SOUND OFF: DON'T BET THE HOUSE

In an unscientific poll on my column's blog, 92 percent of readers who responded said that people who contracted for mortgages which they couldn't afford, and should reasonably have known that they couldn't afford, should not be entitled to expect relief from the government when they're faced with foreclosure.

"The government should not bail out former homeowners in these instances," one reader writes. "My husband and I scrimped and saved and bought a little house. Where is our reward for not putting America into this crisis?"

But 63 percent of my respondents believe that people who signed for mortgages which they could afford, but then lost their jobs, are entitled to such government relief.

People who committed to a mortgage that they couldn't afford shouldn't be given relief, writes Debbie of Corona, Calif., but those who are facing foreclosure because of job loss or other life disaster "should be able to renegotiate their mortgages."

"I do not feel that the government should bail out homeowners who wanted to buy into the American Dream but couldn't afford it," says Deanne Dillenbeck of Cypress, Calif. "Nor do I feel that those who have lost their jobs should be bailed out ... The decline, and in some instances the lack of, ethics, morals and personal responsibility has in large part contributed to our current and dire circumstances."

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)

SOUND OFF: BONUS QUESTION

Here's a seemingly straightforward question for you. Assuming that it is legal and consistent with company policy for a CEO to be given a sizable bonus, is it right for the CEO to receive a bonus in a year when the company hasn't meet the predetermined expectations for earnings, profits and overall company performance? Does it matter that the shortfall may be due to overall economic conditions over which the CEO has no control? Does it matter if bonuses are typically part of the standard compensation for the job? Does it matter if executives in comparable positions at other companies are receiving comparable bonuses?

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 with 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: A DRINKING PROBLEM

The other day Marty Haynes, a reader from Plancentia, Calif., was enjoying a hamburger with his wife, Julie, at a Carl's Jr. restaurant in Yorba Linda.

"Due to the current economic situation," Haynes writes, "I succumbed to my wife's insistence that it was OK to share a small fountain drink from the self-serve fountain."

What made Haynes uncomfortable was that the restaurant offers free refills on drinks, meaning that, when he and his wife finished their small-sized beverage, they could refill the cup and continue sharing.

"There is no sign saying `One per customer, please' or `Only one refill, please' or anything like that," he writes. "I think it is assumed that each consumer should purchase their own drink."

Later that day, Haynes mentioned his concern to his son and to his daughter-in-law. They told him that they frequently shared a drink in similar situations and saw nothing wrong with it.

But Haynes sees a slippery slope here, since he doubts that anyone would agree that it would be OK for, say, a family of eight to share one small soda with many free refills.

"So what do you think?" he asks. "Is it OK for a couple to share a small drink and take advantage of the free-refills policy?"

My initial impulse was to consult the person with whom I would be most likely to find myself in a similar situation.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with it," my wife said, "as long as you buy the drink and are willing to drink it out of the same cup."

She reminded me that she rarely finishes her beverage when we go to a shop with a self-service fountain. Since she typically gives the drink to me to finish, we often buy only one drink instead of two.

"How is this any different?" she asks.

But nonetheless something about the practice still felt a bit hinky to me. Surely the restaurant didn't intend its policy to allow for multiple drinkers from the same refillable cup, I thought. The right or wrong of the situation had to be based, in part at least, on the intent of the offer.

Instead of trying to guess, I checked the Carl's Jr. Web site. No guidance there, though there were some coupons for a free drink if I wanted to buy the new Crisp Burrito. I didn't, so instead I called the company's toll-free customer-service hot line. There a customer-service representative looked up the refill policy for me.

"You have to purchase a drink to get a refill," she told me.

She kept looking through the guidelines.

"There is nothing in our policy about limiting how many people can drink from that same refillable cup," she said.

"So it would be OK for me to buy a drink, share it with my wife and then refill it?" I asked.

"Unless a local franchisee sets its own rules not allowing that," she said, "there is no written company policy against that."

From a strictly ethical point of view this practice passes muster only if you ask first. Rather than trying to guess the intentions of others, the right thing is simply to ask them. As for the restaurants, if they want to place limits on their refill policies, the right thing for them to do is to let customers know as clearly as possible.

c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)

THE RIGHT THING: VOTE FOR THE NAME YOU (SORT OF) KNOW

Several months ago I received an e-mail from an acquaintance who is the head of a certain organization. She wanted me to vote for a young entrepreneur, an alumnus of her institution, who had been nominated as a leading young entrepreneur.

"Please log onto the link below and vote for him as this year's best young entrepreneur," she wrote in a mass e-mail to seemingly everyone she knew.

She was pulling for the young man to win the contest, regardless of her e-mail recipients' perception of the other candidates, and it was clear that his winning would yield significant bragging rights for her organization.

I was reminded of her e-mail when a reader from Tustin, Calif., wrote to tell me of an e-mail he had received from a friend of a distant friend. This friend-of-a-friend wanted him to vote for a video created by his son's first-grade class, which had been entered in a contest to win $25,000 in technology equipment for their classroom. The class was one of five finalists in the competition.

"I would like to ask that you take time to sign up and vote for their video," the friend-of-a-friend wrote.

At first my reader thought that this was a good way for the boy's class to benefit from new technology. Thinking it over, however, and realizing that he hadn't seen the other four videos, he wondered how he could cast a vote saying that theirs was the best.

Examining the e-mail more closely, my reader found an attachment: a note from the class teacher explaining how to view all five videos on a Web site and then vote for his class's video. So my reader could in fact view each video and then vote based on their merits.

"But clearly that is not the intent of the parent who sent me the e-mail or of the teacher," he writes. "What kind of lesson does this send to those 6-year-olds? If they win because the voting has been padded, and not on merit, then they will have won fraudulently. How should the other classes feel if they lose because `well-meaning' parents sought to manipulate the vote?"

Many years ago, when I was in graduate school and an election for house council was being held, a classmate of mine -- now a minister -- explained it to me this way: "You vote for your friends."

That point is more reasonable than it may seem at first glance. We know our friends, after all, and have a clearer window into their values and integrity than we do with strangers. It's therefore possible to support them with greater conviction than it is with someone we don't know. But of course our knowledge of that person might also provide incentive not to vote for them, if we think that they aren't up to the job or don't deserve it.

Supporting a child's class is a noble goal, but the right thing to do in any election is to understand your choices and vote only for the person or idea that truly most deserves your support. That's true whether you're voting for a bunch of 6-year-olds or for the prospective leader of your country.

If my reader deemed two of the class videos to be of equal merit, there would be nothing wrong with him using the personal connection, admittedly a tenuous one in this case, as a tiebreaker. But it would be irresponsible to vote for one video without having seen them all. And if one of the other four videos truly outshines the others, the only honest choices are to vote for that one or not to vote at all.

As for the "young entrepreneur of the year" contest, I did not vote for any candidate, since I didn't know them well enough to judge. The candidate my acquaintance was promoting nonetheless was one of the winners.

c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)

SOUND OFF: FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS TAKE THEIR JOBS

"Friends don't let friends drive drunk," writes a reader who continues, "Friends don't steer a conversation about a friend's references to their own qualifications for the job."

My reader agreed with 71 percent of respondents who responded "no" to an unscientific poll on my blog that asked if it is OK to talk about your own qualifications if a friend's prospective employer pursues this line of conversation.

"Don't say this `friend' didn't steer the conversation," another reader writes. "The qualifications being discussed were clearly those of the job applicant. Just how did this supposed `friend' insert his or her qualifications into the conversation?"

However, 29 percent of readers responding thought it perfectly fine to answer such questions.

"Isn't it possible that the prospective employer wants to know if you are qualified enough to judge your friend's qualifications?" one of them asks. "If you get asked about applying for the job, you can simply say, `No, thank you."'

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)

THE RIGHT THING: IF THE SHOE FITS ...

A reader from Miami took a part-time job selling women's shoes in a department store. After being on the job for five weeks, he sold a pair of shoes to a woman who, after the sale, saw that a friend of hers was also working in the shoe department that day.

"According to the rules of working on commission," my reader writes, "once a customer is yours, he or she stays yours from start to finish. It is the salesperson's responsibility to ask the customer whether or not he or she has already been helped. I always ask, because I want to avoid any confrontations with my co-workers."

Once the customer saw her friend, however, it was the friend whom she had help her find two more pairs of shoes.

"I rang her up for the one pair I got for her," my reader writes. "And then her friend rang her up for the other two.

"There is a way for one employee to ring up another employee's customer," he adds, "and still give the commission to the employee who brought them the shoes, but it is up to the ringing employee to do the right thing and honor the commission."

Would the other salesperson credit him for the sale of the other two pairs of shoes? My reader wasn't sure, so right after ringing up the customer he printed out his own sales statistics. When the customer left 10 minutes later, after being helped by her friend, he printed out his sales statistics again.

He wondered whether he'd see the extra two pairs credited to him, but was surprised to see that not even the one pair he had personally sold was still listed.

"My sales number had decreased by the exact commission on the price of the shoes I had sold that woman," he writes. "Not only did (the saleswoman) steal my customer, but she had her friend return the shoes I sold her, only to resell them along with the other two pairs she bought."

My reader did not confront his co-worker -- "It wasn't worth the $3.97 I lost to her," he writes -- but he can't help feeling that he was wronged both by the sale of the additional two pairs of shoes to his established customer and especially by the return and resale of the pair that she had bought from him.

Can't a friend sell another friend a pair of shoes?

Of course she can. Had the customer sought out her friend to begin with, there would have been nothing wrong with tossing the commissions her way.

Once the customer had made the initial purchase from my reader, however, his co-worker was obligated to honor the fact that the customer was his. If she convinced her friend to return the shoes she had already bought and buy them again, it not only did her colleague an even greater disservice but also was a de-facto acknowledgment that she knew the customer to be his and took the commissions regardless.

It's quite possible that the co-worker knew her friend's taste in shoes better than my reader did, but that doesn't outweigh the store's established practice. The right thing for her to do was to help her friend, if she wanted to, but to credit any sales to her colleague.

c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)

SOUND OFF: OCTO-MOM

Many readers have e-mailed to ask whether I thought it ethical for Nadya Suleman, a California mother of six, to receive fertility treatments that resulted in her giving birth to octuplets.

Given the wide variety of opinions coming in, I put the questions to my readers: Was there anything wrong with Suleman's decision to have the procedure? Was it wrong for her doctor to implant six eggs, two of which later split, in one woman, or should this be a private decision between a mother and her doctor? Does it matter to your response that the mother is unmarried? Does it make a difference if the children may depend at least in part on public assistance?

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 four 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)

THE RIGHT THING: HAS THIS PARENT CROSSED THE LINE?

Walking in a store shortly after Christmas, a frequent reader of this column saw a parent "tap" an apparently misbehaving young girl who looked to be about 7 years old.

"I almost followed them to their car to get their license plate and report them," he writes, but decided not to because he didn't want to neglect his own children.

So what is a "tap?"

"It was more than a pat, but less than a hit," my reader says.

He goes on to say that he considers a pat to be a gentle touch, while a tap has the kind of force you might use in swatting a fly, enough to make an audible noise if applied to a piece of wood.

"I wanted to do something," he writes. "But what was the right thing, not knowing what happened before the incident?"

It's a normal impulse to want to ensure the safety of children. It's also common, however, for even a good parent occasionally to lose composure when dealing with a child in a public place.

I make the latter observation not in an effort to condone striking a child, but merely to acknowledge that not everyone who does so is a confirmed child-batterer. Even the most well-intentioned parent can't always control his or her own behavior in trying to control a child -- which my reader knows perfectly well.

"I am not perfect myself," he admits. "I've had my own share of problems to deal with."

If it is absolutely clear that a child is being abused and physically beaten, no one should hesitate to intervene -- or to ask store security to do so -- or, later on, to report the incident. But this episode didn't involve that level of abuse.

In the past, my reader says, when he has witnessed parents who he believes have "crossed the line" by striking or yelling at a child, he has intervened, but gently: He asked the parents, "Is there a problem I can help you with?" or "Do you need help?"

By engaging these parents by offering help, I believe my reader did the right thing. Such an approach is less antagonistic than "He is only a child!" or "Stop beating your kid, you wacko!" The confrontational approach, by placing the parent in question on the defensive, has a good chance of escalating an incident.

In situations such as the one my reader raises, in which you really don't know the specifics of the situation, the ethical response is to engage the parent and let him or her know that others are witnessing what's going on, even if you don't say so directly. The shock of having another adult express concern might force the parent to recognize that "tapping" might not be the best solution to a child's unruliness. Hearing another member of the community offer help or express concern gives the parent a moment to step back and reassess how he or she is behaving.

In this case, my reader's response was proper, proportionate and, yes, ethical. The key phrase in his report of the incident is "less than a hit." If he saw a parent hit a child -- or, indeed, saw any adult hit any child -- he would have a clear ethical responsibility to intervene. Because this case did not rise to that level, his obligation did not rise to the point of intervention.

His concern is understandable, but it is not my reader's responsibility to chase every parent who taps a child out to the parking lot. We should always err on the side of caution when it comes to protecting children, but it's also important to use common sense.

Some parents simply need to reassess how best to discipline their occasionally unruly children and, while my reader may be right in thinking that this parent's approach was inappropriate, it did not reach a level requiring him to take further action.

c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)

SOUND OFF: THE COACH GOT SACKED

Jeff Jagodzinski, the former football coach for Boston College, was fired after he interviewed for a job as head coach of the New York Jets, a higher-paying job in professional football. He had been warned by the college's athletic director that he would be fired if he interviewed for the Jets job, which he didn't get.

I asked readers if they thought that it was right to fire someone for interviewing for another job. Of the readers who responded to an unscientific poll on my column's blog, 22 percent thought that such firings were OK.

"If my employer warned me, and then I interviewed anyway," Clayton Eads opines, "I'd deserve a firing."

But another reader writes: "This is America, and since when is it not legal to better oneself, as long as it is done on your time, not company time?"

Patrick Harvey of Mission Viejo, Calif., acknowledges that, though the practice of tearing up contracts is often tolerated, Boston College had the right to enforce its contract.

"The downside," he writes, "is that it may make it difficult for the college to recruit future coaches if they know that they will be unable to break a contract and move up."

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)

THE RIGHT THING: THE ETHICS OF SHOPPING

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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.]

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Elizabeth Alexander

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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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)