A reader and her husband recently received a letter from the federal government that has put each of them in a slightly different ethical bind.
For several years my reader and her husband have been friends with a couple who live near them in Providence, R.I.
"The wife has always been a bit `crazy,"' my reader writes, "but in a fun, life-of-the-party kind of way."
Last year the wife volunteered for the Obama campaign. As she got more and more involved, she would travel to other cities and then to other states for extended stays. Gradually the volunteer wife's contact with local people, including her friends and even her husband, started to wane. After the election the volunteer wife still didn't return home. When my reader was able to reach her on the telephone, my reader reports, she found her evasive and "slightly manic."
Finally she returned home to collect her things and to move to Washington, hoping to get a full-time job with the new administration. She never contacted my reader while she was home to retrieve her stuff.
"Our friendship seemed pretty faded," my reader writes.
Three months into the new administration, though, the volunteer wife called my reader at work. She was in a hurry, she said, but she was applying for a job and asked my reader if she could serve as a "sort of reference" by confirming her address in Providence. My reader agreed. When she started to ask a few questions about the prospective job, however, the volunteer wife quickly excused herself and hung up.
She also tried to call my reader's husband, but wasn't able to reach him directly.
My reader and her husband received a letter shortly thereafter. They were indeed asked to confirm her address -- but were also asked if they had "any reason to question this person's honesty or trustworthiness" or if they had any "adverse information about this person's financial integrity."
Neither is crazy about the idea of vouching for anything about this woman other than her address, which is all that my reader had agreed to do.
"Are we ethically obligated to contact her and say that we aren't interested in serving as this type of reference and refuse to respond to the letters?" my reader asks. "I'm pretty sure that we shouldn't continue ignoring these letters and hoping they'll go away."
Yes, generally speaking, letters and obligations rarely disappear. And there is indeed an obligation in this case, no matter how shabbily the "friend" may have acted toward my reader.
Because she told her friend that she would confirm her address, my reader can't simply ignore the letter. The right thing for her to do is either to answer the letter -- she can, if she wishes, confirm the address but leave blank the rest of the letter, since it goes beyond her commitment to her friend -- or to contact her friend to let her know that she does not plan to do so because the letter isn't what she had been led to expect.
My reader's husband is in a different situation, of course. Since he never agreed to be a reference, he is free to ignore the letter, if he likes, or to fill it out any way he pleases. It was bad form for the volunteer wife not to get his agreement before having the letter sent to him, and the letter itself imposes no obligation on him.
Few people are comfortable turning down such requests from friends, no matter how distant they have become. If the volunteer wife had been more forthcoming about the type of reference she wanted, my reader might have felt more comfortable in telling her that she was not the best choice. If she now sends back the form only confirming her friend's address, it will likely speak volumes to those who asked for the reference -- but that's the volunteer wife's own fault for not being more forthcoming.
Everyone seeking a reference would be wise to choose their references carefully and not to mislead them about what they are being asked for. A bad or mixed reference is worse than no reference at all.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, April 19, 2009
SOUND OFF: Bonus Question
In an informal poll on my column's blog, 75 percent of respondents said that it is never OK for a CEO to receive a bonus in a year when the company hasn't met its predetermined expectations for earnings, profits and overall company performance. Of the remainder, 16 percent thought it was OK only if bonuses were a standard part of the compensation for the CEO's job, while 5 percent thought it was OK only if the shortfall was due to economic conditions beyond the CEO's control. Only 2 percent of readers thought it was always OK to pay a CEO a bonus even in years when expectations aren't met.
"It's part of a CEO's job to evaluate the risks of how the economy or other factors ... might affect operations," writes Phil Clutts of Harrisburg, N.C. "If the company has done poorly because of misfortune or planned losses, the top dog is not entitled to a bonus."
"In these times when companies are receiving huge amounts from the U.S. government, that money should be used in total to revive the company, not the executives or employees or shareholders," writes George Zahka of Bradenton Beach, Fla. "If the company's condition is due to malfeasance or dishonesty, then they should be prosecuted."
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)
"It's part of a CEO's job to evaluate the risks of how the economy or other factors ... might affect operations," writes Phil Clutts of Harrisburg, N.C. "If the company has done poorly because of misfortune or planned losses, the top dog is not entitled to a bonus."
"In these times when companies are receiving huge amounts from the U.S. government, that money should be used in total to revive the company, not the executives or employees or shareholders," writes George Zahka of Bradenton Beach, Fla. "If the company's condition is due to malfeasance or dishonesty, then they should be prosecuted."
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, April 12, 2009
SOUND OFF: WHOSE CHILD IS THIS?
The singer/actress Madonna is in the news again with another attempt to adopt a child from Malawi. In 2006 her adoption of a Malawian boy drew press scrutiny, and the public's ire, amid suggestions that the adoption process might have been unfairly expedited due to her celebrity status and to lavish gifts she had given to the country.
When I asked my readers about the propriety of that first adoption, some were outraged that the adoption process might have been speeded up because it was Madonna applying. Others believed that because the cause was virtuous -- "saving that child from poverty and disease," one reader wrote -- any criticism was unwarranted.
The press coverage this time around has been equally vigorous, and at this writing it seems that she will be unsuccessful in a second adoption.
So here's my question for you: Regardless of her celebrity status, in a matter such as this -- the adoption of a child -- should Madonna's privacy be respected? Or do the press and the public have a right to the inside scoop on her adoption?
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)
When I asked my readers about the propriety of that first adoption, some were outraged that the adoption process might have been speeded up because it was Madonna applying. Others believed that because the cause was virtuous -- "saving that child from poverty and disease," one reader wrote -- any criticism was unwarranted.
The press coverage this time around has been equally vigorous, and at this writing it seems that she will be unsuccessful in a second adoption.
So here's my question for you: Regardless of her celebrity status, in a matter such as this -- the adoption of a child -- should Madonna's privacy be respected? Or do the press and the public have a right to the inside scoop on her adoption?
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: THE CHIME OF THE CENTURY
"Have you tackled wind chimes?" a reader from Watertown, Mass., asks me in an e-mail.
My reader's choice of a verb is no accident. Her neighbor's wind chimes are driving her nuts, and she's on the verge of violence against either the chimes or the neighbor.
"I know that, if this is my biggest problem, I should count myself lucky," she adds.
She recently moved into a new neighborhood, and the wind chimes hung at the house next door clank round the clock. She knows this, because she works from home and is therefore subjected to the noise day and night.
"I am trying to talk myself into liking wind chimes," she writes, "because I can't bear to approach my neighbor. I know some communities ban them."
She knows this because she has spent some time researching the issue on the Internet. She has sent me links to stories, including one from Denver about a lawsuit that forced a resident to take down his wind chimes by nightfall and not rehang them until 9 a.m. There are countless stories of homeowners waking to find their wind chimes duct-taped together to keep them from chiming.
"Am I in the right to not want my neighbor to subject everyone to wind chimes 24-7?" my reader asks. "It seems cowardly to go to the city to ask for a solution, rather than to approach my neighbor first."
My reader is wise to recognize that, if the wind-chime nuisance is the biggest problem she's faced since moving into a new home, she's fortunate.
Still, as anyone who has ever been kept awake by neighborhood noise knows, sleep deprivation can magnify the urgency of even the pettiest nuisance.
While she would be within her rights to call the city about the noise, it's good that my reader is reluctant to make that her first step. Calling the authorities on a new neighbor is not a good way to cultivate warm relations over the picket fence. It would be the best way to go if she had reason to fear that her neighbor might respond violently to her request, but since that is not the case -- there is no direct correlation between rage and wind chimes of which I'm aware -- contacting him directly is the civil and sensible thing to do.
As for the options, willing herself to like wind chimes seems futile, and is likely only to increase her frustration at the unwanted clanging. A judicious duct-tape strike by dark of night would be trespassing, and in any event wouldn't convey the message she wants to send. Her neighbor would be more likely to think it a children's prank than a request by a nearby adult for abatement of the noise.
The key point here is that the neighbor probably doesn't realize that the wind chimes are bothersome. He hung them, presumably, because he enjoys the sound. If my reader doesn't tell him that he's annoying her, he may never know. It's quite possible that, upon realizing that he's disturbing her, he'll voluntarily take them down altogether.
The right thing for my reader to do is to approach her new neighbor, introduce herself and ask him, as civilly as possible, if he would mind bringing in the wind chimes after dark. Granted, she may not get the results she wants, but she may also be surprised by how effective an honest and direct approach can be.
She might be doing the whole neighborhood a favor.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
My reader's choice of a verb is no accident. Her neighbor's wind chimes are driving her nuts, and she's on the verge of violence against either the chimes or the neighbor.
"I know that, if this is my biggest problem, I should count myself lucky," she adds.
She recently moved into a new neighborhood, and the wind chimes hung at the house next door clank round the clock. She knows this, because she works from home and is therefore subjected to the noise day and night.
"I am trying to talk myself into liking wind chimes," she writes, "because I can't bear to approach my neighbor. I know some communities ban them."
She knows this because she has spent some time researching the issue on the Internet. She has sent me links to stories, including one from Denver about a lawsuit that forced a resident to take down his wind chimes by nightfall and not rehang them until 9 a.m. There are countless stories of homeowners waking to find their wind chimes duct-taped together to keep them from chiming.
"Am I in the right to not want my neighbor to subject everyone to wind chimes 24-7?" my reader asks. "It seems cowardly to go to the city to ask for a solution, rather than to approach my neighbor first."
My reader is wise to recognize that, if the wind-chime nuisance is the biggest problem she's faced since moving into a new home, she's fortunate.
Still, as anyone who has ever been kept awake by neighborhood noise knows, sleep deprivation can magnify the urgency of even the pettiest nuisance.
While she would be within her rights to call the city about the noise, it's good that my reader is reluctant to make that her first step. Calling the authorities on a new neighbor is not a good way to cultivate warm relations over the picket fence. It would be the best way to go if she had reason to fear that her neighbor might respond violently to her request, but since that is not the case -- there is no direct correlation between rage and wind chimes of which I'm aware -- contacting him directly is the civil and sensible thing to do.
As for the options, willing herself to like wind chimes seems futile, and is likely only to increase her frustration at the unwanted clanging. A judicious duct-tape strike by dark of night would be trespassing, and in any event wouldn't convey the message she wants to send. Her neighbor would be more likely to think it a children's prank than a request by a nearby adult for abatement of the noise.
The key point here is that the neighbor probably doesn't realize that the wind chimes are bothersome. He hung them, presumably, because he enjoys the sound. If my reader doesn't tell him that he's annoying her, he may never know. It's quite possible that, upon realizing that he's disturbing her, he'll voluntarily take them down altogether.
The right thing for my reader to do is to approach her new neighbor, introduce herself and ask him, as civilly as possible, if he would mind bringing in the wind chimes after dark. Granted, she may not get the results she wants, but she may also be surprised by how effective an honest and direct approach can be.
She might be doing the whole neighborhood a favor.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Podcast of Weikel Lecture at University of Wisconsin (Madison) Business School
You can find a podcast of the Weikel Lecture at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) by clicking here.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: `WE'LL CUT YOUR PAY TO SAVE HIS JOB'
During a minor economic downturn in the early 1990s, a former employer of mine was seeking ways to save money.
For years the company had staged lavish holiday parties around Christmas, often renting out a museum or a large catering hall for a sit-down dinner and party. Because money wasn't flowing as freely this year, however, he took a different approach.
Each department was allocated a modest budget to stage an event in its offices to which the rest of the company would be invited. One department hired a photographer to shoot group photos. Another hired a tarot-card reader. Employees brought food and drink to share with colleagues. Our department ordered pizzas and hired an accordion player from the North End of Boston who took requests.
I don't remember much about the more expensive offsite parties, but the self-made, in-house party sticks with me more than a decade later. I haven't forgotten the accordion player, who didn't know Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" (1971) and instead broke into the Gershwins' classic "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" (1922).
In other words, sometimes saving money actually produces a better result -- a heartening thought at a time when the economic troubles of the early 1990s seem quaint compared with what we face now. A party of any sort feels extravagant when you're facing the prospect of job cuts.
In March the heads of 13 medical departments at a Boston-area hospital each contributed roughly $27,000 from their salaries so that the hospital could avoid layoffs. That was a voluntary decision. At other companies, however, employees are being asked to consider taking salary cuts to avoid having co-workers laid off.
When faced with such a question, is it wrong for an employee to respond that he or she would prefer not to take the cut? And does it matter how other employees decide?
Some management experts believe that it's foolhardy to ask employees to stick around at a diminished salary and expect them to be motivated to perform at their highest level. Better, they say, to lose a few employees while allowing those who remain to be fully compensated to do their jobs.
It seems to me that seeing your co-workers begin to drop like flies can be equally demoralizing. Besides, who wants to be the guy who argues against making any sacrifice at all to keep jobs? "I'd hate to see you go, Lenny, but if it's between you and 1 percent of my salary, see ya."
There is no ethical obligation, however, for any employee to offer to take a pay cut or, given the choice, to agree to one if she doesn't want to. The right thing for each employee to do is to weigh all the factors involved in the choice: If I agree to take a pay cut, will it be difficult to meet my family's financial obligations? If I don't agree and others are laid off, will my additional workload diminish the time I have to spend with my family? And so on.
Of course, even if an employee doesn't agree, he has no assurance that across-the-board pay cuts won't be made anyway, leaving him with only the option to quit or not to quit. And, of course, if he turns down the pay cut, it's possible that it will be his job that is cut to make ends meet. There are no good options in this situation, and thus no easy choices. There is no ethical obligation to accept a pay cut for the benefit of others, however, and someone who refuses to do so isn't falling short ethically, even if others decide to accept the cut.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
For years the company had staged lavish holiday parties around Christmas, often renting out a museum or a large catering hall for a sit-down dinner and party. Because money wasn't flowing as freely this year, however, he took a different approach.
Each department was allocated a modest budget to stage an event in its offices to which the rest of the company would be invited. One department hired a photographer to shoot group photos. Another hired a tarot-card reader. Employees brought food and drink to share with colleagues. Our department ordered pizzas and hired an accordion player from the North End of Boston who took requests.
I don't remember much about the more expensive offsite parties, but the self-made, in-house party sticks with me more than a decade later. I haven't forgotten the accordion player, who didn't know Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" (1971) and instead broke into the Gershwins' classic "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" (1922).
In other words, sometimes saving money actually produces a better result -- a heartening thought at a time when the economic troubles of the early 1990s seem quaint compared with what we face now. A party of any sort feels extravagant when you're facing the prospect of job cuts.
In March the heads of 13 medical departments at a Boston-area hospital each contributed roughly $27,000 from their salaries so that the hospital could avoid layoffs. That was a voluntary decision. At other companies, however, employees are being asked to consider taking salary cuts to avoid having co-workers laid off.
When faced with such a question, is it wrong for an employee to respond that he or she would prefer not to take the cut? And does it matter how other employees decide?
Some management experts believe that it's foolhardy to ask employees to stick around at a diminished salary and expect them to be motivated to perform at their highest level. Better, they say, to lose a few employees while allowing those who remain to be fully compensated to do their jobs.
It seems to me that seeing your co-workers begin to drop like flies can be equally demoralizing. Besides, who wants to be the guy who argues against making any sacrifice at all to keep jobs? "I'd hate to see you go, Lenny, but if it's between you and 1 percent of my salary, see ya."
There is no ethical obligation, however, for any employee to offer to take a pay cut or, given the choice, to agree to one if she doesn't want to. The right thing for each employee to do is to weigh all the factors involved in the choice: If I agree to take a pay cut, will it be difficult to meet my family's financial obligations? If I don't agree and others are laid off, will my additional workload diminish the time I have to spend with my family? And so on.
Of course, even if an employee doesn't agree, he has no assurance that across-the-board pay cuts won't be made anyway, leaving him with only the option to quit or not to quit. And, of course, if he turns down the pay cut, it's possible that it will be his job that is cut to make ends meet. There are no good options in this situation, and thus no easy choices. There is no ethical obligation to accept a pay cut for the benefit of others, however, and someone who refuses to do so isn't falling short ethically, even if others decide to accept the cut.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
SOUND OFF: EIGHT IS MORE THAN ENOUGH
In an unscientific poll on my column's blog, 88 percent of my respondents thought that there was something wrong with Nadya Suleman, a Californian mother of six, being allowed to receive fertility treatments that resulted in her giving birth to octuplets.
It didn't matter to 55 percent of my respondents that Suleman was unmarried, but 85 percent said that it did matter if she was on public assistance. Only 15 percent believed that the whole issue should be a private decision between the mother and her doctor.
Californians seemed particularly outraged.
"There appears to be a profound lapse in judgment by everyone involved," writes Bill Wotring of Fullerton, Calif.
"Everything was wrong with her decision," writes Carole Heston of southern California.
"The doctor blew it," writes Carroll Straus of Orange County, Calif. "Big time."
"Basically it comes down to what is best for the child," writes Merrilee Gardner of Irvine, Calif. "There is nothing I see in this that was best for the children."
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, March 29, 2009
SOUND OFF: START SPREADING THE NOT-QUITE-NEWS
Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," is quick to stress that his program, though styled after a television newscast, is actually "fake news" played for comedy.
Nonetheless, in a 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Stewart was named by 2 percent of respondents as the journalist they admired most. That doesn't sound like much, but no single journalist was named by more than 5 percent of the public, and at 2 percent Stewart was tied with Tom Brokaw, Anderson Cooper and Brian Williams.
Does the fact that he is regarded as a journalist by so many people impose any ethical obligations on Stewart -- say, to offer his send-up of the news in an accurate and well-researched manner?
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: `WITHOUT YOU, WE WOULDN'T BE WHERE WE ARE TODAY'
Years ago I wrote an article for a business magazine about the CEO of a company that remanufactured engine parts for jets. He had received word that 11 airline jets, some of which contained parts supplied by his company, had been grounded. The groundings were due to engine problems, the causes of which were at that point unclear.
When he received word of the groundings, the CEO was about to sign his annual financial-audit papers. These papers, which the CEO must sign, include a statement that he does not know of any issues that would adversely affect the financial condition of the company.
Should he sign the audit papers or not? All he had, after all, was incomplete information on the jet groundings. What if it turned out that it wasn't his company's parts that had caused the problems, but he caused a panic among his lenders by raising the subject at all?
The first lawyers he consulted advised him to note the jet grounding in the statement. Dissatisfied with this response, however, he consulted another set of lawyers. This time he got the answer he wanted: Don't report the incident and go ahead and sign the papers.
While many readers disagreed with me, I thought then -- and think now -- that the CEO had made the wrong decision. If there was the remotest cause for concern about other jets which used his company's parts and were still in the air, I believed, he had an obligation to make passenger safety his highest priority, even if that meant raising an alarm by reporting the groundings.
His ability to find lawyers who would give him the advice he was looking for strikes me as particularly salient in light of the recent brouhaha over the $165 million in bonuses that have been paid to AIG executives, despite the fact that the company would have collapsed if it hadn't received almost $200 billion in federal bailout money.
The bonuses had to be paid to retain top employees who could turn around the company, one explanation ran, ignoring the fact that 52 of those employees, people whose bonuses had totaled more than $33 million, had already left the company.
Last fall, shortly after the initial bailout money -- a now-trivial $85 million -- had been doled out to AIG, it was reported that the company had spent $440,000 on a California spa retreat for its executives. Strong public outrage greeted the revelation. The sequel, the bonus blowup, has proven even more controversial, enough to draw personal criticism from the president of the United States.
It need hardly be said that to accept a hefty bonus when the company's performance has been so dismal as to place it on the verge of bankruptcy is unethical on the face of it. Virtually nobody at AIG had the kind of year that merits a bonus.
The unethical conduct does not necessarily stop there, however. Apparently the bonuses were a matter of contractual record, and anyone running a company in financial trouble -- and the federal government now owns 80 percent of AIG -- should make it his or her business to be aware of proposed outlays of this magnitude.
The bailout was intended to keep a major company afloat as it found a responsible way to right its business affairs. It wasn't meant to buy new country houses for its executives. Those in the federal government who didn't care, didn't know or made it their business not to know how AIG intended to spend the money fell short of their ethical obligations to AIG, to the Congress and to their ultimate bosses, the taxpayers.
Mind you, like the airplane-parts executive I wrote about, the bosses of AIG ought to have reported this potential problem rather than waiting for it to hit the newspapers and splatter even more egg on their faces. In the current climate, it didn't take a business wizard to tell that people weren't going to be very pleased with the idea of failed executives taking home huge bonuses.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
When he received word of the groundings, the CEO was about to sign his annual financial-audit papers. These papers, which the CEO must sign, include a statement that he does not know of any issues that would adversely affect the financial condition of the company.
Should he sign the audit papers or not? All he had, after all, was incomplete information on the jet groundings. What if it turned out that it wasn't his company's parts that had caused the problems, but he caused a panic among his lenders by raising the subject at all?
The first lawyers he consulted advised him to note the jet grounding in the statement. Dissatisfied with this response, however, he consulted another set of lawyers. This time he got the answer he wanted: Don't report the incident and go ahead and sign the papers.
While many readers disagreed with me, I thought then -- and think now -- that the CEO had made the wrong decision. If there was the remotest cause for concern about other jets which used his company's parts and were still in the air, I believed, he had an obligation to make passenger safety his highest priority, even if that meant raising an alarm by reporting the groundings.
His ability to find lawyers who would give him the advice he was looking for strikes me as particularly salient in light of the recent brouhaha over the $165 million in bonuses that have been paid to AIG executives, despite the fact that the company would have collapsed if it hadn't received almost $200 billion in federal bailout money.
The bonuses had to be paid to retain top employees who could turn around the company, one explanation ran, ignoring the fact that 52 of those employees, people whose bonuses had totaled more than $33 million, had already left the company.
Last fall, shortly after the initial bailout money -- a now-trivial $85 million -- had been doled out to AIG, it was reported that the company had spent $440,000 on a California spa retreat for its executives. Strong public outrage greeted the revelation. The sequel, the bonus blowup, has proven even more controversial, enough to draw personal criticism from the president of the United States.
It need hardly be said that to accept a hefty bonus when the company's performance has been so dismal as to place it on the verge of bankruptcy is unethical on the face of it. Virtually nobody at AIG had the kind of year that merits a bonus.
The unethical conduct does not necessarily stop there, however. Apparently the bonuses were a matter of contractual record, and anyone running a company in financial trouble -- and the federal government now owns 80 percent of AIG -- should make it his or her business to be aware of proposed outlays of this magnitude.
The bailout was intended to keep a major company afloat as it found a responsible way to right its business affairs. It wasn't meant to buy new country houses for its executives. Those in the federal government who didn't care, didn't know or made it their business not to know how AIG intended to spend the money fell short of their ethical obligations to AIG, to the Congress and to their ultimate bosses, the taxpayers.
Mind you, like the airplane-parts executive I wrote about, the bosses of AIG ought to have reported this potential problem rather than waiting for it to hit the newspapers and splatter even more egg on their faces. In the current climate, it didn't take a business wizard to tell that people weren't going to be very pleased with the idea of failed executives taking home huge bonuses.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
Sunday, March 22, 2009
THE RIGHT THING: SLIPPING A DISK
In the world of movies, the big heist isn't always on the screen.
A few weeks ago a reader from southern California wrote to ask if she was doing anything wrong by accepting DVDs of current movies given to her by a friend, if she knew the DVDs to be illegal, bootlegged copies.
"I was happy to get the DVDs," she writes. "I watched and enjoyed the movies. And I thanked my friend who gave them to me."
The ethics of accepting bootlegged movies never crossed her mind until another of her friends told her that she "could not have even watched them, knowing that."
"Am I wrong to accept these DVDs, even from a second party?" she asks. "I do not want to get anyone in trouble. I am just wondering what your opinion is of my participation in it."
My opinion is that, legally, it stinks. Making, selling or buying bootleg movies is illegal everywhere in the United States.
I'm not a lawyer, so I can't say how much legal trouble my reader might be in, but I'd guess not very much, since she didn't pay for the movies and I doubt that watching them is illegal. At most, I suspect, she's guilty of failing to report a crime or something of that nature.
Some things are illegal but not unethical, however, the same way that many things are legal but not ethical. Setting aside the legalities, how does my reader's situation stack up?
My opinion: It still stinks. Ethically speaking, bootleg films -- and all other illegal replicas of copyrighted books, CDs, software and so forth -- are stolen goods, pure and simple. The person who made them was stealing from the rightful makers and distributors of the film, and anyone who knowingly watches them is aiding and abetting the crime.
From an ethical standpoint, it doesn't matter that my reader didn't pay for the movies she watched. Surely watching them made her less likely to pay to see them in a theater, and that's as good as taking money from everyone involved in the film.
Does it matter if she wouldn't have gone to the theater or paid for a legitimate DVD, whether or not she had seen the bootlegs? No. The viewing of a copyrighted film is not a human right, but rather a privilege with a cost associated with it. Because neither she nor anyone else involved in the bootleg paid anything to the rightful owners of the film, any viewing of it -- except by law-enforcement people trying to track down the bootlegger -- is unethical. Simple as that.
Granted, I have a vested interest in this issue: I make my living partly through royalties from my books and this syndicated column. Understandably I am loath to blithely accept that it is OK for people to make copies of my material without my permission.
Longtime readers of my column know that I always have taken a strong stance against illegal copies of copyrighted material, regardless of who's doing the copying or what their motives may be. Parents who make multiple copies of DVDs or videotapes to give to their children's friends set a terrible example. So too do professors who Xerox large portions of books or articles for their students' classroom use, without obtaining permission from the publisher or author.
People's work should not be stolen, whether by a bootlegger or by private citizens downloading or otherwise making illegal copies of DVDs, CDs or printed material for their own use. Those who own the rights to goods should decide who gets to use them and how. If it's wrong to steal a dress without paying, and thus depriving the dressmaker and the store owner of the fruits of their labor, then it's wrong to steal a movie and rob the filmmakers and distributors.
That one is a physical object and the other an intangible work of art is irrelevant. The movie is equally intangible in the theater, yet most people who buy bootlegs would probably feel it was wrong to sneak in the theater's back door and see the movie for free.
Are DVDs too high-priced? Does little of the purchase price actually go to the creators? No matter. This isn't a Robin Hood situation, and movies aren't essentials like food or shelter. If you don't like the business model, don't buy DVDs ... and don't watch them.
The right thing for my reader to do, should her friend offer her any more illegal DVDs, is to refuse to accept them and to tell her why: Doing so is both illegal and unethical, and she doesn't care to have any part in condoning such activity.
In the meantime, my reader should destroy any bogus DVDs, whether bootlegged or copied illegally, that she may have in her possession. If she wants to see a movie, she should go to the theater or, alternatively, wait until it's legally released on DVD and then either buy it, rent it or borrow it from her local library.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
A few weeks ago a reader from southern California wrote to ask if she was doing anything wrong by accepting DVDs of current movies given to her by a friend, if she knew the DVDs to be illegal, bootlegged copies.
"I was happy to get the DVDs," she writes. "I watched and enjoyed the movies. And I thanked my friend who gave them to me."
The ethics of accepting bootlegged movies never crossed her mind until another of her friends told her that she "could not have even watched them, knowing that."
"Am I wrong to accept these DVDs, even from a second party?" she asks. "I do not want to get anyone in trouble. I am just wondering what your opinion is of my participation in it."
My opinion is that, legally, it stinks. Making, selling or buying bootleg movies is illegal everywhere in the United States.
I'm not a lawyer, so I can't say how much legal trouble my reader might be in, but I'd guess not very much, since she didn't pay for the movies and I doubt that watching them is illegal. At most, I suspect, she's guilty of failing to report a crime or something of that nature.
Some things are illegal but not unethical, however, the same way that many things are legal but not ethical. Setting aside the legalities, how does my reader's situation stack up?
My opinion: It still stinks. Ethically speaking, bootleg films -- and all other illegal replicas of copyrighted books, CDs, software and so forth -- are stolen goods, pure and simple. The person who made them was stealing from the rightful makers and distributors of the film, and anyone who knowingly watches them is aiding and abetting the crime.
From an ethical standpoint, it doesn't matter that my reader didn't pay for the movies she watched. Surely watching them made her less likely to pay to see them in a theater, and that's as good as taking money from everyone involved in the film.
Does it matter if she wouldn't have gone to the theater or paid for a legitimate DVD, whether or not she had seen the bootlegs? No. The viewing of a copyrighted film is not a human right, but rather a privilege with a cost associated with it. Because neither she nor anyone else involved in the bootleg paid anything to the rightful owners of the film, any viewing of it -- except by law-enforcement people trying to track down the bootlegger -- is unethical. Simple as that.
Granted, I have a vested interest in this issue: I make my living partly through royalties from my books and this syndicated column. Understandably I am loath to blithely accept that it is OK for people to make copies of my material without my permission.
Longtime readers of my column know that I always have taken a strong stance against illegal copies of copyrighted material, regardless of who's doing the copying or what their motives may be. Parents who make multiple copies of DVDs or videotapes to give to their children's friends set a terrible example. So too do professors who Xerox large portions of books or articles for their students' classroom use, without obtaining permission from the publisher or author.
People's work should not be stolen, whether by a bootlegger or by private citizens downloading or otherwise making illegal copies of DVDs, CDs or printed material for their own use. Those who own the rights to goods should decide who gets to use them and how. If it's wrong to steal a dress without paying, and thus depriving the dressmaker and the store owner of the fruits of their labor, then it's wrong to steal a movie and rob the filmmakers and distributors.
That one is a physical object and the other an intangible work of art is irrelevant. The movie is equally intangible in the theater, yet most people who buy bootlegs would probably feel it was wrong to sneak in the theater's back door and see the movie for free.
Are DVDs too high-priced? Does little of the purchase price actually go to the creators? No matter. This isn't a Robin Hood situation, and movies aren't essentials like food or shelter. If you don't like the business model, don't buy DVDs ... and don't watch them.
The right thing for my reader to do, should her friend offer her any more illegal DVDs, is to refuse to accept them and to tell her why: Doing so is both illegal and unethical, and she doesn't care to have any part in condoning such activity.
In the meantime, my reader should destroy any bogus DVDs, whether bootlegged or copied illegally, that she may have in her possession. If she wants to see a movie, she should go to the theater or, alternatively, wait until it's legally released on DVD and then either buy it, rent it or borrow it from her local library.
c.2009 The New York Times Syndicate (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)
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)
Sunday, March 15, 2009
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)
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)
"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)
Sunday, March 08, 2009
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)
"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)
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)
Sunday, March 01, 2009
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)
"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)
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)
Sunday, February 22, 2009
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)
"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)
Sunday, February 15, 2009
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)
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)
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)
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