Is buying local rather than online more righteous?

Should you feel righteous about buying something from a local store rather than from an online company?

A reader we’re calling Samuel wrote that he experienced two related incidents that left him wondering: “Did I do the right thing?"

About eight years ago after he moved into a new house, he was looking for a chandelier for his dining room. He searched online and found one that looked great. “It was a bit of a splurge,” he wrote, so he wanted to see it in person before he committed to it.

Samuel found a store in his area that carried products from the chandelier company. He took a look at it, liked it and decided to buy it.

Samuel would not have known about the lamp had he not found it online, but he likes to support small businesses like his local lighting store. He left the store. About a block away thought "Hmm, I should buy it from them" and turned around, went back to the store and bought the lamp, paying a bit more than he would have paid online.

The second incident involved booking a hotel for a few days in a foreign city. After searching a big travel website, Samuel found a hotel that looked good but decided to take a look at the hotel’s own website. He figured if he booked directly with the hotel they wouldn’t have to pay the travel website a fee. But he wouldn’t have discovered the hotel had he not found it on the “large and impersonal” travel website. Ultimately, Samuel decided to book directly with the hotel even though there was no financial benefit to doing so, not even a free breakfast.

In each case, Samuel wrote that he shunned the online purchase because “it feels right” to do that. But now he wonders if it was any more right to purchase the chandelier or to book the hotel room from independent proprietors than from the online site where he found these things in the first place.

I’m a big fan of supporting small, independently owned businesses. The woman I’d eat bees for and I make a habit of buying at least one book from an independent bookstore in any town we visit. We’re friendly with the owners of small shops and markets where we live and we try to shop from them regularly.

Samuel could have decided that if something went wrong with the chandelier he’d be more likely to get better service from a local proprietor he knew. He also might have decided if something went awry with his hotel booking, it might be easier to deal with the hotel directly rather than the large travel site.

But those weren’t the reasons for Samuel’s choices. He was kind to give the lighting store and the hotel his business. He pointed out that the owner of the lighting store expressed his gratitude when he learned Samuel had first discovered the chandelier online but decided to buy local instead.

But there would have been nothing wrong if Samuel had decided to buy or book online from larger entities if that worked better for him. Ultimately, the right thing was for Samuel to make the purchases that worked best for him, whatever his reasoning was, even if it was to show a little kindness to independent business owners.

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) 2025 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

 

Alert others when emails go awry

What’s the right thing to do when you receive an email that clearly wasn’t meant for you?

It can be a frustrating and sometimes embarrassing scenario when you inadvertently copy someone on an email by accident. Perhaps you were looking up the person’s email address by clicking on the “to” field in your email so you could forward the address onto the intended recipient. You had no intention of sending the email itself to the person whose address you looked up, but things happen. You get distracted. You forget you’d looked it up and autofill provided the answer. And boom, the email is sent.

It's also not unheard of to compose an email to a group of people but find that autofill provides you with the email address for someone with the same first name as one of the people on your group list rather than the person you really wanted to send your email to. You get distracted. You forget to double-check to make sure the right people are on your email routing list. And boom, the email is sent.

In the case of the former, where you inadvertently copy someone on an email that wasn’t intended for them, a simple apology would be in order if you catch your error. Ideally, your truly intended recipients will fight the temptation to hit “reply all” to your initial email and spare the unintended recipient’s inbox. While it might seem odd to send an apology for sending an unintended note and thus furthering the cluttering of unwanted emails, go with the simple apology and move on.

When you receive an email from someone you know that includes you on a group email list that she clearly didn’t intend for you to be on, the temptation might be to simply ignore the errant email. It wasn’t intended for you and it wasn’t your mistake. But whoever it was who might have been the intended recipient won’t get that initial email. Sure, the group might figure out after a while that this fellow with whom your email address was swapped out wasn’t on the initial email thread. But by then, there might be a lot of catching up to do and more work created to do so. Again, not your mistake. It’s not like doing nothing is going to cause any more work for you.

Nevertheless, the right thing would be to send a reply to the initial sender – not the whole group on the email recipient list – and alert her that you were likely sent the email in error. [12/30/25 NOTE: Dr. Bob Harbort, professor emeritus of computer science at Kennesaw State University, points out that forwarding the initial email rather than hitting reply to just to original sender is the right thing to do here to avoid inadvertently exposing the emails of all the original recipients is the better route to take. See his far more articulate explanation of why in his posted comment below.] Fight any urge to say nothing in a prurient effort to see if you can learn some juicy secrets you weren’t intended to receive. While the sender might be a bit embarrassed at hearing from you, the right thing would be for her to thank you. Then she should figure out how to bring the guy for whom the email actually was intended up to speed.

All of us would do wise to slow down just a tad, take a deep breath and double-check our emails before we send them off. The time we save from having to deal with errant emails will more than make up for the few seconds it takes to check twice before sending.

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) 2025 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Can I use a friend’s discount to get a break on an item?

Is it wrong to use someone else’s discounts on items?

Several weeks ago, on Veterans Day, my grandson gave me a call to let me know that he had just received a free breakfast made available to all active military members. Later that day, he thought he’d check in at the restaurant that was offering 10 free boneless chicken wings to any veteran or active-duty military personnel with a valid ID who dined in. Military.com published a long list of restaurants that were offering discounts or free stuff to military members on Veterans Day. As voracious an appetite as my grandson sometimes has, it was unlikely even he would be able to avail himself of all the wares being offered.

The Baseball Hall of Fame doesn’t limit its military discount to Veterans Day. The woman I’d eat bees for and I were pleasantly surprised when we took him to Cooperstown several years ago and learned that as an active member of the Army, his admission was free. There are a number of other places that offer discounts to anyone with a valid military ID.

It would never cross our minds to ask our grandson to try to use his military discount for us. He could, I suppose, have some of those 10 boneless wings wrapped up to take home and offer some to us. But going in with the intention of doing so would not honor the terms of the discount being offered. Besides, it’s highly unlikely there would be any leftovers.

Buying gifts for others with his discount might be fine as long as the offer didn’t specify any purchases must be for personal use. In some cases, such as USO centers that are set up for active military personnel use, he is permitted to bring his spouse and child if they are with him. In each of these cases, the rules of the discount are what drives how to properly use them.

It's not the same with other discounts being offered to various groups. If I, for example, use my AARP card to get a discount on airline tickets or a hotel room for me as well as other members of my family who are not AARP members, that’s fair game since AARP places no restrictions on using any benefits for family members. Similarly, if I’m a member of a Costco warehouse club, I can bring a nonmember in with me. They can choose items to purchase, but they have to be paid for by an active member.

At the university where I work, there’s an online website that is full of discounts for tickets to sporting events, museums, theater, ballet and other cultural activities. To get to the site, you have to have an active employee ID. But once there, there’s no restriction on whom you’re buying any tickets for.

The answer to whether you can use someone else’s discount to purchase items is that it depends. You should never try to pretend you’re someone you’re not or a member or a group you’re not to get a discount. But if there are no prohibitions on how a discount can be used, there’s nothing wrong with taking advantage of the offer.

As tempting as it might be to skirt the restrictions for getting the discount, the right thing is to always follow the rules.

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) 2025 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC. 

Does adding errors make your ChatGPT work seem authentic?

Is it OK to introduce errors into an essay written by ChatGPT to make it appear to be more authentic?

In May, James D. Walsh wrote an article for New York magazine about how college students are using ChatGPT to cheat their way through college. Walsh mentioned one of the way students can attempt to evade detection is by adding typos to essays generated by an AI chatbot.

Some AI experts recommend introducing a minor error or two to the output to give your work more of a sense of “authenticity.”

I was reminded of the old saying attributed to everyone from New York Post columnist Leonard Lyons to comedian Groucho Marx. The late journalist Daniel Schorr recounted a version that involved advice given him before he moved from print journalism to join Edward Murrow for a broadcasting career. “Sincerity,” a producer apparently told him. “If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

While the origin of the sentiment remains unknown, the underlying cynicism seems relevant when it comes to authenticity. Just as there is nothing sincere about faking sincerity, there is nothing authentic about doctoring work produced by generative AI chatbots to make it appear you produced the work yourself.

Doctoring AI output to make it less detectable may be clever. It may help avoid getting caught breaking the rules. But it is hardly authentic.

That still raises the question, however, of whether it is OK to do so. It may be OK in some situations, but being dishonest about using it is not.

If you’re a student in a course and the instructor has laid out specific instructions on the course syllabus or if there is a university code against using AI to generate your work for you, then it is not OK to use it. If a syllabus sets out the rules, then trying to evade detection by using AI and introducing a few minor errors suggest the student knows he or she is breaking those rules. It’s also dishonest to present work created by you without disclosing that may not be the case. If a professor makes clear that he or she won’t use AI either, the right thing is to adhere to that commitment.

If the rules aren’t laid out, the right thing is for instructors to make clear what their expectations are. Many syllabuses contain a sentence or two about plagiarism. It might be wise to consider adding similar language about AI use. When in doubt, a student should always ask a professor if what he or she plans to do is OK.

Increasingly, outside of the classroom, AI has been seen as a useful tool when making presentations, creating resumes, writing cogent emails and completing what might be considered mundane tasks. But anyone using AI would be wise to check whatever product AI gives them before releasing it to the world. Even if you don’t create the work, the right thing is to make sure that it reflects whatever message you want it to get across.

Relying on AI can be OK, but doctoring its output to come across as more authentic is not. Go ahead and ask ChatGPT its opinion. It will tell you that it’s not OK, can backfire and that artificial typos feel artificial. At least that’s what it told me when I just asked it.

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) 2025 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

How far should you go to connect with an audience?

 

Should you try to be something you’re not to connect with other people?

Recently, I gave a talk to incoming graduate student editors of a policy journal. The side topic of when I began writing “The Right Thing” column arose. When I canvassed the group about how many of them were born after the column started running in 1998, more than half rose their hands.

On the walk home, I calculated that working with someone like me who graduated from college in 1978 would have been like me working with someone who had graduated from college in 1935 when I was their age. Back then, I would have thought anyone who graduated from college in 1935 was ancient.

I am now that ancient guy.

The policy journal editors are among the students I try to teach. Doing teaching well can be hard and time-consuming work. But working with students continues to bring joy especially when they seem to get some value from what I am trying to teach.

But as the gap in years between me and most of the students continues to grow, it has never crossed my mind to try to act younger than I am. For one thing, I’ve never been particularly hip. For another, I’m not sure pretending to use words I usually don’t or referencing things just to seem au courant adds much value to the work we’re trying to do. It also never crossed my mind to dress younger than I do. My completely white hair and beard are a giveaway. Dying my hair or buying some of that formula advertised on television to get rid of the bags under my eyes wouldn’t improve my ability to teach.

A thought does, however, cross my mind from time to time: Should I do more to try to bridge that inevitable growing age gap?

I was reassured last January when a student came up to me during break and said she was impressed that I never sat down when I teach an all-day course. She followed that she was particularly impressed given how old I am.

One of my favorite songs is Bobby Cole’s “I’m Growing Old,” a recognition of aging but also the wisdom that accompanies it. Cole was in his mid-40s when he wrote the song, the age of some of my older current graduate students.

Rather than trying to appear to be younger or more with it, the right thing for me, and I suspect many others, is to focus on the work. A former professor of mine once told me that when he stopped caring about the things his students cared about, he knew it was time to stop teaching. Because many of my students do public service work, we continue to care about similar things. When the work no longer sparks joy, however, and I no longer seem to be able to achieve whatever goals I set out for a course, that’s when it’s likely time to stop.

When we try to be something we’re not to please or connect with others, I’m not sure there’s real value. Instead, it seems a distraction from simply trying to do good work.

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) 2025 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

When AI mangles a friend’s message, what should you do?

Should you tell a friend when artificial intelligence mangles her message?

A few days ago, I learned that a former international student had been interviewed by a news channel in her country about her professional work. The news channel had posted the interview to its YouTube channel which made it easy to find.

The interview was conducted in Telugu, a language most commonly used in southern India. But YouTube had applied its automatic dubbing feature so the words being spoken were translated to English. What a terrific use of AI since I have absolutely no capacity to understand Telugu.

Except it didn’t work.

That’s not exactly true. The auto-dub feature did translate the video to English, but not phrases or sentences that made sense. Occasionally, there was just a syntax issue where words were out of order and I could sort of make out what the interviewer or my former student had presumably meant. But these occasions were rare.

At one point, for example, the former student mentions that her parents used to “roll babies” to make money. I’m pretty sure this isn’t accurate. Cigarettes were mentioned later in that portion of the exchange, so maybe they rolled cigarettes? I have no idea. By the time I finished struggling to figure out what “rolling babies” meant, a slew of other words that equally made no sense came through.

I hesitated to contact the student to let her know, but then I decided I should. Since she is living in India now, she wouldn’t know that folks like me who live in a primarily English-speaking area would be receiving the bad automatic dubbing. She thanked me and sent me some articles she had written about her work that were written in English. She also told me she would let the broadcaster know about the faulty dubbing.

The auto-dub via AI is a relatively new feature on YouTube. Apparently, it gets applied when a creator uploads videos. To avoid having it applied, a creator must finagle the settings when uploading to not have it featured on its videos. It’s my understanding that users like me can’t turn it off, although there are many YouTube videos online offering hacks on how to trick YouTube into thinking I’m someplace that speaks Telugu so it won’t dub videos I receive. Too much work.

Contacting my former student was the right thing to do. Her contacting the broadcaster was also the right thing to do. According to the online hacks, there’s also a way to provide YouTube feedback on such features if they don’t work well. While that too is work, it also seems the right thing to do.

In the meantime, if I were the broadcaster, I’d turn off the auto-dubbing feature until it can actually do what it’s designed to do, which I assume will happen eventually. When it does, it could be a beautiful thing.

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) 2025 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Is regifting wrong?

 

Is it wrong to give someone something as a gift that you got for free?

A reader who we’re calling Aton wrote that he regularly gets invited to parties where guests often bring gifts. He wrote that he often struggles with what to bring. Aton wrote that he is not crazy about spending money on a gift that his host may not like, but he doesn’t want to arrive empty-handed. He wondered if it would be wrong to bring a gift that he hadn’t purchased but had himself received as a gift or that he owned but couldn’t quite remember where it came from.

“Is it wrong to give a gift that I didn’t actually pay for?” wrote Aton.

Thirty years ago, the term “regifting” was made popular by the sitcom Seinfeld in an episode titled “The Label Maker.” In it, two of the sitcom’s lead characters, Jerry and Elaine, suspect a minor character, the dentist Dr. Tim Whatley (played by actor Bryan Cranston years before his Breaking Bad stardom), of regifting a label maker he had received as a gift. As with many episodes in the sitcom, there was much to-do about nothing and laughs were had. But if the stars of the sitcom were to be believed, regifting was a major no-no, showed great disrespect and could deeply hurt recipients if they found out they had been regifted.

That was a sitcom. In real life, if surveys are to be believed, regifting is quite common. In 2024, Badcredit.org found that 43% of the people they asked had plans to regift something they had received. A year earlier, Magestore pegged that percentage at 56.6%. Other surveys reflect similar results. Few suggested any of the regifters felt any guilt or remorse.

Either attitudes have changed since that Seinfeld episode aired in 1995 or regifting was never the egregious act it was held out to be. Some believe that regifting something you don’t want rather than it ending up in a landfill is better for the environment.

There also is nothing ethically wrong with regifting. You wouldn’t want to lie about where the gift came from, but few recipients ask you to explain your shopping habits.

If Aton or others considering regifting want to be thoughtful, then try to give a gift that the person might actually like. If the item is engraved with your or someone else’s name, then avoiding regifting those items is a sound move, although I own quite a few coffee mugs that have the names of people or places I don’t know on them that I find to be amusing conversation starters.

If Aton wants to bring a gift but doesn’t want to spend money on something new when he had many things around the house that he’s willing to part with, then the right thing is to do so as thoughtfully as he can. But he should recognize that in a few years, the regifted item may make its way back to him.

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) 2025 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.