Puzzling over returning flawed puzzle

Often, how to respond ethically to some of the more mundane things in life that puzzle us the most.

A reader we’re calling Pamela recently wrote to comment about how much she loves her local library. The library is located in the center of her town in a big old sprawling building. It’s well stocked and rare that Pamela can’t find what she is looking for.

Her library also has a “library of things” it lends out to cardholders. Games, gardening tools, slide to JPG converters and assorted other stuff are available to lend.

Pamela also noticed recently that the library has a sizable jigsaw puzzle collection that falls outside the jurisdiction of other collections.

The library doesn’t ask people to check the jigsaw puzzles out, but simply to take whatever one they want and then to return it when they are finished with it. All they ask is that the borrower fill out a small sheet of paper inside each jigsaw puzzle box that asks if any pieces are missing.

Aside from that, there’s no obligation and no record of any of the puzzles having been borrowed. It's a total honor system when it comes to borrowing, using, and returning.

It took Pamela a few days to find time to get around to the jigsaw puzzle she had borrowed. When she did, she realized it was a more challenging puzzle than she had anticipated, so it was taking her longer to complete it. “A lot of dark green to figure out,” wrote Pamela.

As she neared the puzzle’s completion, it became clear to Pamela that pieces were missing. At first, she thought one piece for certain was missing. By the time she had placed all the pieces in the box, it was clear that three pieces were missing.

“Either I dropped them somehow,” wrote Pamela, “or someone who borrowed the jigsaw puzzle before me hadn’t bothered to fill out the note about missing pieces.

“Should I even return the puzzle?” Pamela asked. “It’s missing pieces and they’re just going to get rid of it anyhow. Or should I just throw it out?”

Pamela is correct that it’s unlikely the library will keep her borrowed puzzle given the missing pieces.

But the agreement when she borrowed the puzzle was to return it when she was through and to fill out the missing-piece questionnaire before she returned the puzzle.

Granted, the library doesn’t know Pamela has the puzzle, since the borrowing was based on an honor system and didn’t go through the usual checkout process. But just because Pamela could toss the puzzle and never get caught or questioned about it does not make reneging on her initial borrowing commitment the right thing to do.

It might take more time to make the return. Ultimately, the library might not care.

Pamela should either call the library to ask whether she needs to return the jigsaw puzzle given its missing pieces or she should simply return the puzzle as she promised to do — not out of fear of getting caught, but because it’s 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, emeritus, 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) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

 

Is it OK to call something 'gourmet' or 'homemade'?

Two related questions from different readers arrived this week, each related to food labeling.

From a reader we’re called Howard, we received the question of what can be called “gourmet” food. From another we’re calling Jesse, we were asked what “homemade” means when attached to prepared food at his neighborhood grocery’s delicatessen counter.

While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has published guidelines for many food labeling items such as “organic” or “natural,” I’ve been hard-pressed to find anything definitive by it or any other agency that clearly lays out the qualities a food must have to be called “gourmet” or “homemade.”

“Whose home do they mean?” Jesse asked in his email. Good question.

Near as I can fathom, when something is labeled “homemade” like cole slaw, potato salad or roasted vegetables, it simply means the food wasn’t made by a machine, but instead was cooked and assembled by a human being.

It’s more likely that the homemade stuff was made in the deli’s kitchen or a central kitchen rather than anyone’s home. The regulations for selling food made in a home kitchen are estimable enough to thwart that preparation route as an option.

The “gourmet” moniker is typically a marketing maneuver used to suggest the finest ingredients were used in its preparation to make it all fancy-like. But who determines what makes such ingredients fancy enough to warrant a gourmet label is unclear or nonexistent.

It seems akin to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s response in 1964 when asked how he determined something was obscene: “I know it when I see it.” Hardly satisfying, but nevertheless it persists.

That all gets us back to Howard’s and Jesse’s overarching questions about whether it is wrong to label something as “gourmet” or “homemade” if neither the seller nor the customer knows what each label means.

As consumers, we face similar situations regularly. What, for example, does “supersize” mean when affixed to a package? It’s used to entice us and make us believe we’re getting more bang for our buck at the cash register.

There’s nothing wrong with such marketing tactics, as long as the seller is not trying to label something that is clearly not what they are trying to sell.

As consumers, the right thing is to educate ourselves to have a glimmer of a sense of what it is we are buying. Looking at the ingredient label is far likelier to be useful than to rely on a word like “gourmet.”

Referring to the unit price tags on store shelves that inform consumers how much items cost per a consistent weight measure is a far better method of determining value than relying on words like “jumbo” or “super.”

Are sellers trying to manipulate us to buy stuff because they use fancy labels that are hard to define consistently? Yes.

But if consumers really care about the food they are consuming or the amount they are spending on it, the right thing is for them to be as informed as possible.

Grocery stores already help with this by featuring unit price tags. Ingredient labels are another method.

If the ingredients include things you can’t identify, it’s good to question how willing you are to put food in your body when you don’t know what it’s made from.

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, emeritus, 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) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Is it OK to sell my town-issued recycling bin?

Each week after “The Right Thing” column has run its course in the publications that subscribe to it, it gets posted on a blog as www.jeffreyseglin.com. The blog doesn’t go all the way back to the first column that ran in September 1998, but it does go back pretty far, to January 2006.

Occasionally, I take a look at the analytics to see which columns have received the most hits over the years. For a long time, the most-viewed column was one that ran 19 years ago exploring the question of if it was OK to allow others to rummage through your recycling bins for bottles or cans that can be returned for a deposit.

That column was recently surpassed by a January 2016column that asked the question of whether it was OK to accept a job offer by a name caller. Still, recycling remains at the top of the most-viewed columns over the past couple of decades.

The rights and wrongs of neighborhood recycling continues to be a recurring concern for readers judging from a recent email.

A reader we’re calling Elke describes herself as a regular estate and garage sale frequenter. During the early days of the pandemic, Elke was able to keep up with her shopping predilection by availing herself of online estate sale sites that enabled buyers to bid online and then pick up an item from the dealer handing the sale at a safe distance rather than in a crowded house of other shoppers.

Elke has started to attend in-person estate sales again, but she still keeps an eye on the sites for things she might like. After viewing a recent sale, she emailed me.

“It is OK to sell one of those large recycling bins issued by a town?” she asked.

Since it is possible to buy large blue bins on wheels on your own, I asked Elke if she was sure the container was town-issued and not something that might have been purchased at a nearby hardware store.

Elke confirmed that the container had the name and seal of the town on it, as well as words that made clear it was issued as part of the municipality’s recycling program.

In some city neighborhoods where recycling bins might get mixed up after recycling is picked up, it seems fair for residents to put house numbers on the bins. When they don’t, I’m confident that bins occasionally get exchanged from house to house.

But unlike trash cans a resident purchased and has every right to sell or take with them if they move, the town-issued recycling bins should stay with the house to which they were issued.

Why the dealer allowed the recycling bin to be listed on the website for sale is baffling and wrong.

If the family selling the items asked to have the bin listed, the right thing would have been for the dealer to point out why it was inappropriate. Now, the right thing is for the dealer to take that listing down.

As for neighbors looking through recycling bins for returnables, I still believe it’s OK to give them permission to do so. The returnables are yours, even if the bin they’re placed in is not.

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, emeritus, 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) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.