Is a reader obligated to return a package received in error?

With less than a week to go before Christmas, CBS News reported data from Shipmatrix, a company that analyzes data on shipments made in the United States, which estimated that  roughly 6 million packages were piling up in warehouses and that on-time delivery had dropped to 86%. Check Point Software Technologies, a cybersecurity company, also indicated that fake texts and emails notifying people about the shipping status of a package were up 440% from the previous month.

Late deliveries and fake notices likely have a bunch of frustrated and nervous shoppers worried about gifts being delivered on time. But still another, likely much smaller category of shoppers, have found themselves with a different perplexing package problem.

"I was excited to see a package with the gift I thought I'd ordered arrived," writes a reader we're calling "Buddy." But when he opened the box, he found a book he had never ordered.

While it wasn't wrapped, Buddy initially thought that perhaps it was a gift from someone. But there was no note and no order slip enclosed. Given the topic of the book, Buddy was pretty sure it was not a gift from anyone who knew him terribly well.

"The only return address on the box was a shipping center in Kentucky," writes Buddy. "I didn't order the book. I didn't pay for the book. I'm pretty sure it was shipped to me by mistake."

Buddy feels bad for two reasons. The first is that there's likely someone out there expecting a book about aristocrats he or she will never receive. The second is that he's torn about simply keeping the book rather than making an effort to return it, something that might prove challenging given the slim information about its origin. If he doesn't try to return it, Buddy knows the likelihood that its intended recipient will ever receive it is much lower.

"What should I do?" Buddy asks.

Buddy is kind to worry about the intended recipient never getting the book. I'm of the mind that trying to be kind is most often the right thing to do. But Buddy should not be expected to take extraordinary measures to find out who the package was truly intended for if scant information is available for him to do so. While I'm not a legal expert on such matters, the Federal Trade Commission indicates on its website that a recipient of unordered merchandise has "no legal obligation to notify the seller." But, it goes on to say that,  "you may write the seller and offer to return the merchandise, provided the seller pays for shipping and handling."

Given the minimal information about the seller Buddy has, he might be hard-pressed to contact them. But, if he wants to, he can search online for the name of the shipping center to see if there's an email address through which he can reach the seller. If he sends off an email and is asked to return the book, then it would be kind of him to do so. If he receives no response or can't find a way to contact the shipping center, he at least can rest easy that he went above and beyond by trying. Or he can simply do nothing and decide if he wants to learn about aristocrats of 19th century America by reading the book. 

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.

(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Small acts of kindness leave a lasting impression

Several weeks ago, I asked readers to send me some stories from their lives that captured moments when they stepped up to do the right thing for someone else, regardless of whether they received recognition, or to share a time when they were the recipients of such acts. Many readers wrote in to share their stories.

One was Brenda who told me of the time in 2017 when fires were raging in Santa Rosa, California when she stopped into her local Mexican restaurant to pick up a takeout order. She noticed a fire truck from Texas in the parking lot, and asked the waitress to put the firefighters' meal on her credit card, "tip and all." She asked the restaurant staff to tell them after she left that "our town was honored they came so far to help us."

Reader Kate was at her Subaru dealer when she overheard the service desk worker tell a woman she needed two new tires. After the woman declined to replace the tires, Kate heard her whisper to a friend that "there was no way" she could afford them. Kate asked the dealer to charge her for the two tires but not to mention it to the woman, simply saying instead that the dealership was taking care of it. "It was like playing Santa Claus," Kate wrote.

Max, a Jesuit priest, was living in Alberta, Canada when he met a man whose ministry was engaging homeless people downtown in conversation. Max asked what he might offer the homeless people and was told to bring three things: bus tickets, Power Bars and cigarette rolling papers, as well as tobacco if he could afford it. "This I did," said Max.

When Irene was about 14, her 13-year-old neighbor boy yelled to her that his family's pasture was on fire. Irene yelled back to have his 17-year-old sister call in the fire. Then she and the boy grabbed a pile of empty burlap sacks, drenched them using a garden hose and started beating back the fire. Cars began stopping and people got out to help by grabbing some of the wet sacks. By the time forestry got there, the kids and those who stopped to help had extinguished the fire.

Around Christmas time in the 1970s a reader we're calling Kali went to a street artist fair near Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco. She was admiring a necklace made from an old Buffalo-head nickel from which the artist had carved out the profile of a Native American. The necklace cost $15. Kali told the artist she had just lost her job otherwise she would have purchased it. "Here," he said, and handed it to her.

"I still have the necklace," Kali writes, more than 40 years after the artist gave it to her. "I have never forgotten his generosity."

These are only a handful of the many stories readers sent. These, like other stories I received, mostly involved small acts that made a lasting impact on both the giver and receiver.

As we enter the season of both giving and receiving, it is heartening to learn of these benevolent acts, small and large, when readers decided to do something for someone else, to do the right thing, expecting nothing in return. 

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. 

(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Avoid regrets by giving mentors flowers while they can smell them

Last week, a random tweet came across my feed that was retweeted by someone I follow but don't know. In it, the tweeter wrote that he discovered an email in his outbox that was never sent that he had written to someone thanking them for the influence they had had on him. He only discovered the unsent email after learning the recipient had died a few days after he composed the email. His tweet reminded me of my own regrets in not expressing thanks soon enough.

Forty-five years ago this coming January, I had dropped out after my first semester as a full-time college student, taken a day job as a costumed employee at Colonial Williamsburg and a night job as an assistant manager at a Hardee's hamburger restaurant. On the nights I wasn't working I took a sociology course at Christopher Newport University when it was still a two-year community college in Newport News, Virginia. Students in the course ranged from people my age to older students, several of whom were active military from one of the nearby bases. Toward the end of the spring-term course at least a couple of students couldn't make class because they were somehow involved with Operation Frequent Wind, the effort in April 1975 to evacuate more than 7,000 people from Saigon as the Vietnam War drew to a close.

But the most lasting memory for me was of the young African-American professor who taught the course. Her name was Charlotte Fitzgerald. Professor Fitzgerald's enthusiasm for the topic, her ability to engage students and her detailed feedback on written work showed me how instrumental a teacher can be to cultivating a lasting love of learning. She influenced my decision to return to school and how I engaged as a student. Years later, I emulated her approach in how I sought to work with students of my own.

It was only in December 2013, after receiving a particularly moving note from a former student of my own, that I decided a note of thanks from me to Professor Fitzgerald was long overdue.

My first attempts to locate her through Christopher Newport University were met with: "Unfortunately, we do not have this information readily available" from the registrar. A year later, I wrote again, this time to the college library, and a librarian immediately responded with a link to a page from Randolph-Macon College's website.

Professor Fitzgerald had apparently moved to teach at Randolph-Macon in 1982. After she died in 1996, the college established a scholarship in her memory for students in financial need who were majoring in the social sciences.

I remember Professor Fitzgerald as a young professor, but then so was I at the time. A cryptic entry on an ancestry database indicates she was 25 while teaching my class at Christopher Newport. She died at 46.

I regret never having had the chance to thank Professor Fitzgerald beyond a few words at our last class meeting in 1975 for the significant influence she had on me. I wish she had known how she impacted me and I'm hopeful that other students after me were far more forthcoming with praise.

After discovering that Professor Fitzgerald had died before I could thank her properly, I have made an effort to thank influential mentors and teachers while they are still around. I'm far from done, but it definitely seems the right thing to do. 

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. 

(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Do individual efforts to feed the hungry detract from larger efforts?

Millions of people in the United States continue to go hungry each day. Prior to the pandemic, Feeding America, the largest hunger-relief organization in the United States, reported that "more than 35 million people, including nearly 11 million children, lived in a food-insecure household." According to Feeding America's "The Impact of the Coronavirus on Food Insecurity in 2020" released in October, those numbers represented the lowest level of food insecurity in the country in 20 years.

With massive unemployment caused by the pandemic, any gains made in trying to ensure that no household went hungry have been reversed, the report says. In its state-by-state breakdown, Feeding America details how "millions of people are newly experiencing food insecurity."

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the efforts of volunteers who started communal food fridges where people could donate both perishable and non-perishable food. Anyone who was in need of food could stop by 24 hours a day, seven days a week and take whatever they needed. Because the food fridge effort is entirely run by volunteers and donations, the food offerings vary widely. One day there might be lots of bread and eggs. Another day, peanut butter and pasta.

In response to the column, I received notes from individuals who for years had organized initiatives to feed people in need of food. One grassroots effort undertaken by two women in the Northeast was gearing up to collect donations and distribute gift bags as the cold weather began to hit. Hats, gloves, bottled water, snacks, cloth masks, hand warmers and gift cards for fast-food restaurants were among the items the women hoped to include in each bag.

Other readers, however, wondered if the various individual attempts to address hunger were too random to have a lasting impact. A gift bag to a homeless person doesn't solve the issue of homelessness, some wrote. Others wondered how helpful a communal refrigerator and pantry was to a household looking to feed adults and children if they couldn't predict what might be on the shelves when they arrived.

"Shouldn't we be putting all of our efforts behind a national effort to get rid of hunger?" one reader asked, arguing that it might be wrong to divert donations from larger efforts.

I agree with readers who believe that we should make a concerted effort to make sure that children and their families do not suffer from hunger. An organized, focused program to help get food to those in need does indeed seem wise.

But that does not diminish the smaller-scale efforts being made, whether through a community refrigerator and pantry, the distribution of gift bags to homeless people in the area, or any other creative means of trying to aid the millions of people suffering from food insecurity in the United States.

The right thing is not to think of this as an either/or choice, but a both/and. If you can get behind a national cause to end hunger, great. If you find a local initiative you like that seeks to bridge any gaps for those in need, contribute with gusto.

Yes, there are systemic reasons people go hungry in a developed country. And yes, it will take time and effort to try to address those reasons. Until that happens, getting food or mittens to those who need them most seems worth the effort. 

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. 

(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.