If a colleague interprets rules differently from you,
does that make her unethical? A reader from the Midwest seems to think so.
The reader has a colleague who works as a counselor for
her church's youth group. Until some members of the youth group are baptized,
the coworker said she had chosen to abstain from eating bread.
"In her mind, this is some sort of meaningful
religious sacrifice," the reader writes, suggesting he's doubtful that the
meaningfulness extends beyond his coworker's mind.
When a group of people at the reader's office, including
his bread-abstaining coworker, were discussing where to go for lunch, they
decided they'd go to an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet.
Obviously, the reader believed this would cause some
concern for his coworker. However, the woman readily agreed to the group's
choice and said she'd just eat the cheese and toppings off of the pizza and leave
the rest.
"I believe it is unethical for a person to do
this," my reader writes.
He explains that he believes the all-you-can-eat deal
works because "it assumes people will get full and stop eating." To
go to an all-you-can-eat place with the intent of not eating half or more of
the food, he writes, "is shady."
"In the same way that you can't share food with a
non-paying tagalong at such a place, or take leftovers home, I don't think you
can go to such a place with the intent of not consuming the food you are
taking."
At the restaurant, the reader's colleague had the
opportunity not to partake of the buffet and instead order her own pizza off
the menu. If she had done that, my reader concludes, "she'd be free and
clear to eat or not eat it in any way she saw fit." But the reader seems
surprised that his coworker saw nothing wrong with ordering the buffet and then
eating only the toppings from the pizza.
"Is her approach ethical?" he asks.
Years ago, my wife and I frequented a restaurant in
Western Massachusetts that featured a salad buffet with printed signs that
implored diners to: "Take as much as you want, but eat as much as you
take."
The reader is likely right that restaurants would prefer
buffet customers eat what they take from the buffet table. Clearly, he'd never
go to a buffet and take food with the intent of not eating all that he took.
It is inappropriate for the reader to pass judgment on
whether or not his coworker is making a religious sacrifice through her
actions. That's between the coworker and her God.
Ideally, the coworker would eat what she takes from the
buffet table to avoid being wasteful. But it's not convincing that the
coworker's behavior would be any more shady than that of a customer who doesn't
like pizza crusts and leaves them on her plate. It's unlikely the reader would
pass similar judgment on the crust abstainer.
The right thing is for my reader not to let his judgment
about whether his coworker's self-professed religious actions and decisions are
legitimate to color his assessment of how she behaves at the buffet table.
She'll be back to eating the whole slice soon enough.
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) 2014 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNECONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
3 comments:
The woman is trying to remain moral with her contract to God to abstain from bread but is failing to be moral in her contract to the buffet owner in eating what you take. She is eating the most expensive part of his offering and eliminating the most filling part.
Jeffrey,
Eating just the toppings at a pizza buffet is unethical because it undermines the implied agreement that this customer has with the restaurant. A restaurant takes a calculated gamble when it offers all-you-can-eat buffets that the sale will remain profitable. It bases this gamble on the known costs of food and the physical limits someone can eat in one sitting and it prices its offerring accordingly. By eating only the toppings and forgoing the more filling bread, this customer radically increases the restaurant's risk of an unprofitable sale since they will naturally consume more pizza at a greater cost to the restaurant.
The restaurant would be within its rights to refuse to serve such a customer but it is the restaurant's and not the coworker's bone to pick over this behavior. Your reader's calling out his coworker, on a nationally published column no less, appears a bit self-righteous. Perhaps your reader would do well to follow the admonition of not worrying about the speck in his brother's eye while there remains a plank in his own...
William Jacobson
Anaheim, CA
PS. A similar issue arises with all-you-can-eat sushi:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/17/business/la-fi-lazarus-20110218
This is a perfect example of people in groups who think they (can) (must) apply their own moral justifications to everyday situations. Much to-do about absolutely nothing.
Charlie Seng
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