When yard sale customers pay but don’t pick up their goods

How long must you wait for someone who purchased an item but never picked it up at a yard sale?

Back during the first week of September, a reader we’re calling Alice participated in her neighborhood’s annual neighborhood yard sale. Dozens of houses participate every year and Alice has long enjoyed clearing out her attic, basement and closets of things she no longer needs or wants but that might provide some use to someone else.

Alice lives in a neighborhood in a large New England city that is easy to get to by subway and has plenty of on-street parking, so the yard sale is frequented by people from all over who attend to see if they can find something specific they might be looking for or to be surprised by something they never knew they needed until they saw it for sale.

Every year, Alice finds enough stuff to place out on a folding table in front of her house. She makes about $100, a bit more if the weather is particularly nice, and even more if she has some old pieces of furniture to sell.

The weather this year was perfect, according to Alice. A warmish fall day in New England with no rain in sight. The posted yard sale hours were from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. The steady stream of potential customers began right at the start and continued throughout the day. Because Alice was at the start of her block, every once in a while someone who bought something would ask if they could pick it up later in the day, especially if it was on the larger size and if they were already carrying quite a few items from others’ sales.

At about 11 a.m., Alice sold a set of dishes and a few pieces of glassware to a customer. After he paid, she offered to put the items in a box and he asked if he could pick up the box at the end of the day. She agreed and then he placed a sleeve of plastic drinking cups he had purchased elsewhere into the box and left them on Alice’s front steps.

By the end of the day, the customer hadn’t returned. Nevertheless, Alice left the box on the steps overnight in case he returned the next morning. No appearance. Three days passed and the customer never arrived for the pickup. Finally, on the fourth day, rain was predicted so Alice moved the box to her basement and figured the customer would ring the bell if he ever showed up.

It's been more than two months now and there has been no sign of the customer. Alice wants to know if she’s obligated to hold onto the goods.

I am not an expert in yard sale law, but it seems that if Alice were moving or truly didn’t have space to store the items, she would be OK getting rid of them. But given that the box is not taking up much space in her basement and it contains an item that the customer bought elsewhere, the right thing seems to be to hold onto the item to see if the customer shows up, even if it’s at next year’s sale. If it becomes a burden to do so, then Alice should be clear finding a new home for the goods.

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) 2024 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

What running a light decades ago taught me

Is it OK to take glee in wanting someone who made the same mistake as you did to get caught?

Several decades ago when my parents were still alive and living in Williamsburg, Virginia, the woman I’d eat bees for and I decided to make the drive from Boston to Williamsburg to pay a visit. We decided to break up the trip by stopping overnight in Washington, D.C., to visit some friends and to explore some of the many museums there.

One evening we were driving through Georgetown to meet our friends. I was driving. I approached a stoplight that was turning yellow and soon to turn red. Instead of slowing down and stopping, I proceeded through the yellow light and took a right turn onto a side street. I was greeted by a police offer waving me to pull over next to another car that had apparently already been pulled over for running the light.

As the officer approached my window, I rolled it down, and she began by asking if I knew I had run a red light. Before I could even consider deciding whether to acknowledge the truth or come up with some lame excuse, the driver in a car that had already been pulled over shouted over to her: “Give him a ticket too.”

The officer broke off her conversation with me, looked over the top of my car at the gentleman in the other car, and then waved me on with what I recall was an exaggerated wave of her hand and simply told me: “You can go on.”

My assumption has always been that had the other guy not shouted out at her, I too would have received a citation for running the light. Was she right to give me a pass on my infraction? Probably not. I was wrong and deserved a ticket. Did I argue with her? No.

Certainly, the other driver was upset that he had been pulled over and ticketed. I would have been too. But that he felt the need to vocally make sure that others were punished simply because he had been wouldn’t have made his ticket any less expensive. Sure, the fair thing would have been for me to be treated as he had been and I likely would have been had he let the officer do her job.

That incident from back in the mid-1980s has stuck with me all these years. It reinforced a sense that each of us should try to take responsibility for our own actions rather than make sure everyone goes down with us. Did I know whether his infraction was greater than mine? No. Could the officer simply have decided that a warning for me running the yellow light was enough? Sure. Perhaps she was simply showing me kindness rather than reacting to the berating she received from the other driver.

That incident also made me more careful at stop lights while driving, not just in Georgetown, but anywhere. I’ve not been stopped for running a light since. But if I am, the right thing would be to acknowledge my error, pay my fine and move on.

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) 2024 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Don’t get angry. Get to work

What is the right way to act when something doesn’t turn out as you would have liked it to?

Most of us have found ourselves in a situation where we would have preferred a different outcome. Often such events don’t rise to the level of calamity, but instead result in a disappointment.

It rains on our walk to work. A favorite sports team loses a close game. We drop a pen between the front cushion of our car and the middle console and can’t fish it out. These and other such incidents rarely result in apoplectic rage.

But there are occasionally events that do seem to fill us with a palpable sense of rage. A tyrannical manager wreaks havoc on our workplace without being called out for his or her behavior. A teacher seems impatient with our inability to grasp a complex topic in the classroom. A politician we claim to loathe wins an election against our favored candidate.

One response to these more severe incidents is to embrace an anger that we carry with us as it festers. Rarely does this anger result in a positive outcome. More often the anger causes us more harm than it does the person to whom it is directed.

A quotation attributed to Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher of the first and early second century, captured how anger may not be the most constructive of emotions: “Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.”

So what then is the right thing to do when things don’t go your way, when you find yourself waking up to a situation that at least for the moment seems untenable?

Rather than allow anger to consume us over an outcome we didn’t like, a different tack might be to double down on whatever efforts we have done to accomplish a task or to fight for a cause and channel any energy born of disappointment into finding new ways to reach those goals.

At the 1980 Democratic National Convention, Sen. Ted Kennedy rose to address the crowd after his rather disappointing run for the presidential nomination against sitting President Jimmy Carter. With the writing help of political operative Bob Shrum and others, Kennedy delivered what turned out to be one if not the most memorable speeches of his career. He ended with these words:

“For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

Those words seem useful to heed when things don’t go as we had hoped. If we were truly concerned about a cause, that cause doesn’t disappear because we didn’t get our way. Rather than stew in anger or regret, the right thing seems to be to double down on any efforts to engage in whatever work is needed to set things straight.

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) 2024 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Become informed and vote

Should an uninformed voter be allowed to vote?

Back in March, I responded to a reader who asked what a conscientious person should do when he or she or they couldn’t invest a lot of time researching candidates. The reader was concerned that many media sources weren’t neutral and he had no desire to rely on an “equally uninformed friend.”

Then in July, I wrote about an old friend who regularly chides me for encouraging all eligible people to vote. My friend claimed not to have voted since the 2012 election cycle. He was insistent that his one vote didn’t matter and was likely not to make a difference in any election, be it for candidates running for national or local election.

There is no litmus test for how informed eligible voters must be before they vote. But, I urged back in March, if someone wants to be a conscientious voter, there are plenty of resources available to find out where local and national candidates stand on the issues. While talking heads on cable news programs may claim that this candidate or that hasn’t taken a stance on an issue, voters would be wise not to take that claim at face value and instead take the time to look at the many resources that collect information on which candidates stand where and on what.

There are many nonpartisan websites that are available to provide prospective voters with a guide on where candidates stand on what issues. When it comes to presidential candidates, some of these websites provide a simple “pro” or “con” on where a particular candidate stands on an issue. On one of these sites, ProCon.Org, which is owned by Encyclopedia Britannica, a user can view the pro-con page and then click on any issue to get more details on what a particular candidate has said about that issue.

Another useful site on which any voter can parse the issues is VoteSmart, whose founding board several decades ago included Republican and Democratic leaders including former presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford as well as former presidential candidates Barry Goldwater and George McGovern, among others. What’s particularly useful about the VoteSmart site is that you can click on a candidate and an issue and see what they said about it as well as where and when they said it.

While the deadline to register to vote in many states has already passed, some might still be open. To see what your state’s voter registration deadline is, you can consult a site like Ballotpedia. If you are unsure whether you are registered to vote, there’s a website where you can check that too. The National Associations of Secretaries of State website lets you choose your state and then provide your name to see if you’re registered. My state even lets me call up the November ballot that contains not only the people running for local, state and national positions, but also any referendum questions that happen to be on the November ballot as well.

My old friend who maintains his vote doesn’t matter might talk to Chris Poulos, a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives. In 2022, he defeated his opponent by 1 vote.

If you want to be an engaged citizen, the right thing is to register to vote, determine which candidates and issues mirror your own stances, and then vote.

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) 2024 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.