How honest should you be when returning product to store shelves?
A reader we’re calling Davis is particular about the type of denim jeans he wears, both brand and style. He keeps a lookout when they become available at the membership warehouse club to which he belongs since the price is much better than elsewhere.
A challenge Davis has is that the size jeans he wears, waist and inside leg length, is rarely as available as other sizes. He figures that he either has unusual measurements or one of the most common measurements. Whatever the reason, Davis tries to grab a pair of his favorite jeans whenever he finds them at a good price. Typically, by the time this happens the jeans he does own either have holes in the knees or splattered paint or grease embedded in the denim.
But on a recent trip to his warehouse club, large stacks of Davis’ favorite jeans were piled up on counters in the center of the store. Davis parked his shopping cart at the end of the counter, ransacked his way through the hundreds of pairs of jeans to see if they had his size. He grabbed the two pair of jeans in his size that were in the denim piles.
Pleased with his find, Davis went about his shopping. He picked up a rotisserie chicken, a bag of coffee beans, some navel oranges, and a container of strawberries, among other things. When he got to the line queued up for the cash registers, Davis noticed that the strawberries had been sitting on top of the jeans and had left what looked to be a stain on them.
Now, Davis was faced with a decision. Should he buy the jeans and hope to get the stain out? Should he pull out of line and go back to toss the jeans onto the pile where he found them? Or should he go to the customer service counter at the front of the store and hand the jeans over to them explaining what happened?
Two of these options could have been a right thing to do. Davis could have purchased the jeans and hoped for the best in removing the stain. Or he could have handed the jeans over to the customer service desk or to the cashier at the cash register and explained what happened. Returning them with a stain to the pile of goods may have been the quickest remedy, but that chanced that an unsuspecting customer might purchase them without noticing the strawberry blemish.
If Davis didn’t want to deal with getting the stain out of the jeans, then the right thing would have been to turn them over to someone at the store who could make the decision about what to do with them. Davis shouldn’t feel guilty if he chose not to buy the jeans even though he was the one who wasn’t careful about where the strawberries were placed in his cart. He should be no more responsible for this error of judgment than he would be had he knocked over a jar of olives. Next time the jeans become available, however, Davis would be wise to be more careful about his cart produce placement.
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.
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