s Day (apparently Bastille Day was deemed not as popular) in 2018. More than 40% of people said they’d frequently bolted an event without saying goodbye to anyone. Half of millennials indicated they’d done so. And 75% of those surveyed indicated they had at least one acquaintance who was notorious for engaging in Irish goodbyes. Disappearing from an event is not all that uncommon.

Some of the arguments in favor of the Irish goodbye are that it’s particularly useful at a large or informal gathering or at an event where you’re not all that close to whoever it is running the event. It also saves a great deal of time that would be spent trying to hunt down as many people as possible to say goodbye to, most of whom would likely not take offense at your sudden disappearance.

Irish goodbyes are not uncommon among those who go out in small groups bar-hopping for the evening. Sometimes, apparently, one of the hoppers simply has had enough and decides to retire for the evening.

If you’re the guest of honor at an event, it’s hard to justify making an Irish goodbye. Doing so would likely put a damper on the evening. If you’re someone’s ride for the evening, it would also be inappropriate to leave without letting your passenger know they must find their own way home.

Short of leaving someone stranded or insulting those who are throwing you a party, there’s nothing ethically wrong with engaging in the Irish goodbye. If it were me, I’d let at least one person in a small group know I was leaving, even if I did so by text on my way out the door so the group didn’t worry needlessly about me. I’d also try to find the host of the event and thank them for the invite. Then again, my attempts to do the latter often end up in a string of other goodbyes on my way to finding the host. (See my family’s assessment of my capacity for lingering above.)

When it comes to leaving, the right thing is to leave the way you want to leave and let others leave as they care to as long as you avoid inconveniencing any other attendees in the process. If you do catch someone engaging in the Irish goodbye, the best thing is to let them go, although a shouted “slán leat” or “slán go fóill” wouldn’t be inappropriate as long as it doesn’t slow them down.

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.

Sunday, February 01, 2026

Is it OK to prefer not to?

Is it wrong not to engage in activities you’d prefer not to but might be expected to?

Several months ago, a reader we’re calling Frigg started a new job at a place where it quickly became apparent that after-hours events were in abundance. Some of the events were purely social to celebrate a milestone or simply to unwind with colleagues. Others were more directly connected to the organization and often featured dinners or speakers.

Rarely, Frigg found, were the events directly related to the work she was hired to do. She was not in sales, so networking outside of work was not essential. While she was friendly with her new co-workers, she didn’t feel the need to use them to expand her social circle. When she was hired, no mention was made of the varied events outside of work that were the norm of her new workplace.

Frigg found nothing wrong with all the events her new company had. She passed no judgment on her colleagues who seemed to look forward to such events. But she found no advantage or joy in attending such events herself.

Nevertheless, at first Frigg tried to attend as many of these events as she could. She worried that by not doing so she might be insulting her colleagues or bosses. But after months of doing so, Frigg is exhausted. She would rather spend her free time with her friends and family or simply unwinding from work. She wants to know if it’s OK to decline such invitations or if it would be wrong now that she’s already gone to many.

I should preface my response to Frigg with acknowledgment that I tend to avoid social engagements organized by work. I have a friend who jokes that when someone asks me to attend something, I’m likely to respond that “I could be home having a nice piece of fish.”

Regardless of my own social proclivities, Frigg should feel free to accept or decline or accept invitations that aren’t related to her work. Sure, doing so might result in not forming closer relationships with colleagues or receiving a delicious free meal from time to time. But if Frigg would prefer to decline to engage in activities outside work, she should do so, and her colleagues and bosses should not judge her for doing so.

When it comes to work, the right thing is for Frigg to do her job as best as she can, engage with and support colleagues in the workplace, and decide how much time (if any) she wants to spend with colleagues outside of normal work hours.

When a colleague was recently contemplating accepting a promotion and was concerned about how much time would be expected of her outside work for social events, I gave her a mug with the line from Herman Melville’s story "Bartleby, the Scrivener": “I would prefer not to.”

I meant it as a joke and did not intend to suggest she refuse any opportunity to do something outside work she might like to do. But it was also a reminder that our employers should expect us to do good work, but not expect us to devote every waking hour to the job. Sometimes we need time to go home and enjoy that nice piece of fish.

Sunday, January 25, 2026

Should you read something before you "like" it?

Should you like something online if you haven’t read it?

A reader we’re calling Frank has a close friend who has spent years advising businesses and organizations on how to use social media effectively. Frank’s friend had built a strong reputation and was in strong demand. Recently, he wrote, his friend decided to start an online newsletter in which she would share her experiences and expertise with social media with the world. Her intentions with the newsletter, as Frank understood it, was both to build more awareness to her business, but also to test the waters for writing a possible book on the topic.

Since Frank’s friend had a decent following on various social media platforms, she figured she could hit the ground running with readers by promoting her online newsletter with existing followers from other platforms. Her gambit seemed to work since she told Frank.

Frank went to his friend’s first entry shortly after she posted it and noticed that she already had five “likes” on her the post. “Not bad,” he figured, but then he read the post. In it, he noticed that there were several typos and that one paragraph contained incomplete and repeated sentences. The errors were substantial enough that anyone reading the first entry would have found it impossible to make any sense out of what his friend was trying to convey in that paragraph. Nevertheless, those five people had already posted a like to it, presumably out of loyalty or because they regularly liked things they hadn’t bothered to read.

Frank had two questions for me. “Is it wrong to like something you haven’t actually read?” And: “Should I tell my friend about the errors in her post?”

The answer to the second question is simple: Yes, tell her. Even if she wasn’t a close friend, pointing out the error should be appreciated. If Frank cares about her and her work, then pointing out the errors is the right thing to do.

The answer to the first question should be simple as well. No, it’s not OK to like something you haven’t bothered to read. If you’re doing it out of loyalty, it would be kinder to actually read the piece rather than pretending you’d taken the time to do so. The same holds true for forwarding links to pieces online you haven’t read. By sharing pieces you haven’t read simply because someone you know posted them, you send a false message that you’ve actually taken the time to read what you share. That’s not only disingenuous, but it also risks sharing stuff that if you’re read it in full, you’d realize you’d be aghast at sharing it. The right thing is to take the time to read the stuff we like or share.

Frank’s friend also should have taken the time to re-read her own post before posting it. We all make mistakes and introduce the occasional typo into a piece by mistake. But if we take the time to proofread what we’re about to post, we’ll generally catch the big mistakes. Taking that time is the right thing to do, especially if we expect our prospective readers to take the time to read what we post.

Sunday, January 18, 2026

The problem with "repurposing"

How much honesty do I owe my readers?

I have a wicked head cold. Mostly, the symptoms are a persistent hacking cough, running nose and tiredness. The last of these likely results from waking myself up every hour or so with that hacking cough. I’ve been to the doctor, I am taking medication, drinking lots of fluids and taking a copious amount of naps.

It is a bit difficult to concentrate, but truth be told, I had the head cold when I wrote last week’s column and no one, near as I can tell, found it any worse for the wear. But I’m more exhausted this week and still have a bit of prep work to do for a couple of courses I agreed to start teaching a week ago.

My best friend called and suggested I “repurpose” an old column. Since I’ve been writing The Right Thing column since 1998, he’s convinced no one will be the wiser. He uses words like “repurpose,” he says because he’s a former Hollywood writer and regularly repurposed stuff.

The only other time someone suggested I use an old column rather than write a new one was after my father died during COVID. My editor at the time was sympathetic to how challenging a time it was and offered me the chance to re-run an old column.

In neither case, did I seize the opportunity. Given that I’m now writing the 1,200th Right Thing column, there’s certainly enough material to draw upon. It’s also quite likely that there’s been some overlap in the types of topics I’ve written about over the years, although those have been inadvertent. I will admit, however, that there are times I sit down to write a column and have to search through the old columns to make sure I haven’t written the same column before. Forty-seven years is a long time and, particularly when I have a head cold, it’s highly likely I don’t remember everything I’ve written.

But I look at it this way: It would be misleading to present an old column as a new one to my readers. Some readers might not care, but I do. So I soldier on and write about the importance of being honest with my readers.

There might be a time when I decide to consider repurposing an old column. I don’t anticipate doing so, but if I do, the right thing would be to let readers know that the column is one that ran before. That would be the honest approach. If I do give it a try, I may find out that an occasional greatest hit from the archives is something readers would appreciate. Few of you, after all, have been with me since 1998 when I started, something about which I was made painfully aware when four graduate students told me that weren’t yet born then.

My promise to you is to be honest and as transparent as possible.

But now I have an appointment with a bowl of homemade chicken soup made by my wife. Unlike those grad students, she has read every column I’ve written since 1998. Those are only two of the many reasons that she remains the woman I’d eat bees for.

Sunday, January 11, 2026

Looking back at another year of doing the right thing

A year ago, at the end of 2024, after looking at the analytics for the website where The Right Thing weekly column gets posted after it has run in publications that carry it, it was clear that readers were most drawn to columns that focused on being an engaged citizen, companies that prop up bad behavior in advertisements, learning to lose gracefully, not allowing pretension to get in the way of our message, and whether companies are obligated to honor commitments even if they were made in jest.

In 2025, the five columns viewed the most touched on the reliability of artificial intelligence, Googling prospective acquaintances, full disclosure by product reviewers, letting online friends know you were cutting ties and trusting columnists without checking their facts.

The fifth-most viewed column, “If a columnist tells you something, check it out,” ran in late August. In it, I recounted how a news program once misidentified my profession and how I’d recently misspoke on a podcast interview. In each instance, I felt the importance of acknowledging the error and urged readers to double-check facts before they spread them as gospel.

A July column, “Should I tell a social media friend that I’m cutting them?” reassured a reader there was nothing unethical about pruning the list of people she connects with online without feeling compelled to alert them they were being dumped or added.

The answer to “Should reviewers disclose receiving compensation?” which also ran in July was an emphatic “yes.” Being transparent about when you’re receiving compensation to review any product lets readers know about potential biases in the reviews they read.

In early August, I asked: “Is it OK to Google someone you’re about to meet?” While there’s no replacement to getting to know someone in person, it’s also perfectly fine and often wise to gather as much information about a person as you can before meeting them.

Finally, by far the most viewed Right Thing column of the year was June’s “Are you responsible for checking your AI work?” I mentioned that I’d asked several chatbots to write my biography and while most of the information about me was accurate, they also named a wife, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren who didn’t exist in my life, had me living with my imaginary wife in Manhattan for a couple of years, and bestowed a fellowship from a Utah university I’d never received. Even without those hallucinations, the right thing is to double-check whatever AI tells you is true.

As 2025 drew to a close, I was reminded of the opening of a Lucille Clifton poem:

i am running into a new year

and the old years blow black

like a wind

that I catch in my hair

Thank you for continuing to email your questions, stories and reactions to The Right Thing column. May your years continue to be full of doing the right thing while surrounded by those who choose to do the same and may you face whatever the coming year’s winds bring you.