Parking at work can become a heated issue. At some
businesses, negotiations over who gets to park where -- or for how much in
adjacent lots -- can ignite fiery arguments. When a deal is finally struck, the
cheers can be heard for blocks.
How much attention employees pay to such a benefit once
they have it can a whole other story.
A professor -- let's call him Reg -- at a small liberal
arts college located in the center of a major city writes to tell me that he
recently received an email from human resources informing him that he'd receive
a rebate of just over $465 for overpaying for parking during the previous 18
months.
It turns out no one had noticed that the college, which
foots part of employees' parking costs, had been underpaying its portion of the
parking bill each month for some staff.
Reg was informed that all employees still
"active" at the college at the beginning of this academic year who
were affected by the error would receive a rebate dating back 18 months.
"There was one problem," writes Reg. "I
had been out of the country for one of the three semesters I was being
reimbursed for." Even so, the college was set to reimburse him for a
portion of the parking fees for that extra semester.
"I alerted the college to this discrepancy,"
Reg writes. "But I'm curious: Was this my ethical responsibility or would
I have acted ethically had I ignored the college's error?"
Reg's question is a variation on a question readers
regularly ask. A reader might receive too much money in an ATM transaction and
wonder if it's his or her responsibility to return the extra cash. A reader
might get too much change from the local coffee shop. Should they call
attention to the errors?
Yes, the right thing is to call attention to such
mistakes and try to correct them, just as Reg did. And the right thing was for
the college to return the money as soon as the overpay errors were discovered.
But Reg and his fellow employees' plight raises a couple
of other questions. The notification to Reg and others only specified that
"active" employees would be reimbursed for the billing errors. The
right thing would be for the college to make sure to reimburse anyone who'd
been short-changed, regardless of whether they still worked for the school.
The notification also indicates that employees everywhere
would do well to examine their pay stubs from time to time to see if errors
exist. Granted, in this case, it was the college's mistake, but it's good for
employees to understand their compensation and make sure they get what's owed
them.
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 programat 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.
1 comment:
To show other readers how things have changed over my experiences from working during the years 1956to retirement in 2000, in those years, I worked for 45 years at 6 different insurance company home offices, all of which provided free parking for all employees. My, how things have changed using Jeffrey's example! My comment on today's example is that unless the professor answering the question had been told he would not receive remuneration during his one semester being away from his employment, it would seem that while it would be ethical to check with human recources to make sure, but it would appear that he owed the company nothing for the monies refunded.
Charlie Seng
Lancaster, SC
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