Last December, the actor Alec Baldwin was asked to leave
an American Airlines flight boarding at Los Angeles International Airport
because of his desire to continue to play the game Words with Friends on his
smartphone after the aircraft's doors had closed. Undoubtedly the popularity of
the game, similar to the longtime family-favorite board game Scrabble, didn't
suffer as a result of the dustup at LAX.
Apparently, some users find Words With Friends
captivating enough to have several games going with various opponents at once.
Anyone who has played the game knows that heated discussions over which words
are allowed and which are not commonly erupt. Unlike the analog game of
Scrabble where a player can challenge an opponent's word, on Words With
Friends, the program itself decides whether a word is acceptable.
As the game has grown in popularity, so too have the
sites that users can consult to see what the seven random letter tiles they end
up with each round can possibly spell. Plug in your seven letters plus one open
letter on the board and all possibilities are quickly revealed to a user - even
though many of the words can be those for which the user hasn't a clue about
their meaning. These sites do link to a definition of even the most obscure
words, but players are under no obligation to learn the meaning of whatever
word they are supplied.
It's not uncommon after a particularly unusual word is
played by someone not known for his use of unusual words ("feazing,"
anyone?), that an opponent will suggest that a help site was consulted. Or,
more directly, will say, "You cheated, didn't you?" By
"cheated," both parties typically will know that what's meant is the
accusation that a help site was used.
A question then is whether it's wrong to consult such
help sites when playing the game. Is it indeed cheating?
If no clear ground rules are set that forbid or encourage
the use of such sites, then I find nothing wrong with using the sites. As long
as the words fit and are accepted by the online game board, no violating of the
established rules has occurred.
But as with many situations, a follow-up question might
be if that's the best right solution to how to play the game fair and square
where questions of possible cheating are removed from the table (or, in this
case, screen) entirely. It's not.
The best right thing to do when engaging a new opponent
in a game of Words With Friends is to establish an agreement that using help
sites is perfectly OK or if using them is off limits for this particular game.
Making the rules clear from the outset wherever possible not only can make for
a more even playing field, it also can result in fewer misunderstandings and
accusations. All in all, the transparency of rules makes the playing all that
more pleasurable.
As for whether Alec Baldwin should have been bounced from
the flight? Anyone not following the instructions of a flight attendant should
know they run the risk of wrath. Regardless of whether the rules are enforced
consistently, once the attendant makes it clear this is going to be one of the
flights where you follow the rules or else, then the right thing is to follow
the rules if you don't want to get kicked off the plane.
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.
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin
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.
A husband and wife send their kids to a camp for three
weeks each summer. They like the camp and their kids will choose to go there
for at least 10 years.
In addition to the fee they pay to send their kids to
this camp, the couple pays an additional $100 to be able to send and receive
emails from their children. Since the camp is, as their mother reports, "a
technology-free place of fun," the emails the parents send are printed out
and given to the children. The children then hand write replies that are
scanned by camp employees and emailed to the parents.
This is all a bit convoluted, since an old-fashioned
postcard might do the trick and be cheaper. What really is bugging the parents,
however, is that the camp also offers a picture-sharing service that allows
them to see their kids in camping action. Parents sign a release and then a
photographer regularly snaps pictures that are then posted to the camp's
website. Parents can buy a 4 by 6 photo of their kid for $1.65 plus shipping
and handling.
"I can get a picture printed from Walgreens for 19
cents," the mother wrote me. "This past week I realized that I could
pull pictures off the website without purchasing them." Even though she
says she is not really a tech-savvy person, she notes that the procedure is as
easy as "copy and paste."
The mother has expressed her concern to the company
providing the photographs. The latter would not negotiate the price.
"Customer service is not a strength they have," she explains.
She's quick to acknowledge that the company should make a
fair profit for the product it provides and charge accordingly. Copying photos
from the site without paying anything is not an option for her, since she would
consider that stealing. But she wonders whether it would be unethical to pull
the pictures off the site and then also purchase enough so the photographer
gets a fair profit -- "say, 50 cents per picture."
"Or is it just outright stealing?" she asks.
She is considering the action, but it just doesn't sit
right with her, not passing her own "gut test."
I could quibble that it seems nuts for the camp not to
embed the cost of a $1.65 photo or two and the email "service" into
the general fee charged to attend the camp. I could also ponder why a
photographer wouldn't protect the photos online so that they couldn't be copied
and pasted without purchase. But the convoluted way the camp chooses to provide
this service has no bearing on whether it's right to simply take the photos off
the website without paying for them since they are deemed to be overpriced.
The mother's gut test serves her well and she's right to
avoid taking the photos without paying for them. The right thing is to pay for
the photos they take and continue to talk to the camp about changing this
process. The alternative is simply to get enough parents to refuse to pay the
$100 fee and to refrain from buying photos at the marked-up price until the
camp recognizes that there's a better way to service the needs of the parents
who send their kids to enjoy a technology-free three weeks every summer.
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.
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin
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.
If you had a chance to guarantee that at least one person
wouldn't vote against your preferred candidate, would you take it? What if that
prospective voter were your elderly father whose care is partially entrusted to
you?
In the past year, a reader has relocated her 87-year-old
father from the state in which he was living to a senior-living facility near
her home. She writes that he has been diagnosed with short-term memory loss and
moderate to severe dementia.
"For example," she writes, "he doesn't usually
know his own age, the month of the year, the season, or the name of the current
president." But he does read the newspaper on most days and maintains
"pleasant social interactions."
The reader has managed her father's finances for several
years. Since he moved closer to her, she has managed his medical and health
care issues, as well.
The facility where her father resides recently
distributed absentee ballot applications to all residents. The reader notes
that her father is unable to fill out the application on his own. "I
really doubt if he could complete the ballot without assistance," she
writes. "I know he couldn't handle voting in person. But he has always
voted, and I might add, along strict party lines."
So here's the reader's quandary as she sees it: Should
she help her father fill out the absentee ballot? Should she help him vote even
though, as she observes, he doesn't know who the current president is?
"If I ask him, 'Do you want to vote for the
Republican or the Democrat?' I know what he will say. But it seems to me he is
no longer capable of making a rational decision."
She adds that her and her father's political affiliations
are opposite one another. "I'm wondering," she writes, "if the
thought of his vote canceling out my vote is influencing my uneasiness."
While it would be lovely to believe that all voters make
rational decisions, are educated about the candidates or are in full control of
their faculties when they cast their votes in an election, it's a safe bet that
that's not the case. The reader is not obligated to help her father fill out
the application for his absentee ballot nor is she obligated to assist him in
remembering to cast that ballot in time to be counted in the upcoming election.
But she shouldn't do anything to dissuade him from voting, particularly if
she's motivated by the knowledge that his vote is likely to cancel her own out.
It's clear that she cares for her father and knows that
voting is important to him. That she is wrestling with the question suggests
she knows the right thing to do in this situation and that's to ask her father
first if he wants to vote in this election and then to offer him assistance by
telling him what he has to do to attain his absentee ballot and to fill it out
in time to be counted. If he decides not to vote, that's his choice. But so,
too, is whether he asks his daughter for help. If he asks, it seems right to
offer assistance even if the outcome that goes against how his daughter might
have cast her ballot. In the end, offering help in this case stops short of
making any decision for him.
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.
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin
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.
Now that her mother is 96 and in an assisted living
center in the Midwest, a reader has taken over paying the bills and handling
her bank account.
The mother receives a pension as well as Social Security
payments totaling less than $2,300 a month. Her rent for her apartment in the
assisted living center is $5,000 a month.
The ownership of her mother's house was transferred to my
reader about eight years ago. Last year, the house was sold and the proceeds
remain in the daughter's name. The mother's earnings total a couple of hundred
dollars too much to qualify for Medicaid, so my reader needs to come up with
another $1, 700 a month just to pay her mother's rent. On top of that, she pays
for any additional medical supplies, health insurance and other miscellaneous
costs her mother incurs.
My reader draws $3,000 a month from the account that
holds the proceeds from the sale of her mother's house. She also supplements
that by paying for many things with her own limited income, which is less than
$2,000 a month from Social Security.
In her mother's will, she names several people to inherit
certain percentages of her money. She has no idea that her daughter is using
that $3,000 per month to pay for assisted living and, as a result, there will
be less money left to her church and her grandchildren.
My reader says her dilemma is whether she should let her
mother's savings build so she can leave a larger amount of money to the heirs,
but as a result deplete her own funds -- or whether she should use her mother's
funds, which would mean that any inheritance for the grandchildren would amount
to practically nothing.
Her grandchildren have told her that they do not want any
inheritance. "They would rather that I protect my inheritance for as long
as I can and continue to use her income to help with paying her bills,"
she writes.
"I know that everyone involved would say to go ahead
and use her monthly income, but am I not honoring her will by doing so?"
my reader asks. "It's been very hard for her to give up all control, and
I'm afraid this whole state of affairs would be devastating to her."
The right thing is for my reader to honor her mother's
wishes as much as possible, but not to deplete her own funds that she needs to
pay her living expenses in the process. Her mother's intention in her will was
to divide whatever assets existed upon her death to her grandchildren, the
church and other beneficiaries. It's not her daughter's responsibility to draw
on her own funds to make sure that her mother's funds stay as healthy as
possible.
While the best thing might be to let her mother know the
specifics of her financial condition, if their agreement was that the daughter
would take care of paying her bills and managing her expenses drawing on her
mother's accounts as needed, then that's what she should do.
She is already honoring her mother by taking care of her
and her affairs. She should not go broke in the process if the resources exist
in her mother's accounts to pay her mother's expenses. If she wants her
children to inherit more, she can decide to leave whatever she wants to them in
her own will.
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.
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin
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.
