"I confess," a reader writes. "I am a
miserable person."
The reader takes great pride in trying to do what's
right. Quite frequently, he's found himself being undercharged at a store or
restaurant.
"Mostly, I tell the people and they correct the
bill," he writes. But, "before I get too high and mighty," he
confesses that he hasn't always made the effort to set things straight. About 41 years ago, when he was "young and poor" and living in Denver, the
reader spent quite a bit of time hiking and camping. Living on a shoestring
budget, he tried to stretch every dollar.
He'd saved enough money to buy a propane backpacking
stove that sold for $19.90, the kind you can still pick up for about $25 at
most sporting goods stores or discount retailers. At the checkout counter, the
cashier placed the decimal point in the wrong place and erroneously charged him
only $1.99.
Eying the receipt, the reader, who was unemployed at the
time, contemplated whether to tell the cashier he'd made a mistake. He decided
not to. "I was dishonest," he writes.
Granted, there are stores that might sell you an item at
a lower price if it's mislabeled or scans wrong. But my reader's experience was
in the days before scanners were in wide use. (The first item scanned at a
checkout is reported to have been a pack of chewing gum at a grocery store in
Ohio in 1974, the same year as the reader's propane stove purchase.)
That he didn't pay the correct amount has always nagged
at the reader.
Last fall, he found himself with four friends at a
restaurant in New York City. When the bill arrived, he discovered they hadn't
been charged for a round of drinks. Without hesitation, he told his friends
they needed to let the waiter know, and they did.
It wasn't the experience 41 years ago that taught the
reader that correcting someone who undercharges you is the right thing to do,
although it might have heightened his determination to set things right in
similar situations. He knew as soon as he saw the receipt for the propane stove
that he should have drawn attention to the error. The fact that he was nearly
broke shouldn't have made a difference. He did, after all, go into the store
expecting to pay $19.90.
Does this make the reader a miserable person? No.
We all make errors of judgment, and the reader recognizes
that he made one 31 years ago. Ever since then, he's tried his best to do the
right thing when faced with similar situations, as well as predicaments that
could have had far more dire results.
I've written before that what should really drive us is
to understand that in making choices, our actions define us. Only then can we
consistently strive to do the right thing.
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 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
1 comment:
This topic fascinates me, because of what it says about human behavior. I try to always correct undercharging when I catch it. It's as much about how I like to view myself as anything more noble. My rule: If my mom would do it, then it's the right thing to do.
Yet the same people who think I'm an easy mark or a Pollyanna wouldn't think twice about raising a ruckus if a store, restaurant, or other service provider OVERcharged them. Funny, isn't it?
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