My 7-year-old grandson, Lucas, doesn't watch much television. He is, however, a connoisseur of infomercials.
For several months Lucas went on about the Iron Gym pull-up bar.
"It slides right over any door frame, Nana," he would tell my wife. "Have you seen it, Nana? It's really cool. If you act now, instead of two payments of $29.99, it's only $29.99 total."
My wife, of course, had no idea what an Iron Gym was. We decided to get Luke one for Christmas, though, and looked up the ad online. Before we purchased it, however, we shopped around a bit and saw that our local bed-and-bath store had the same product on sale for only $23.99.
We had done all of our research online and Luke had seen the product on television, but -- strange as it may seem -- the lowest price we could find was in fact at the "bricks and mortar" alternative, the bed-and-bath store, though it had done nothing to make us aware of that fact or to woo us as shoppers.
I was reminded of our Iron Gym experience when I received an e-mail from Jeff Eales, a reader in Mission Viejo, Calif.
He wanted to buy a certain item for his son, so he went to a store that he knew to have good prices and online specials. Unfortunately that item was out of stock, so Eales drove to a second store that had the product in stock. His son tried it on and decided that this was indeed what he wanted, but the price was quite a bit higher than the first store typically charged. No sale.
After returning home, however, Eales decided to look on the first store's Web site. He ordered the product online and had it delivered to the first store, where he picked it up about a week later. He ended up spending about 15 percent less than he would have paid at the second store, where his son actually tried on the product.
His son didn't believe that they were cheating the second store by going there and "touching, feeling and trying on the product" before buying it elsewhere, my reader writes. Eales, on the other hand, had some misgivings, since the second store has rent, employees and other costs incurred in displaying its wares.
"But since the price was about 15 percent more there," he says, "we knew we wouldn't buy it there. In a sense we were `using' the store."
Since they knew they were ultimately going to buy the product at the first store, Eales asks, was he ethically wrong in his visit to the second store?
Retailers may cringe at my answer, but no -- Eales not only acted ethically, but also acted sensibly. As a frequent patron of the second store, where he has spent thousands of dollars through the years, he might have told its manager that he had seen the same product offered for 15 percent less elsewhere and given him the opportunity to match that price. He was under no ethical obligation to do so, however.
Shopping for the best price is smart and ethical. Eales did the right thing by finding a place where he could let his son try on the product, to make sure that it was indeed something he wanted, and then to go buy the product where he could get the best price.
When Lucas opened his present at Christmas and saw the Iron Gym, he was downright gleeful. He and his father went off to assemble it, but he quickly returned to the room with a question for my wife.
"You didn't pay $60 for this," he asked, "did you?"
He may be only 7, but Luke is a strong shopper.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, February 15, 2009
SOUND OFF: HOUSE BAIL-OUT
Are people who contracted for mortgages which they couldn't afford, and should reasonably have known that they couldn't afford, entitled to expect relief from the government when they're faced with foreclosure? Are people who signed for mortgages which they could afford, but then lost their jobs, entitled to such relief?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the two polls with these questions that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the two polls with these questions that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, February 08, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: TWO RINGS AND `DR. PHIL'
Elinor Kohler, a reader from Columbus, Ohio, was perturbed by a recent episode of the television program "Dr. Phil." The segment in question asked, "Would you return a diamond ring if a jeweler gave you the wrong one by mistake?"
The gist of the issue was that Eddie had proposed to Ashley and given her a lovely diamond ring, one that apparently they had picked out together. Crying, celebration and ring attachment ensued. The next day, however, Eddie received a call from the jeweler telling him that he had been given the wrong ring. The one he got was worth about $639 more than the one they actually had picked out.
The jeweler asked Eddie to return the ring. Eddie didn't want to, because by now he and Ashley were so sentimentally attached to this particular ring that he couldn't simply swap it for another one.
The jeweler asked Eddie to pay the difference in price. Eddie didn't want to, because the mistake had been the jeweler's, not his.
The jeweler took the issue to court, but Eddie didn't show up for the court date.
And they all ended up talking to Dr. Phil McGraw.
What irked my reader, though, was not the actions of either side in the dispute, but rather the solution that McGraw came up with.
"My first thought was that of course he should give back the ring or pay the difference," Kohler writes. "Dr. Phil thought otherwise."
He started by reminding the jeweler that it would cost more than $639 to sue the couple for the ring. So far, so good. The jeweler offered to settle for $500.
The couple still balked, so McGraw asked the jeweler if he would split the difference and take $320. He said yes, and the couple agreed.
Then -- and here's the kicker that really tossed my reader for a loop -- McGraw told the couple that he would pay the $320, and even treat them to a really nice dinner to celebrate getting the matter resolved.
"That just didn't seem right to me," Kohler writes. "What do you think?"
No matter how many jewelers have schooled me, I'm not sure I could tell the difference between similarly sized diamonds if they were in the same setting. But whether or not Eddie and Ashley made an honest mistake is not my reader's question.
Was the host wrong to negotiate a lower price, pay off the difference and then reward the couple with a nice meal?
Because the couple and the jeweler came to the show to seek McGraw's assistance in finding a solution, he did the right thing in trying to get the parties to reach a compromise.
And, while it may seem that his decision to pay the difference himself and send them out to dinner gave the couple everything they wanted and the jeweler only half, there was nothing untoward about that decision, so long as the outcome was not prearranged between McGraw and the couple.
It isn't relevant to the current discussion whether the court would have found for the couple or for the jeweler. The jeweler, in reaching a compromise, willingly waived whatever his legal rights might be, and he's perfectly free to do so. This isn't a case of McGraw imposing a verdict on the jeweler, willy nilly, but rather a case of his convincing both sides to give up part of what they hoped to get.
I understand Kohler's displeasure at McGraw's picking up the price of the ring. If the host, a wealthy man to whom the money isn't consequential, was going to open his own wallet, why not give the jeweler $639 at the beginning and save everyone the trouble?
But there's no reason -- again, assuming that things weren't arranged beforehand -- for McGraw not to be generous in this instance. And by waiting until after the compromise had been struck, he allowed the process of compromise to work its way to fruition, which may well have offered valuable lessons to both parties and to the viewing audience, and certainly made for more compelling television.
It may sit uneasy with those of us who pay full freight for the things we buy. But when someone wants to help someone else out of a financial pickle because they feel their pain, good on them. Next time I'm given merchandise that's more expensive than whatever I actually purchased, I'm still likely to return it rather than call Dr. Phil to help me out. But if you want to ring him up, go right ahead.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
The gist of the issue was that Eddie had proposed to Ashley and given her a lovely diamond ring, one that apparently they had picked out together. Crying, celebration and ring attachment ensued. The next day, however, Eddie received a call from the jeweler telling him that he had been given the wrong ring. The one he got was worth about $639 more than the one they actually had picked out.
The jeweler asked Eddie to return the ring. Eddie didn't want to, because by now he and Ashley were so sentimentally attached to this particular ring that he couldn't simply swap it for another one.
The jeweler asked Eddie to pay the difference in price. Eddie didn't want to, because the mistake had been the jeweler's, not his.
The jeweler took the issue to court, but Eddie didn't show up for the court date.
And they all ended up talking to Dr. Phil McGraw.
What irked my reader, though, was not the actions of either side in the dispute, but rather the solution that McGraw came up with.
"My first thought was that of course he should give back the ring or pay the difference," Kohler writes. "Dr. Phil thought otherwise."
He started by reminding the jeweler that it would cost more than $639 to sue the couple for the ring. So far, so good. The jeweler offered to settle for $500.
The couple still balked, so McGraw asked the jeweler if he would split the difference and take $320. He said yes, and the couple agreed.
Then -- and here's the kicker that really tossed my reader for a loop -- McGraw told the couple that he would pay the $320, and even treat them to a really nice dinner to celebrate getting the matter resolved.
"That just didn't seem right to me," Kohler writes. "What do you think?"
No matter how many jewelers have schooled me, I'm not sure I could tell the difference between similarly sized diamonds if they were in the same setting. But whether or not Eddie and Ashley made an honest mistake is not my reader's question.
Was the host wrong to negotiate a lower price, pay off the difference and then reward the couple with a nice meal?
Because the couple and the jeweler came to the show to seek McGraw's assistance in finding a solution, he did the right thing in trying to get the parties to reach a compromise.
And, while it may seem that his decision to pay the difference himself and send them out to dinner gave the couple everything they wanted and the jeweler only half, there was nothing untoward about that decision, so long as the outcome was not prearranged between McGraw and the couple.
It isn't relevant to the current discussion whether the court would have found for the couple or for the jeweler. The jeweler, in reaching a compromise, willingly waived whatever his legal rights might be, and he's perfectly free to do so. This isn't a case of McGraw imposing a verdict on the jeweler, willy nilly, but rather a case of his convincing both sides to give up part of what they hoped to get.
I understand Kohler's displeasure at McGraw's picking up the price of the ring. If the host, a wealthy man to whom the money isn't consequential, was going to open his own wallet, why not give the jeweler $639 at the beginning and save everyone the trouble?
But there's no reason -- again, assuming that things weren't arranged beforehand -- for McGraw not to be generous in this instance. And by waiting until after the compromise had been struck, he allowed the process of compromise to work its way to fruition, which may well have offered valuable lessons to both parties and to the viewing audience, and certainly made for more compelling television.
It may sit uneasy with those of us who pay full freight for the things we buy. But when someone wants to help someone else out of a financial pickle because they feel their pain, good on them. Next time I'm given merchandise that's more expensive than whatever I actually purchased, I'm still likely to return it rather than call Dr. Phil to help me out. But if you want to ring him up, go right ahead.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: CAFFEINATED VOTERS
Most readers would not tell their local Starbucks clerk that they had voted, if they hadn't, simply to get a free cup of coffee. Still, 15 percent of the readers responding to an unscientific poll on my column's blog said that they would take the free cup of joe if they planned to vote later in the day.
"I was faced with specifically this quandary on Election Day," writes William Jacobson of Cypress, Calif. "While I did consider jumping for the free cup of coffee pre-voting, I did relent and do the ethical thing by holding off. I had my fiancee's free cup instead."
"I would turn down the offer," writes Phil Clutts of Harrisburg, N.C,, "and say that it's my responsibility (and everybody else's) to vote, so thanks anyway, but I'll pass up your offer."
"Anything to encourage people to get out and vote is a good thing," writes Megan Chromik of Cambridge, Mass.
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
"I was faced with specifically this quandary on Election Day," writes William Jacobson of Cypress, Calif. "While I did consider jumping for the free cup of coffee pre-voting, I did relent and do the ethical thing by holding off. I had my fiancee's free cup instead."
"I would turn down the offer," writes Phil Clutts of Harrisburg, N.C,, "and say that it's my responsibility (and everybody else's) to vote, so thanks anyway, but I'll pass up your offer."
"Anything to encourage people to get out and vote is a good thing," writes Megan Chromik of Cambridge, Mass.
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, February 01, 2009
SOUND OFF: `LET'S TALK ABOUT YOU'
You're a reference for a friend who is applying for a job. He's a serious enough candidate that you get a call from the prospective employer. In the course of the conversation, however, the discussion turns from your friend's qualifications for the job to your own.
Is it OK to pursue this line of conversation, even if you suspect that you might be offered the job rather than your friend?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll about this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Is it OK to pursue this line of conversation, even if you suspect that you might be offered the job rather than your friend?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll about this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: SOME OLD TRUTHS ABOUT VALUES, MORALS AND ETHICS
Last week, on the first night of a class in professional ethics that I team-teach at Emerson College in Boston, I wrote these words on the board: "hard work," "honesty," "courage," "fair play," "tolerance," "curiosity," "loyalty" and "patriotism."
Then I turned and asked the class: "What are these things?"
"Values," a few of the students responded.
"Where have you heard them before?"
"In Barack Obama's inaugural address this afternoon," one of the students piped up.
He was right, of course. These are the values President Obama listed in his speech, the ideals upon which he thinks our success in meeting new challenges is based.
"These things are old," he said. "These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history."
Typically I start any ethics class by telling the students that I cannot teach them values, nor can I hope to change their values. The values they have coming into the class are likely to be the same ones they have leaving it.
Our values are shaped early in life, I tell them, by our earliest experiences and, above all, by the examples -- positive and negative -- supplied by our families.
The priorities we place on these values may change, though, depending on where we are in life. If we're in our early 20s and single, for example, we may prioritize our value of fairness and tell off an unreasonable boss. In our 40s, when we have a family to support, that urge for fairness may be trumped by our concern for our family's well-being, leading us to forgo the urge to put a workplace ogre in his place.
Our values don't change, in short. Our priorities do, though, and we act accordingly.
These personal values that help us determine right and wrong are the morals that guide us. How we apply these morals to particular situations ... well, that's ethics.
People with wildly different political views may share similar values, as then-Sen. Barack Obama (D.-Ill.) and Sen John McCain (R.-Ariz.) demonstrated in the recent presidential campaign.
The two men clearly had fundamental differences of opinion on many of the issues, but at different points in the campaign each showed a similar sense of fair play -- McCain when he castigated a conservative talk-radio host for raising insinuations about Obama's religion and Obama when he rejected his supporters' attempts to capitalize on the pregnancy of the unmarried, teenage daughter of McCain's running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin (R.-Alaska).
The difference between the two men, in short, is not one of values but rather of how they choose to apply these values to various situations. That's what defines them as politicians, but it's their values that define them as human beings.
When Obama said, in his inaugural address, that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, "so defining of our character, (as) giving our all to a difficult situation," that's what he was talking about: how we choose to apply our values to a task. He was talking about ethics, about doing the right thing when faced with "common dangers."
Each time I face a new class of students, deliver a talk or sit down to write a column on ethics, I do so fully aware that I cannot change my audience's values. It's a daunting task to stand before a group of people, some of whom I know will choose to behave unethically regardless of what I say or write, and make an attempt to influence their ethics or at least to inspire them to think those ethics through.
The right thing for me to do, based on my values, is to give my all to such difficult tasks. And the right thing for you to do, whether you are a student, a listener or a reader, is to decide whether the way you choose to behave reflects the values you say you hold dear. If not, you either don't have the values you think you do or you need to rethink your behavior. There is nothing new about this observation. But it is true.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Then I turned and asked the class: "What are these things?"
"Values," a few of the students responded.
"Where have you heard them before?"
"In Barack Obama's inaugural address this afternoon," one of the students piped up.
He was right, of course. These are the values President Obama listed in his speech, the ideals upon which he thinks our success in meeting new challenges is based.
"These things are old," he said. "These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history."
Typically I start any ethics class by telling the students that I cannot teach them values, nor can I hope to change their values. The values they have coming into the class are likely to be the same ones they have leaving it.
Our values are shaped early in life, I tell them, by our earliest experiences and, above all, by the examples -- positive and negative -- supplied by our families.
The priorities we place on these values may change, though, depending on where we are in life. If we're in our early 20s and single, for example, we may prioritize our value of fairness and tell off an unreasonable boss. In our 40s, when we have a family to support, that urge for fairness may be trumped by our concern for our family's well-being, leading us to forgo the urge to put a workplace ogre in his place.
Our values don't change, in short. Our priorities do, though, and we act accordingly.
These personal values that help us determine right and wrong are the morals that guide us. How we apply these morals to particular situations ... well, that's ethics.
People with wildly different political views may share similar values, as then-Sen. Barack Obama (D.-Ill.) and Sen John McCain (R.-Ariz.) demonstrated in the recent presidential campaign.
The two men clearly had fundamental differences of opinion on many of the issues, but at different points in the campaign each showed a similar sense of fair play -- McCain when he castigated a conservative talk-radio host for raising insinuations about Obama's religion and Obama when he rejected his supporters' attempts to capitalize on the pregnancy of the unmarried, teenage daughter of McCain's running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin (R.-Alaska).
The difference between the two men, in short, is not one of values but rather of how they choose to apply these values to various situations. That's what defines them as politicians, but it's their values that define them as human beings.
When Obama said, in his inaugural address, that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, "so defining of our character, (as) giving our all to a difficult situation," that's what he was talking about: how we choose to apply our values to a task. He was talking about ethics, about doing the right thing when faced with "common dangers."
Each time I face a new class of students, deliver a talk or sit down to write a column on ethics, I do so fully aware that I cannot change my audience's values. It's a daunting task to stand before a group of people, some of whom I know will choose to behave unethically regardless of what I say or write, and make an attempt to influence their ethics or at least to inspire them to think those ethics through.
The right thing for me to do, based on my values, is to give my all to such difficult tasks. And the right thing for you to do, whether you are a student, a listener or a reader, is to decide whether the way you choose to behave reflects the values you say you hold dear. If not, you either don't have the values you think you do or you need to rethink your behavior. There is nothing new about this observation. But it is true.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Lies vs. Metaphors
Here's a short clip from The Colbert Report where presidential inaugural poet, Elizabeth Alexander, tries to explain the difference between a metaphor and a lie to Stephen Colbert.
[Sent to me by friend and colleague Leslie Brokaw.]
[Sent to me by friend and colleague Leslie Brokaw.]
Sunday, January 25, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: THE COST OF DOING GOOD
More often than not, doing the right thing results in a good outcome. In the workplace that makes sense, since good ethical behavior often parallels good management decisions: Treat your employees with respect, for example, and they're likely to be more productive and more inclined to work for the greater good of the company.
Let's face it, though: There are times when doing the right thing can cause pain. Sure, the action may have a payoff in the long term, but that doesn't diminish the pain in the short term.
A reader who is a licensed therapist learned this firsthand after leaving her most recent job as a supervisor for a mental-health agency.
One of the therapists whom she had been assigned to supervise had memory problems which led her to make significant billing errors. When my reader brought the problem to the attention of the agency's administration, the memory-impaired therapist was transferred to another supervisor. No action was taken to correct the billing.
Soon afterward my reader was assigned to coordinate one of her agency's specialty programs. The therapist she had reported previously was seeing clients through this program. Again my reader brought this therapist's billing errors to the attention of the administration, and again nothing was done to address the issue or to correct the resulting errors.
"When I left the agency for another position," my reader writes, "I felt I had done all I could to solve this problem and could not do anything further."
For her new position, however, she attended a compliance-training program and learned that the type of errors her former supervisee repeatedly made were considered fraud. If a licensed therapist has knowledge of fraud and doesn't report it, the trainer told the group, her license is at risk.
So my reader called the county fraud hot line and reported the errors. As a result of her call, her previous employer's billing was audited and her complaint was substantiated.
The call itself was confidential, but the fact that the audit team looked specifically at one particular therapist's work led the agency staff to conclude that it was my reader who had made the fraud complaint. Since the audit, none of her former colleagues will talk to her or respond to written communication.
"The difficult part of this is that I have lost all of my friendships at the agency," she writes. "I have accepted that the relationships are over, but I still wonder if I did the right thing."
I'm rarely one to quote scripture, but there's a terrific passage in the Book of Isaiah that captures the essence of this experience: "So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance. Truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter. Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey."
Because my reader stood up when those around her refused to acknowledge a serious ethical lapse -- and, as it turned out, serious illegality -- she has been left open to the judgments of her former co-workers, even though the audit confirmed what she had been saying all along.
She was correct to report the billing errors, first to her administrators and then to the hot line when it was clear that otherwise no action would be taken to correct the issue. In the long run her profession benefits from her willingness to report the issue, not solely because of any legalities, but also because it was the right thing to do.
As for her former colleagues, they did and are doing the wrong thing. That my reader was forced to go to an outside authority is their own fault, and they should not blame her personally for taking an action which, if left undone, might have placed her own career in jeopardy.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Let's face it, though: There are times when doing the right thing can cause pain. Sure, the action may have a payoff in the long term, but that doesn't diminish the pain in the short term.
A reader who is a licensed therapist learned this firsthand after leaving her most recent job as a supervisor for a mental-health agency.
One of the therapists whom she had been assigned to supervise had memory problems which led her to make significant billing errors. When my reader brought the problem to the attention of the agency's administration, the memory-impaired therapist was transferred to another supervisor. No action was taken to correct the billing.
Soon afterward my reader was assigned to coordinate one of her agency's specialty programs. The therapist she had reported previously was seeing clients through this program. Again my reader brought this therapist's billing errors to the attention of the administration, and again nothing was done to address the issue or to correct the resulting errors.
"When I left the agency for another position," my reader writes, "I felt I had done all I could to solve this problem and could not do anything further."
For her new position, however, she attended a compliance-training program and learned that the type of errors her former supervisee repeatedly made were considered fraud. If a licensed therapist has knowledge of fraud and doesn't report it, the trainer told the group, her license is at risk.
So my reader called the county fraud hot line and reported the errors. As a result of her call, her previous employer's billing was audited and her complaint was substantiated.
The call itself was confidential, but the fact that the audit team looked specifically at one particular therapist's work led the agency staff to conclude that it was my reader who had made the fraud complaint. Since the audit, none of her former colleagues will talk to her or respond to written communication.
"The difficult part of this is that I have lost all of my friendships at the agency," she writes. "I have accepted that the relationships are over, but I still wonder if I did the right thing."
I'm rarely one to quote scripture, but there's a terrific passage in the Book of Isaiah that captures the essence of this experience: "So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance. Truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter. Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey."
Because my reader stood up when those around her refused to acknowledge a serious ethical lapse -- and, as it turned out, serious illegality -- she has been left open to the judgments of her former co-workers, even though the audit confirmed what she had been saying all along.
She was correct to report the billing errors, first to her administrators and then to the hot line when it was clear that otherwise no action would be taken to correct the issue. In the long run her profession benefits from her willingness to report the issue, not solely because of any legalities, but also because it was the right thing to do.
As for her former colleagues, they did and are doing the wrong thing. That my reader was forced to go to an outside authority is their own fault, and they should not blame her personally for taking an action which, if left undone, might have placed her own career in jeopardy.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: MY OPEN FACEBOOK
My readers were split on how far an employer should go in using Facebook pages, Myspace pages or blog posts to determine whether or not to hire an otherwise qualified candidate with a solid work history and strong recommendations. In an informal poll on my column's blog, 52 percent of my readers said that employers should be able to use these pages and posts in evaluating a job candidate.
"Anyone who thinks that they can have an anonymous online life while living a public life needs to get real," writes Andrea Useem of Virginia.
But another reader wonders "(where we) draw the line with our personal life becoming professional business and vice versa." This reader is very careful to keep professional information out of her profiles, partly to keep employers from "nosing around my dating profiles."
Thomas Ward of Wisconsin thinks that anything aired publicly, whether actually or virtually, is fair game.
"When we publish information about ourselves and put it on the Web for anyone to consume," Ward says, "we open a door that has consequences. As a professional recruiter, I use every tool I have to read a candidate. Web search is a common tool."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
"Anyone who thinks that they can have an anonymous online life while living a public life needs to get real," writes Andrea Useem of Virginia.
But another reader wonders "(where we) draw the line with our personal life becoming professional business and vice versa." This reader is very careful to keep professional information out of her profiles, partly to keep employers from "nosing around my dating profiles."
Thomas Ward of Wisconsin thinks that anything aired publicly, whether actually or virtually, is fair game.
"When we publish information about ourselves and put it on the Web for anyone to consume," Ward says, "we open a door that has consequences. As a professional recruiter, I use every tool I have to read a candidate. Web search is a common tool."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Steve Jobs Health Disclosures
Discussion about Steve Jobs and disclosures about his health on WGBH's Greater Boston.
[Read earlier discussion of Steve Jobs on the blog by clicking here.]
SOUND OFF: MOVING UP OR MOVING OUT
Jeff Jagodzinski, the football coach for Boston College, recently interviewed for a job as coach of the New York Jets, a higher-paying job in professional football. He had been warned by the college's athletic director, Gene DeFilippo, that he would be fired if he interviewed for the Jets job, but did so anyway and was fired shortly thereafter. He apparently will not get the job with the Jets.
Jagodzinski was under contract to Boston College, but it is not unusual for college coaches under contract to leave for NFL jobs. Do you think it's right to fire someone, with or without a warning, for interviewing for another job? Or is an employee entitled to seek to better him/herself?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll about this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: WHEN THE END IS NEAR FOR A PET
When I was a freshman in college, my mother called to tell me that she and my father had decided to euthanize our family dog, a beagle-terrier mix that my father had bought for the family at an animal shelter when my sister and I were very young.
P.J. -- named for my sister, Patti, and myself -- had been sick since before I went off to school, suffering from a tumor that the veterinarian believed to be inoperable.
It was a difficult telephone call, but I remember feeling odd that I wasn't as upset as I thought I should have been. Partly I was preoccupied with settling into my first semester of school, but also for several months I had understood that our dog would likely not make it through the end of the fall semester.
The memory wafted up after a reader from Waunakee, Wisc., wrote with a question about her pets.
"We love our dog and cats," she writes, "and they have been a source of great comfort and love for us. But now they are getting old. At what point do we let them die in peace or put them to sleep?"
My reader knows that her veterinarian can sell her many medical supplies that will help keep the animals alive for a few more years. She points out, however, that these items cost a great deal of money.
"Just a few years ago," she continues, "there was no treatment for these illnesses, and we would have kept them comfortable until we had to euthanize them."
Advancements in veterinary science have made it possible to prolong a pet's life longer than before, but she's not sure that it's the right thing to do.
"How do we make these decisions now?" she asks. "How do we take care of our pets, whom we dearly love, without wiping out all of our savings? Where do we draw the line without betraying our pets?"
Hers is a question that will likely be faced eventually by all pet owners except the very elderly and those who live with long-lived parrots or tortoises. It's a highly personal decision, but one that requires some pointed questions.
To start with, how will keeping a pet alive affect its quality of life? Simply because there are surgeries that can be performed, or medicines that can be administered, doesn't guarantee that a pet won't continue to suffer from an underlying disease or from the decline brought on by the aging process.
My reader also needs to consider how taking extraordinary measures will affect her own quality of life, however. Will the expense of medicine or surgery for her pets leave her unable to pay her day-to-day bills? Will it force her to forgo putting aside money for a child's education or the purchase of a home?
The questions about costs should, of course, be asked by anyone with a pet, regardless of its health. If you can't afford to own a particular pet without jeopardizing your own standard of living, then -- for the sake of the pet and for your own sake -- it's best to find a home for the pet with a family that can better afford it.
The right thing for any pet owner to do, when the pet nears its end, is to discuss these issues with a veterinarian who can lay out the options. As long as it is made thoughtfully and not capriciously, the decision to conclude a pet's life is not a matter of betrayal but rather of deciding how best to let a beloved member of the household live out the end of its life.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
P.J. -- named for my sister, Patti, and myself -- had been sick since before I went off to school, suffering from a tumor that the veterinarian believed to be inoperable.
It was a difficult telephone call, but I remember feeling odd that I wasn't as upset as I thought I should have been. Partly I was preoccupied with settling into my first semester of school, but also for several months I had understood that our dog would likely not make it through the end of the fall semester.
The memory wafted up after a reader from Waunakee, Wisc., wrote with a question about her pets.
"We love our dog and cats," she writes, "and they have been a source of great comfort and love for us. But now they are getting old. At what point do we let them die in peace or put them to sleep?"
My reader knows that her veterinarian can sell her many medical supplies that will help keep the animals alive for a few more years. She points out, however, that these items cost a great deal of money.
"Just a few years ago," she continues, "there was no treatment for these illnesses, and we would have kept them comfortable until we had to euthanize them."
Advancements in veterinary science have made it possible to prolong a pet's life longer than before, but she's not sure that it's the right thing to do.
"How do we make these decisions now?" she asks. "How do we take care of our pets, whom we dearly love, without wiping out all of our savings? Where do we draw the line without betraying our pets?"
Hers is a question that will likely be faced eventually by all pet owners except the very elderly and those who live with long-lived parrots or tortoises. It's a highly personal decision, but one that requires some pointed questions.
To start with, how will keeping a pet alive affect its quality of life? Simply because there are surgeries that can be performed, or medicines that can be administered, doesn't guarantee that a pet won't continue to suffer from an underlying disease or from the decline brought on by the aging process.
My reader also needs to consider how taking extraordinary measures will affect her own quality of life, however. Will the expense of medicine or surgery for her pets leave her unable to pay her day-to-day bills? Will it force her to forgo putting aside money for a child's education or the purchase of a home?
The questions about costs should, of course, be asked by anyone with a pet, regardless of its health. If you can't afford to own a particular pet without jeopardizing your own standard of living, then -- for the sake of the pet and for your own sake -- it's best to find a home for the pet with a family that can better afford it.
The right thing for any pet owner to do, when the pet nears its end, is to discuss these issues with a veterinarian who can lay out the options. As long as it is made thoughtfully and not capriciously, the decision to conclude a pet's life is not a matter of betrayal but rather of deciding how best to let a beloved member of the household live out the end of its life.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, January 11, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: A PASSING AGGRAVATION
Not long ago, while driving on a long, flat stretch of freeway in central Wyoming, a reader from Salt Lake City faced a dilemma.
My reader, P.W., tries not to exceed posted speed limits, he says, for "ethical and safety considerations." Typically he stays in the right lane and watches as other drivers barrel by on the left.
That's what he did for most of the drive on the Wyoming freeway, which was divided, with two lanes running in each direction. The posted speed limit was 75 miles per hour, and even at that rate people were whizzing past P.W.
But then P.W. came to a stretch of at least 10 miles where road work was underway. The freeway narrowed to only one lane in each direction, and the posted speed limit was reduced to 50 miles per hour.
After a short period of driving at 50 miles per hour, P.W. noticed that, while there were no cars in front of him, a long line of cars was strung out behind him.
"It was clear," he writes, "that, by following what I thought was right, I was inconveniencing many other people."
So P.W. accelerated, violating his ethical beliefs and risking a speeding ticket -- in a construction area, no less, where fines are doubled.
"I let public pressure force me to go against my values," P.W. writes. "I'm sure it was the practical thing to do, but I'd like to have your take on the ethical viewpoint."
Public pressure can work in unusual ways. Once, while I was driving in Georgetown, a suburb of Washington, I made a right-hand turn when the traffic light was yellow. Awaiting me was a police officer who had already pulled over three or four drivers at the same intersection.
As she took out her ticket book, one of the other drivers shouted out his window, "Give him a ticket! Give him a ticket!"
Presumably he wanted me to have a ticket to match the one he already had received. He didn't get what he wanted, though: The officer looked over at the yelling man, looked down at her citation book and then stepped back. With an exaggerated, sweeping motion of her arms she directed me to drive on.
Public pressure, in the form of the other driver's shouting, apparently changed her mind about giving me a ticket.
In P.W.'s case, he knew that he was wrong to break the speed limit while driving through the construction zone on that Wyoming freeway. But the drivers lining up behind him made him feel that he was inconveniencing them and/or annoying them by keeping them from driving as quickly as they would ordinarily have been doing ... regardless of the posted limits.
Often we're faced with situations in which we choose to do or not do something -- to turn a blind eye to inappropriate behavior at work or not to turn in a classmate for cheating, for example, or to speed because everyone else is speeding -- because we don't want others to think ill of us. So we do the wrong thing in order to fit in.
No lives were at risk when P.W. observed the speed limit, only the patience of the drivers behind him. It would have made for an awkward 12 minutes or so of driving, but the right thing for him to do was to follow his values and observe the speed limit, regardless of how many cars accumulated behind him. As soon as it was possible, of course, he should have pulled over and let the speeders pass.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
My reader, P.W., tries not to exceed posted speed limits, he says, for "ethical and safety considerations." Typically he stays in the right lane and watches as other drivers barrel by on the left.
That's what he did for most of the drive on the Wyoming freeway, which was divided, with two lanes running in each direction. The posted speed limit was 75 miles per hour, and even at that rate people were whizzing past P.W.
But then P.W. came to a stretch of at least 10 miles where road work was underway. The freeway narrowed to only one lane in each direction, and the posted speed limit was reduced to 50 miles per hour.
After a short period of driving at 50 miles per hour, P.W. noticed that, while there were no cars in front of him, a long line of cars was strung out behind him.
"It was clear," he writes, "that, by following what I thought was right, I was inconveniencing many other people."
So P.W. accelerated, violating his ethical beliefs and risking a speeding ticket -- in a construction area, no less, where fines are doubled.
"I let public pressure force me to go against my values," P.W. writes. "I'm sure it was the practical thing to do, but I'd like to have your take on the ethical viewpoint."
Public pressure can work in unusual ways. Once, while I was driving in Georgetown, a suburb of Washington, I made a right-hand turn when the traffic light was yellow. Awaiting me was a police officer who had already pulled over three or four drivers at the same intersection.
As she took out her ticket book, one of the other drivers shouted out his window, "Give him a ticket! Give him a ticket!"
Presumably he wanted me to have a ticket to match the one he already had received. He didn't get what he wanted, though: The officer looked over at the yelling man, looked down at her citation book and then stepped back. With an exaggerated, sweeping motion of her arms she directed me to drive on.
Public pressure, in the form of the other driver's shouting, apparently changed her mind about giving me a ticket.
In P.W.'s case, he knew that he was wrong to break the speed limit while driving through the construction zone on that Wyoming freeway. But the drivers lining up behind him made him feel that he was inconveniencing them and/or annoying them by keeping them from driving as quickly as they would ordinarily have been doing ... regardless of the posted limits.
Often we're faced with situations in which we choose to do or not do something -- to turn a blind eye to inappropriate behavior at work or not to turn in a classmate for cheating, for example, or to speed because everyone else is speeding -- because we don't want others to think ill of us. So we do the wrong thing in order to fit in.
No lives were at risk when P.W. observed the speed limit, only the patience of the drivers behind him. It would have made for an awkward 12 minutes or so of driving, but the right thing for him to do was to follow his values and observe the speed limit, regardless of how many cars accumulated behind him. As soon as it was possible, of course, he should have pulled over and let the speeders pass.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: FIRE THE LIAR
One of the most responded-to of the informal polls on my column's blog also resulted in one of the most lopsided tallies: Of the readers who responded, a hefty 95 percent believed that an executive who is discovered to have listed false academic credentials on his or her resume should be fired.
"Why would a company want dishonest people working for them?" one reader asks. If an executive lies on a resume, he adds, "why would you trust this same person with confidential company information?"
Marguerite Rathbone of California absolutely agrees.
"An executive should be fired, not allowed just to resign, if they gave any false information on a resume," Rathbone says. "If they lied on something so easily verified, what else would they lie about?"
Bill Chase of Mission Viejo, Calif., would terminate any employee after verifying that false claims had been made on his or her resume. He'd go further, though, and, if called for a reference, would tell prospective future employers of the reason for termination.
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
"Why would a company want dishonest people working for them?" one reader asks. If an executive lies on a resume, he adds, "why would you trust this same person with confidential company information?"
Marguerite Rathbone of California absolutely agrees.
"An executive should be fired, not allowed just to resign, if they gave any false information on a resume," Rathbone says. "If they lied on something so easily verified, what else would they lie about?"
Bill Chase of Mission Viejo, Calif., would terminate any employee after verifying that false claims had been made on his or her resume. He'd go further, though, and, if called for a reference, would tell prospective future employers of the reason for termination.
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, January 04, 2009
SOUND OFF: THE COFFEE VOTE
On Election Day a national coffee-shop chain in the United States offered a free cup of coffee to anyone who told the clerk that he or she had voted. Would you consider telling the clerk that you already voted, in order to get the free coffee, even if you hadn't, if you knew that you were going to vote later in the day?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll about this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll about this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: WHAT WAS I THINKING?
As always at the turn of the year, it's time to reassess the past 12 months -- which, for me, means to reconsider a handful of columns that made some readers wonder, "What were you thinking?"
Four columns in particular drew responses that prompted me to revisit some of the issues therein.
COUPON RETURNS.
Back in March I advised Jennifer Schwanke of Columbus, Ohio, that she had done the right thing by deciding not to use the coupons that were given her for purchasing a freezer, after she had decided to return the freezer. The coupons provided discounts at various area food stores.
Laurie Marshall, owner of Kelly's Coffee and Fudge Factory in Anaheim, Calif., and Rachael Ritchie, owner of GoodFella's Pizza in Athens, Ohio, both took me to task for missing the retailer's point of view. Coupons are meant to draw business, they pointed out, and the stores that issued the coupons don't care whether or not she kept the freezer.
"I am struggling to get people in my door," Marshall wrote. "Using the coupon would get her into my store when she might not otherwise come in."
Ritchie and Marshall are correct, and I was wrong. As long as the retailer from whom Schwanke almost bought the freezer attached no strings to use of the coupons, using them would be perfectly fair. Nobody would suffer for it, and she and the food stores might both benefit.
THY NEIGHBOR'S TRASH.
A reader was concerned that, when their trash can was filled, her husband was putting their excess trash into the trash can of their neighbor, who has unused space. The neighbor had noticed, grown irate and eventually expressed her displeasure by depositing the garbage atop the husband's car.
In May I told my reader that her husband was wrong, and that he should seek permission before placing his excess trash in his neighbor's barrels.
"This is ridiculous," one reader wrote. "What difference does it make to the woman if he puts trash in her trash to be picked up? It's ludicrous that she gets upset."
Trash pickup seems to trigger vehement emotions among my readers. I had another 2008 column relating to this subject -- concerning an overzealous trash collector who made off with a reader's recyclables -- and it too drew some passionate responses.
In this case, though, I have to stick with my original response. I agree that the neighbor overreacted, but she was right to resent the husband's trash deposit. Her trash cans are not public wastebaskets and, in any case, many municipalities prohibit the depositing of household trash in public wastebaskets. They're her cans, so she gets to decide what goes in them. If he wanted to do the right thing, the husband should have asked permission.
IKEA ADS DISASSEMBLED.
"You'd have to be pretty dense not to pick up on the humor of the Ikea ads that poke fun at shoppers mistakenly thinking that they are taking advantage of what are permanently low prices," wrote Charlie Seng of Lancaster, S.C. "Your reader who was annoyed by the ad is a person looking to be annoyed."
I found the ad amusing, but wondered if Ikea had missed the boat by not considering having a consumer in the ad argue with the clerk that she had rung up a price that was too low. This would have shone a light on customers who try to be honest, instead of on those who try to get away with something.
I don't believe my reader missed the humor of the ad, any more than I did. I think that serious points can be made through humor, however, and I'd have liked to see Ikea work harder to do the right thing in its ads.
UNFORBIDDEN FRUIT.
Finally, in August a reader in Cypress, Calif., wondered if it would be wrong to pick a lemon or two from a tree that hangs over the fence of a nearby house and onto the nearby sidewalk. Her husband had told her that it would be wrong. She wasn't so sure.
I felt that the right thing to do would again involve getting permission from the tree's owner.
Gerald Boyden of Anaheim, Calif., was among a number of readers taking issue with my response.
"That fruit is considered to be residing `in the public domain,"' Boyden wrote. "It belongs to anyone who cares to claim it. There is no violation of ethics involved."
I noted in the original column that there was nothing wrong with helping oneself from a legal point of view, because Cypress has no ordinance against picking overhanging fruit. But what's legal is not always what's ethical, and most of the time ethical behavior requires more than simply not violating the law.
The law may not take cognizance of the fact that the tree has been raised, watered, nourished, tended and maintained by its owner, not by passers-by. Ethical considerations do take that fact into account, however, so I still think that the right thing is to ask the owner's permission. Legalities aside, it's the civil and fair thing to do, and therefore it's the ethical choice to make.
I know my readers will continue to do the right thing by sharing their wisdom with me by e-mailing me at rightthing@nytimes.com as the new year progresses.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Four columns in particular drew responses that prompted me to revisit some of the issues therein.
COUPON RETURNS.
Back in March I advised Jennifer Schwanke of Columbus, Ohio, that she had done the right thing by deciding not to use the coupons that were given her for purchasing a freezer, after she had decided to return the freezer. The coupons provided discounts at various area food stores.
Laurie Marshall, owner of Kelly's Coffee and Fudge Factory in Anaheim, Calif., and Rachael Ritchie, owner of GoodFella's Pizza in Athens, Ohio, both took me to task for missing the retailer's point of view. Coupons are meant to draw business, they pointed out, and the stores that issued the coupons don't care whether or not she kept the freezer.
"I am struggling to get people in my door," Marshall wrote. "Using the coupon would get her into my store when she might not otherwise come in."
Ritchie and Marshall are correct, and I was wrong. As long as the retailer from whom Schwanke almost bought the freezer attached no strings to use of the coupons, using them would be perfectly fair. Nobody would suffer for it, and she and the food stores might both benefit.
THY NEIGHBOR'S TRASH.
A reader was concerned that, when their trash can was filled, her husband was putting their excess trash into the trash can of their neighbor, who has unused space. The neighbor had noticed, grown irate and eventually expressed her displeasure by depositing the garbage atop the husband's car.
In May I told my reader that her husband was wrong, and that he should seek permission before placing his excess trash in his neighbor's barrels.
"This is ridiculous," one reader wrote. "What difference does it make to the woman if he puts trash in her trash to be picked up? It's ludicrous that she gets upset."
Trash pickup seems to trigger vehement emotions among my readers. I had another 2008 column relating to this subject -- concerning an overzealous trash collector who made off with a reader's recyclables -- and it too drew some passionate responses.
In this case, though, I have to stick with my original response. I agree that the neighbor overreacted, but she was right to resent the husband's trash deposit. Her trash cans are not public wastebaskets and, in any case, many municipalities prohibit the depositing of household trash in public wastebaskets. They're her cans, so she gets to decide what goes in them. If he wanted to do the right thing, the husband should have asked permission.
IKEA ADS DISASSEMBLED.
"You'd have to be pretty dense not to pick up on the humor of the Ikea ads that poke fun at shoppers mistakenly thinking that they are taking advantage of what are permanently low prices," wrote Charlie Seng of Lancaster, S.C. "Your reader who was annoyed by the ad is a person looking to be annoyed."
I found the ad amusing, but wondered if Ikea had missed the boat by not considering having a consumer in the ad argue with the clerk that she had rung up a price that was too low. This would have shone a light on customers who try to be honest, instead of on those who try to get away with something.
I don't believe my reader missed the humor of the ad, any more than I did. I think that serious points can be made through humor, however, and I'd have liked to see Ikea work harder to do the right thing in its ads.
UNFORBIDDEN FRUIT.
Finally, in August a reader in Cypress, Calif., wondered if it would be wrong to pick a lemon or two from a tree that hangs over the fence of a nearby house and onto the nearby sidewalk. Her husband had told her that it would be wrong. She wasn't so sure.
I felt that the right thing to do would again involve getting permission from the tree's owner.
Gerald Boyden of Anaheim, Calif., was among a number of readers taking issue with my response.
"That fruit is considered to be residing `in the public domain,"' Boyden wrote. "It belongs to anyone who cares to claim it. There is no violation of ethics involved."
I noted in the original column that there was nothing wrong with helping oneself from a legal point of view, because Cypress has no ordinance against picking overhanging fruit. But what's legal is not always what's ethical, and most of the time ethical behavior requires more than simply not violating the law.
The law may not take cognizance of the fact that the tree has been raised, watered, nourished, tended and maintained by its owner, not by passers-by. Ethical considerations do take that fact into account, however, so I still think that the right thing is to ask the owner's permission. Legalities aside, it's the civil and fair thing to do, and therefore it's the ethical choice to make.
I know my readers will continue to do the right thing by sharing their wisdom with me by e-mailing me at rightthing@nytimes.com as the new year progresses.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, December 28, 2008
THE RIGHT THING: THE BEST OF YEARS, THE WORST OF YEARS
It's time for my annual look back at some of the more egregious ethical lapses that have plagued the previous twelve months.
As always, I also offer positive alternatives to the questionable actions of many high-profile people in the news. I believe that as much can be learned from those people who do the right thing as from those who don't.
GETTING OBAMA OFF ON THE WRONG FOOT.
On January 20, Inauguration Day, a sea of people will descend on Washington to witness the swearing-in of a new president. Lodging will likely be scarce. Some residents are offering up their well-placed apartments for $1,000 a day. Hotels are charging a premium for any rooms not already booked.
None of that is unethical per se, but some people are going too far. Recently ads on Craigslist were offering to sell hotel reservations for a nonrefundable $300. This doesn't include the cost of the minimum four-night stay at the hotel, which will add more than $1,000 to the tab. Essentially, as The Washington Post points out, some guy wants you to pay him $300 to make a reservation for you!
Compare this to Earl Stafford, founder of a Virginia technology company, who paid $1 million to book hotel rooms to accommodate wounded soldiers, poor people and others who couldn't afford to participate in the inauguration otherwise. According to The New York Times, "He said he wanted to help people who have worked hard and done everything right but who find themselves without a job or home."
EVERYONE (OF YOU) WILL HAVE TO SACRIFICE.
Not a week had passed, after the federal government's $85 billion bailout of the insurance company AIG, before some of its executives were treated to a spa vacation, running up a tab totaling more than $440,000. This, after AIG's CEO had told Congress that the company was facing a "financial global tsunami."
Financial tsunamis can make seasoned executives lose their poise, but doling out expensive vacations while crying poverty in an effort to get ahold of government funds suggests that these ones also lost their senses.
The incongruity was lost on AIG's leaders, but it didn't escape some university presidents who were asking their institutions to tighten their belts. Among them were Mark Wrighton, president of Washington University in St. Louis, who announced that he would take a 5-percent cut in his base salary come Jan. 1, and another 5-percent cut on July 1.
It packs a bit more ethical oomph, if you're asking people to tighten their belts, when you're willing to tighten your own.
WHEN GOOD MEN SAY STUPID THINGS.
To start with some disclosure: The actor and comedian Denis Leary is a graduate of, and a generous alumnus of, Emerson College, where I teach. My wife is a therapist who works with autistic children.
Leary has taken some hits for his new book, in which he attributes the boom in autism cases to "inattentive mothers and competitive dads" who throw money away to have their children diagnosed "to explain away their deficiencies."
His quote was taken out of context, Leary insists. And, to be fair, there are indeed some parents who look for any reason to explain their children's behavior other than their own lack of parenting skills. Had he simply stopped there, he might have done some good by addressing parental responsibility.
If you read on, however, Leary reveals a virtually complete lack of understanding of the process of autism diagnosis. In other words, in context the quote puts Leary in an even worse light than it does when pulled out and left to stand on its own.
OK, everyone has a right to an opinion, however wrongheaded. In the opinion of many highly trained professionals, including the one at my breakfast table, Leary's take on the issue is absurd. But that isn't itself unethical.
It reaches that level, however, when he uses his celebrity status to air his views to a readership who, themselves knowing little about the subject, don't realize how uninformed he is and may even take seriously the facetious byline, "Dr. Denis Leary" -- his only doctorate, I believe, is an honorary one from Emerson. It's especially unethical if, as I suspect, he overstates his own opinion for the sake of a laugh.
Also guilty of substandard ethics: Leary's publisher, Viking. Leary is used to spouting off-the-cuff rants onstage, and may not know any other way to work. Viking doesn't have that excuse. It's the job of any reputable publisher to make sure that what it prints is fair, accurate and not likely to do harm to others.
Groups such as Parents of Autistic Children -- at www.poac.net -- whose purpose is to help families with an autistic child get services and learn to cope day-to-day, don't enjoy Leary's spotlight. Nonetheless, they and the many service providers who work with them have a far deeper understanding of this issue, and it's a pity that their insights won't receive the circulation that Leary's have.
c.2008 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
As always, I also offer positive alternatives to the questionable actions of many high-profile people in the news. I believe that as much can be learned from those people who do the right thing as from those who don't.
GETTING OBAMA OFF ON THE WRONG FOOT.
On January 20, Inauguration Day, a sea of people will descend on Washington to witness the swearing-in of a new president. Lodging will likely be scarce. Some residents are offering up their well-placed apartments for $1,000 a day. Hotels are charging a premium for any rooms not already booked.
None of that is unethical per se, but some people are going too far. Recently ads on Craigslist were offering to sell hotel reservations for a nonrefundable $300. This doesn't include the cost of the minimum four-night stay at the hotel, which will add more than $1,000 to the tab. Essentially, as The Washington Post points out, some guy wants you to pay him $300 to make a reservation for you!
Compare this to Earl Stafford, founder of a Virginia technology company, who paid $1 million to book hotel rooms to accommodate wounded soldiers, poor people and others who couldn't afford to participate in the inauguration otherwise. According to The New York Times, "He said he wanted to help people who have worked hard and done everything right but who find themselves without a job or home."
EVERYONE (OF YOU) WILL HAVE TO SACRIFICE.
Not a week had passed, after the federal government's $85 billion bailout of the insurance company AIG, before some of its executives were treated to a spa vacation, running up a tab totaling more than $440,000. This, after AIG's CEO had told Congress that the company was facing a "financial global tsunami."
Financial tsunamis can make seasoned executives lose their poise, but doling out expensive vacations while crying poverty in an effort to get ahold of government funds suggests that these ones also lost their senses.
The incongruity was lost on AIG's leaders, but it didn't escape some university presidents who were asking their institutions to tighten their belts. Among them were Mark Wrighton, president of Washington University in St. Louis, who announced that he would take a 5-percent cut in his base salary come Jan. 1, and another 5-percent cut on July 1.
It packs a bit more ethical oomph, if you're asking people to tighten their belts, when you're willing to tighten your own.
WHEN GOOD MEN SAY STUPID THINGS.
To start with some disclosure: The actor and comedian Denis Leary is a graduate of, and a generous alumnus of, Emerson College, where I teach. My wife is a therapist who works with autistic children.
Leary has taken some hits for his new book, in which he attributes the boom in autism cases to "inattentive mothers and competitive dads" who throw money away to have their children diagnosed "to explain away their deficiencies."
His quote was taken out of context, Leary insists. And, to be fair, there are indeed some parents who look for any reason to explain their children's behavior other than their own lack of parenting skills. Had he simply stopped there, he might have done some good by addressing parental responsibility.
If you read on, however, Leary reveals a virtually complete lack of understanding of the process of autism diagnosis. In other words, in context the quote puts Leary in an even worse light than it does when pulled out and left to stand on its own.
OK, everyone has a right to an opinion, however wrongheaded. In the opinion of many highly trained professionals, including the one at my breakfast table, Leary's take on the issue is absurd. But that isn't itself unethical.
It reaches that level, however, when he uses his celebrity status to air his views to a readership who, themselves knowing little about the subject, don't realize how uninformed he is and may even take seriously the facetious byline, "Dr. Denis Leary" -- his only doctorate, I believe, is an honorary one from Emerson. It's especially unethical if, as I suspect, he overstates his own opinion for the sake of a laugh.
Also guilty of substandard ethics: Leary's publisher, Viking. Leary is used to spouting off-the-cuff rants onstage, and may not know any other way to work. Viking doesn't have that excuse. It's the job of any reputable publisher to make sure that what it prints is fair, accurate and not likely to do harm to others.
Groups such as Parents of Autistic Children -- at www.poac.net -- whose purpose is to help families with an autistic child get services and learn to cope day-to-day, don't enjoy Leary's spotlight. Nonetheless, they and the many service providers who work with them have a far deeper understanding of this issue, and it's a pity that their insights won't receive the circulation that Leary's have.
c.2008 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: PARDON MY PARDON
Roughly 89 percent of the readers who responded to an unscientific poll on my column's blog thought that it was unethical for a president to pardon someone whose illegal actions may have involved him or his administration.
The most thoughtful response comes from Sean O'Leary, a reader in Harpers Ferry, W.Va.
"Pardons of all kinds can be just, compassionate and even necessary," he writes, "because they can take into account a wider range of factors than might be considered pertinent in a court of law. Just pardons increase accountability by making more known and taking more into consideration ... Granting a presidential pardon to a crony whose crimes are a matter of public record is less troubling than granting a pardon for the specific purpose of preventing the crimes underlying the pardon from being fully investigated and becoming a matter of public record ... Just pardons increase accountability. Unjust pardons reduce accountability."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2008 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, December 21, 2008
SOUND OFF: GET OUT OF MY FACEBOOK
The New York Times and other media have reported that people seeking to work in the White House for the Obama administration are being required to provide vetters with, among other things, links to any blog posts they've made, links to their Facebook pages and "all aliases or `handles' you have used to communicate on the Internet."
Granted, work in the White House is likely to involve more sensitive issues than you'll come across in most workplaces. But employers can use the way prospective employees project themselves on the Internet as a screen for employment decisions, even if these things are not part of the official application process.
Should employers use Facebook pages, Myspace pages or blog posts to determine whether an otherwise qualified candidate with a solid work history and strong recommendations gets a job?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll about this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2008 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Granted, work in the White House is likely to involve more sensitive issues than you'll come across in most workplaces. But employers can use the way prospective employees project themselves on the Internet as a screen for employment decisions, even if these things are not part of the official application process.
Should employers use Facebook pages, Myspace pages or blog posts to determine whether an otherwise qualified candidate with a solid work history and strong recommendations gets a job?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll about this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2008 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: THE THINGS WE LEAVE BEHIND
When my friend Bruce went to clear out his mother's house after she died, he found labels attached to every physical thing in the house, from furniture to trinkets in old dresser drawers. His mother had lived alone for some time and, preparing for the day when she would no longer be around, had decided to make life a little easier on her only child. The labels bore instructions about where each of her belongings should go after her passing.
Bruce's story reminded me of a time I was visiting one of my college professors. As I was leaving her house, I admired a framed, antique print of the college campus that hung in her foyer. She lifted the print off the wall and showed me how it had been passed from one professor to another, each leaving instructions on the back of the print as to who should receive it upon his or her death. Hers was only the latest among many handwritten notes on the print.
I've long thought that the approach taken by Bruce's mother and by my college professor in directing how their possessions should be disposed of shows great thoughtfulness. Their wishes upon death were made clear, avoiding any number of subsequent conflicts.
Sadly, more often than not, such desires are not made clear.
Ten years ago, for example, the mother of four sisters died. The oldest of the sisters always had thought that, as the eldest, she would be the recipient of her mother's jewelry. Upon her mother's death, however, one of her younger sisters took possession of the jewelry.
"It's mostly costume jewelry," the oldest sister adds, "having more sentimental than monetary value."
Initially the sisters could not bring themselves to discuss sharing their mother's jewelry, because it brought up too many emotions. But now my reader and her younger sisters are finally meeting to try to distribute the jewelry.
"Should the jewelry traditionally go to the eldest when there are four sisters?" my reader asks.
In this case, obviously, it didn't -- so apparently that wasn't this family's tradition. But my reader's real question is whether it's the right thing for the eldest daughter in a family to get all the jewelry.
The short answer: No. Absent legal instructions, or a note attached to the jewelry, there is no ethical reason for any one child to be favored over the others.
By not leaving instructions prior to her death, my reader's mother essentially employed a strategy used by many parents in an effort to help their children learn to get along: If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the words, "Work it out among yourselves," wafting over the four women.
The right thing for them to do now is to gather so that each can express her desires. My reader can express her view that, as the oldest daughter, she is entitled to keep the whole lot. Because her mother never expressed that desire, however, she may have a hard time convincing her sisters. A better goal would be to achieve some agreement on how the jewelry can be shared to everyone's satisfaction.
Granted, 10 years is a long time to wait to decide the right thing to do. But we can't read the minds of those who have died. Some things simply take time to work out among ourselves.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
ECONOWHINER.COM ON ETHICS
"How has this economic downturn forced you to make ethical choices in your business or personal life? What do you see happening in the world around you?"
Those two questions are the tag on an interview with me posted this morning on the Econowhiner website, a website whose tagline is: "Surviving and Thriving in Tough Times."
The interview grew out of a question Econowhiner received from a reader about choosing not to layoff her employees and instead cutting her own paycheck to keep them on. I've written about the ethics of layoffs before in The Right Thing column, in "In Downsizing, Loyalty is a Two-Way Street." That was back in 2001, during an economic downturn that pales in comparison to what we're experiencing today.
What the Econowhiner interview gets at is whether very tough economic times force people to make ethical decisions differently. You might want to take a look at the interview by clicking here.
You can post comments here or on the Econowhiner website.
Those two questions are the tag on an interview with me posted this morning on the Econowhiner website, a website whose tagline is: "Surviving and Thriving in Tough Times."
The interview grew out of a question Econowhiner received from a reader about choosing not to layoff her employees and instead cutting her own paycheck to keep them on. I've written about the ethics of layoffs before in The Right Thing column, in "In Downsizing, Loyalty is a Two-Way Street." That was back in 2001, during an economic downturn that pales in comparison to what we're experiencing today.
What the Econowhiner interview gets at is whether very tough economic times force people to make ethical decisions differently. You might want to take a look at the interview by clicking here.
You can post comments here or on the Econowhiner website.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
THE RIGHT THING: A DEATH THREAT IN THE TRASH
"Here's an ethical question for you," the mother of a fourth grader writes. "If a student writes a note in anger, threatening to do something, but then throws the note away before giving it to anyone, should he still be punished?"
My reader's 9-year-old son was playing with a folded-up piece of paper that he had made into a football that he could flick around his school desktop with his fingers. Another student in the class kept grabbing the paper football from the 9-year-old. This upset him, but he continued to grab back his football until his classmate finally captured it and held it too firmly for the 9-year-old to retrieve.
The 9-year-old took out a piece of paper and scribbled a note to the football thief.
"Give me back my football," he wrote in pencil, "or I'll kill you."
He stared at the note for a moment, then thought better of delivering it. Instead he crumpled it up and threw it into a waste basket.
A third student saw the paper in the wastebasket and retrieved it. He uncrumpled it, read the scrawled message and was alarmed. So he gave the note to the recess monitor.
All of this took place late on a Monday afternoon, with no school that Tuesday. As the 9-year-old was getting ready to go home, the monitor approached him.
"You will have to meet with your teacher and me on Wednesday," the monitor said, "to discuss that note you wrote."
When the 9-year-old's mother, my reader, picked him up at school, he settled into the back seat. She asked how his day had been, and he burst out crying.
"I never want to go back to that school," he repeated over and over through his tears.
It's important to know that the 9-year-old never had been in trouble at school for any minor misbehavior, let alone anything violent. His grades are strong, and he has many friends. And it's even more important to remember that, while the language in the note was strong for an era of zero tolerance of any hint of violence in schools, he had crumpled it up and thrown it away.
After sweating it out for two days, my reader's son returned to school. During recess he was told to stay in and talk to his teacher and the recess monitor. His punishment: Writing a letter of apology to the student who had been spooked after retrieving the original note.
Calming the garbage picker seemed wise, so my reader's son wrote the apology without complaint.
From an ethical standpoint, however, the 9-year-old had nothing to apologize for. He did the right thing at the outset, when he used his judgment to discern that the note he had written in haste was wrong and again when he threw it away.
On the other hand, the teachers failed by not addressing the incident on the day that it happened, particularly since there was no school the next day. Making the 9-year-old agonize about what his punishment might be, imagining everything from no recess to expulsion, showed poor judgment at best. They weren't trying to teach him a lesson by making him wait, they simply failed to use common sense in resolving the issue.
c.2008 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
My reader's 9-year-old son was playing with a folded-up piece of paper that he had made into a football that he could flick around his school desktop with his fingers. Another student in the class kept grabbing the paper football from the 9-year-old. This upset him, but he continued to grab back his football until his classmate finally captured it and held it too firmly for the 9-year-old to retrieve.
The 9-year-old took out a piece of paper and scribbled a note to the football thief.
"Give me back my football," he wrote in pencil, "or I'll kill you."
He stared at the note for a moment, then thought better of delivering it. Instead he crumpled it up and threw it into a waste basket.
A third student saw the paper in the wastebasket and retrieved it. He uncrumpled it, read the scrawled message and was alarmed. So he gave the note to the recess monitor.
All of this took place late on a Monday afternoon, with no school that Tuesday. As the 9-year-old was getting ready to go home, the monitor approached him.
"You will have to meet with your teacher and me on Wednesday," the monitor said, "to discuss that note you wrote."
When the 9-year-old's mother, my reader, picked him up at school, he settled into the back seat. She asked how his day had been, and he burst out crying.
"I never want to go back to that school," he repeated over and over through his tears.
It's important to know that the 9-year-old never had been in trouble at school for any minor misbehavior, let alone anything violent. His grades are strong, and he has many friends. And it's even more important to remember that, while the language in the note was strong for an era of zero tolerance of any hint of violence in schools, he had crumpled it up and thrown it away.
After sweating it out for two days, my reader's son returned to school. During recess he was told to stay in and talk to his teacher and the recess monitor. His punishment: Writing a letter of apology to the student who had been spooked after retrieving the original note.
Calming the garbage picker seemed wise, so my reader's son wrote the apology without complaint.
From an ethical standpoint, however, the 9-year-old had nothing to apologize for. He did the right thing at the outset, when he used his judgment to discern that the note he had written in haste was wrong and again when he threw it away.
On the other hand, the teachers failed by not addressing the incident on the day that it happened, particularly since there was no school the next day. Making the 9-year-old agonize about what his punishment might be, imagining everything from no recess to expulsion, showed poor judgment at best. They weren't trying to teach him a lesson by making him wait, they simply failed to use common sense in resolving the issue.
c.2008 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: LOVE IN THE WORKPLACE
Is it a company's place to dictate who can and cannot fall in love in the workplace? According to 37 percent of the readers who responded to an informal poll on my column's blog, the answer is yes. The remaining 63 percent said no.
"Only bad things can happen during an office romance," one reader writes.
On the other hand, while Megan Chromik of Cambridge, Mass., thinks that a workplace relationship can make work difficult, she still doesn't believe that "a company should have the right to say who can and can't date and fall in love."
R.K., a reader in Florida, thinks the company should and does have that right.
"Aren't employers entitled to prohibit such employee relationships?" R.K. asks. "It's sad when trouble arises from the deceit that secretive office couples sometimes engage in."
"It crosses an ethical line for a boss to `strike up an affair' with someone at the office," writes Phil Clutts of Harrisburg, N.C. "But, if genuine romance evolves from working together, it's not the company's business if the relationship doesn't affect the company or either party's future in it in any way."
R. Brooks of Fullerton, Calif., takes a similar hands-off line.
"How else are hardworking people to meet other people?" Brooks observes. "The workplace is a prime place to meet people with similar interests."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2008 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
"Only bad things can happen during an office romance," one reader writes.
On the other hand, while Megan Chromik of Cambridge, Mass., thinks that a workplace relationship can make work difficult, she still doesn't believe that "a company should have the right to say who can and can't date and fall in love."
R.K., a reader in Florida, thinks the company should and does have that right.
"Aren't employers entitled to prohibit such employee relationships?" R.K. asks. "It's sad when trouble arises from the deceit that secretive office couples sometimes engage in."
"It crosses an ethical line for a boss to `strike up an affair' with someone at the office," writes Phil Clutts of Harrisburg, N.C. "But, if genuine romance evolves from working together, it's not the company's business if the relationship doesn't affect the company or either party's future in it in any way."
R. Brooks of Fullerton, Calif., takes a similar hands-off line.
"How else are hardworking people to meet other people?" Brooks observes. "The workplace is a prime place to meet people with similar interests."
Check out other opinions here, or post your own by clicking on "Comments" or "Post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2008 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, December 07, 2008
SOUND OFF: GAMBLING ON A RESUME
Recently J. Terrence Lanni resigned as the CEO of the MGM Mirage hotel in Las Vegas. He did so after The Wall Street Journal raised questions about whether he actually held an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California, as company publicity materials claimed he did. USC told the Journal that it had no record of his degree. Lanni said, however, that his resignation had nothing to do with the allegations.
More and more top executives are finding their academic credentials questioned. Do you think an executive should be asked to resign if it is discovered that he or she has listed false academic information on a resume?
Post your thoughts here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, hometown, and state, province, or country. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column. Or e-mail your comments to me at rightthing@nytimes.com.
You can also respond to the poll about this question that will appear on the right-hand side of the blog until polling is closed.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
c.2008 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
THE RIGHT THING: A CAN PLAN CRUSHED
Many neighbors seek out Dodie for advice. A regular reader of this column in southern California, she tries her best to help out when she can -- but sometimes she is simply flummoxed as to how to respond.
That was the case recently, when a friend came to her with a question about her trash company.
It seems that her friend regularly puts out her trash on the curb alongside her recycling bins for pickup. Recently, however, the garbage men not only picked up what had been left on her curb, but also walked into her yard and carried off the recycling that she had stored in bags leaning against her house.
The bags clearly had not been left for trash pickup, so the friend called the trash company to see if she could "get the situation fixed." The company explained that, unfortunately, the driver was new and didn't know better than to walk into her yard and take something that was on her private property.
This fell a little short of an apology, but my reader's friend was hoping for more than an apology. She is a single mother, raising a young teenager, and had counted on the money from recycling her own cans to help with her daughter's soccer costs. An apology would be welcome, but wouldn't address her basic problem.
Dodie wants to know the right thing for the trash company to do.
Every municipality has its own code regarding things such as trash pickup. Apparently there's nothing explicit in Dodie's town code that indicates that a law was broken, but it seems pretty clear that the trash collector overstepped his bounds here.
What's more, in its list of residential services, the disposal company specifically defines the type and size of trash containers and stipulates that all trash must be placed at curbside. Trash improperly packaged or not placed at curbside will not be picked up. Therefore the trash collector broke his own company's policy when he went into the friend's yard to pick up the garbage bags full of recycling.
Clearly there's no malice involved here. The trash collector was doubtless well-intentioned and thought that he was doing the resident a favor by hauling off garbage bags that he wasn't technically obliged to remove. Nonetheless, he had no right to go into the yard to do so. Grabbing every bag in sight is beyond his call of duty, and sooner or later was bound to result in him taking stuff that people had no intention of throwing away. I can recall some early moves to new apartments in which I carted all of my belongings in green garbage bags.
Placing aside the law -- since I am, after all, not a lawyer -- and focusing on the ethics of the situation -- since I am, after all, an ethics columnist -- an apology would be a good first step. If the trash company wants to do the right thing, however, having admitted that the bag of recyclables was taken mistakenly, it should consider reimbursing her for the cash value of the cans that she lost. Or it might consider crediting her trash-collection bill for that day's pickup.
Even when the economy is not forcing people to watch costs and be more meticulous about returning cans for deposit, the stuff we store on our lawns should be safe from over-vigilant garbage collectors. The company should do whatever it can to ensure that a young girl's soccer plans are not trashed.
c.2008 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
That was the case recently, when a friend came to her with a question about her trash company.
It seems that her friend regularly puts out her trash on the curb alongside her recycling bins for pickup. Recently, however, the garbage men not only picked up what had been left on her curb, but also walked into her yard and carried off the recycling that she had stored in bags leaning against her house.
The bags clearly had not been left for trash pickup, so the friend called the trash company to see if she could "get the situation fixed." The company explained that, unfortunately, the driver was new and didn't know better than to walk into her yard and take something that was on her private property.
This fell a little short of an apology, but my reader's friend was hoping for more than an apology. She is a single mother, raising a young teenager, and had counted on the money from recycling her own cans to help with her daughter's soccer costs. An apology would be welcome, but wouldn't address her basic problem.
Dodie wants to know the right thing for the trash company to do.
Every municipality has its own code regarding things such as trash pickup. Apparently there's nothing explicit in Dodie's town code that indicates that a law was broken, but it seems pretty clear that the trash collector overstepped his bounds here.
What's more, in its list of residential services, the disposal company specifically defines the type and size of trash containers and stipulates that all trash must be placed at curbside. Trash improperly packaged or not placed at curbside will not be picked up. Therefore the trash collector broke his own company's policy when he went into the friend's yard to pick up the garbage bags full of recycling.
Clearly there's no malice involved here. The trash collector was doubtless well-intentioned and thought that he was doing the resident a favor by hauling off garbage bags that he wasn't technically obliged to remove. Nonetheless, he had no right to go into the yard to do so. Grabbing every bag in sight is beyond his call of duty, and sooner or later was bound to result in him taking stuff that people had no intention of throwing away. I can recall some early moves to new apartments in which I carted all of my belongings in green garbage bags.
Placing aside the law -- since I am, after all, not a lawyer -- and focusing on the ethics of the situation -- since I am, after all, an ethics columnist -- an apology would be a good first step. If the trash company wants to do the right thing, however, having admitted that the bag of recyclables was taken mistakenly, it should consider reimbursing her for the cash value of the cans that she lost. Or it might consider crediting her trash-collection bill for that day's pickup.
Even when the economy is not forcing people to watch costs and be more meticulous about returning cans for deposit, the stuff we store on our lawns should be safe from over-vigilant garbage collectors. The company should do whatever it can to ensure that a young girl's soccer plans are not trashed.
c.2008 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Monday, December 01, 2008
The Right Thing Stories
For the weekly newspaper ethics column I write for the New York Times Syndicate called "The Right Thing," I am always looking for stories of ethical challenges, dilemmas, and perplexing situations. If you have such a story or question based on an incident and would like it to be considered for the column, please email it to me at rightthing@nytimes.com. (Or you can post it here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below.
Please make sure to include enough details about the story, the issue that you're wrestling with, and your name and the city and state or province where you are located. Include a way for me to contact you.
If you know of others who might have interesting stories, please forward this email on to them.
If you're local paper doesn't carry The Right Thing column and you'd like it to, you can send an email to the editor of the paper suggesting they contact the New York Times Syndicate. Contact information is available at http://nytsyn.com/saleinfo.html. (Or contact Sales Manager Ana Muñoz at munoza@nytimes.com or 212.499.3333 and tell her the name of your local newspaper that you believe should be carrying the column.)
Thanks in advance for your stories.
Please make sure to include enough details about the story, the issue that you're wrestling with, and your name and the city and state or province where you are located. Include a way for me to contact you.
If you know of others who might have interesting stories, please forward this email on to them.
If you're local paper doesn't carry The Right Thing column and you'd like it to, you can send an email to the editor of the paper suggesting they contact the New York Times Syndicate. Contact information is available at http://nytsyn.com/saleinfo.html. (Or contact Sales Manager Ana Muñoz at munoza@nytimes.com or 212.499.3333 and tell her the name of your local newspaper that you believe should be carrying the column.)
Thanks in advance for your stories.
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