How should a reader balance her desire to get what she’s paid for even if she has no plans to use what she paid for and knows that it could become a nuisance to her neighbor and an unsightly addition to her yard?
In a midwestern city of roughly 80,000 people, residents are charged about $4 a month on their utility bill for curbside organics recycling, or composting. Each household has to sign up to receive a wheeled collection cart for their compost, but not for the fee. The fee gets assigned to every household whether they ask for it to be or not.
A resident we’re calling Chloe doesn’t plan to use the composting cart but doesn’t like that she’s being charged for the service and won’t get the cart she’s entitled to, so she signed up to get a cart. Once she received it, she realized that she really has no place to store it that won’t be inconvenient or unsightly for her or her neighbors. The trash and recycling bins already take up any space available in her garage. If she puts the composting cart on the side of her house, her neighbors have to stare at it from their windows.
She asks if it’s wrong to put the cart out on the side of her house where it might annoy her neighbors. What’s the right thing to do?
It’s reasonable for Chloe to believe she should receive the composting cart because she, like everyone else, is paying $4 a month for it. But getting the cart just because she’s entitled to it and then not using it creates more problems.
If Chloe has no intention of composting, it doesn’t make sense for her to keep it simply because she paid the fee. Keeping the cart is a nuisance for her and a potential eyesore for her neighbors, who now have to live with the consequences of a choice Chloe made that serves no real purpose for her.
Chloe should try to find a place to keep the cart out of sight of her neighbors and consider using it for what it was intended. Her neighbors shouldn’t be forced to become unwilling participants in Chloe’s composting fee protest. She could end up finding herself a convert to the wisdom of composting rather than resenting the cart as a symbol of a fee she resents paying.
If Chloe is determined not to use the cart and can’t find a place to store it, she should call the city and ask if the cart can be retrieved. Sometimes doing the right thing means recognizing that getting what you're entitled to isn't always the same as doing what you're entitled to do. If she doesn’t like the policy, Chloe can ask the city to change it or ask that every household should automatically receive a cart. Until the policy changes, the right thing is for Chloe to find a place to store or use the cart or return it to the city.
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.
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