If a bouncy house doesn't bounce, is a refund in order?

The first time we hosted a family reunion for my wife’s side of the family, our oldest grandson was 13 years old. He was the oldest of our grandchildren and would be attending the party along with his younger cousins and second cousins. In the preparations leading up to the reunion, he came to me and said, “Papa, I think it would be great for the younger kids if we rented a bouncy house.”

We found a place that had a $99 special for a bouncy house and booked the rental. On the morning of the event, the house was delivered along with an electric pump to inflate it. We ran a heavy-duty extension cord out of our bedroom window to the pump so we could inflate the house. On the day of the event, our oldest grandson spent more time in the bouncy house than anyone, including the many adults who partook.

Bouncy houses can indeed be a hit at an outside party. It was no surprise, then, when I received an email from E.F., a reader from Santa Rosa, California, telling me she had rented a bouncy house for her daughter’s birthday. She rented from the same company she’d rented from several times before noting that its workers had “always been professional and prompt.”

But this time, the pump broke 15 minutes after the house was set up, and it deflated. “No one was hurt,” E.F. reported. But the operator had no way to fix it. “So that was it.”

Several people at the party, including the worker from the bouncy house company, suggested she ask for a refund. “To me, he filled his obligation,” wrote E.F. “He was as surprised as the rest of us at the equipment failure. I don't consider a bouncy house to be of such importance that I expect him to carry multiple pumps with him.”

E.F. writes that while she knows it would be fine to ask for a refund, it seems the wrong thing to do. “Your thoughts?” she asked.

While E.F. is being understanding and gracious about the mishap, I don’t agree that it would be wrong to ask for a refund on the rental of a product that didn’t work. While it might not have been the worker’s fault, she did pay to have an operating bouncy house at the party. Given that E.F. has rented bouncy houses from the company before and might do so again, if she doesn’t feel comfortable asking for a refund, she could ask for a credit for the rental of a future bouncy house.

Things do go wrong with stuff. But when we pay for something that turns out not to work, the right thing is for the company to offer to either refund the money or otherwise make good on that transaction. E.F., of course, can choose not to accept that refund and just live with the disappointment.

Companies should stand behind their products, even if they’re something not of great importance … though my experience has been that an operating bouncy house can be the thing that makes a great party sublime.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Parents should support but not do a child's homework for them

“How much help is OK for a parent to give for a child's project?” a reader we’re calling Flo asked.

After I received Flo’s question, I was reminded of a paper I wrote for an earth science class in my freshman year of high school. My father worked for many years as an agronomist for the Soil Conservation Service, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As part of his job, he spent time in the field mapping soils.

Occasionally, he let me tag along with him as he drove to remote fields or wooded areas in New Jersey to measure inclines with his pocket clinometer or to use a large auger to extract soil samples. To have a sense of where he was going and where he was once he got there, he used sets of aerial photographs and a portable stereoscope to view the terrain.

I wrote my report for earth science class on mapping soils. My father loaned me some of his manuals and tools, recommended other books, and drove me to the county library to research other sources. I did my research, wrote my paper, and typed it up using the skills I learned in eighth grade typing class, a class I almost failed because I couldn’t type without looking at the keys.

When I finished the report, my father offered to make a Xerox copy of an aerial photograph to use as a cover for the paper. I accepted his offer, stapled the paper together, and turned it in.

My teacher returned the paper with a note suggesting it was clearly not my work, but instead was likely written by my father. Meetings with her, the department head, a guidance counselor and others ensued. Ultimately, it was determined there was no way to prove I hadn’t written the paper. She graded the paper on its merits rather than on her suspicions.

I ran into the teacher about 40 years later. I didn’t recognize her, but she knew my name and told me the experience had in part led her to explore opportunities outside of the classroom. We didn’t discuss whether she had come around to believing I had written the paper or not.

Now, back to Flo’s question. I believe it is totally appropriate for parents to help a child with school work as vigorously and supportively as they can, but to stop short of doing the work for them. If a child asks for explanations, great. If a child asks a parent to read a draft to see if it makes sense, terrific. If a parent offers to make a copy of a title page for a report, have at it.

If a child has put off writing a paper to the last minute and asks a parent to write it for him, the parent shouldn’t. Help is fine. Doing all the work for a child is not.

My father’s dad jokes could be excruciating. (Full disclosure: Mine are no better.) But he was a quiet, humble, and honest man. I am confident that my teacher’s accusation hurt him as much as it hurt me, if not more. He did the right thing by supporting me while I was writing my paper and supporting me when my honesty was challenged since he knew he hadn’t written my paper. Had he offered to do the work for me, it would have been both surprising and wrong.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Be curious, not judgmental

I’m late to "Ted Lasso." My lateness mostly results from not wanting to pay to subscribe to yet another streaming service to add to my television viewing options.

Matthew Gilbert, the television critic for The Boston Globe, has advised me and others to avail ourselves of free trials, binge on a series or two, and then cancel before being charged. There’s nothing unethical about Gilbert’s advice, but having to remember to cancel after the allotted time seemed too much trouble.

My mindset changed recently after the woman I’d eat bees for convinced me that $6.99 a month was far less than what we’d pay to go to the movies. We signed up and just finished watching the first season of "Ted Lasso."

I promise not to provide any significant spoilers, but let’s get out of the way that Walt Whitman never wrote the words “be curious, not judgmental,” as the lead character claims. Facts matter, but more important to this column is what the show has to offer.

I know little about British football (our soccer) and the Premier League. I had no idea if the teams on the show are fictionalized versions of real teams, nor how relegation works (or that it was even a thing). But I do know that some of the behavior reflects how I’d like it to be true, on or off of the pitch.

Ted Lasso’s character is the moral center of the show. He is supportive, understanding, patient, inspirational and forgiving to a fault. Sometimes he presents as goofy with just a tad too many dad jokes in his arsenal, which I’ve learned is the name of a real British football team.

But what makes the show more than a simple sitcom built around the mishaps of a bumpkin tossed in a foreign environment is that the writers, and actor Jason Sudeikis, give us a fully formed human being. He has doubts. He experiences personal trauma. He finds himself sidled with guilt on occasion. But he rarely loses his patience with anyone else in his orbit — though his humanity makes him do that on occasion as well.

I bring this up now because it seems too simple for us to cast blame on and be unforgiving of others, even when their transgressions are minor. It’s easier to dismiss someone altogether than to try to understand that whatever they might be going through might be far worse than we could imagine and could cause them to act in ways that have nothing to do with us and everything to do with their inability to manage their own pain.

It’s too easy for us to dismiss the ideas of others solely on the basis of their current station in work or life. What "Ted Lasso" gives us, albeit in a highly fictional setting, is a glimpse into an alternative worldview wherein we believe in the possibilities of others and ourselves, but not so much that we can’t shift our viewpoint when life necessitates.

Even if it’s fiction, even if a real Ted Lasso might be chewed up by those around him beyond any ability to function, it’s worth taking a moment to entertain the notion of a world in which patience and acceptance are embraced even when we strongly disagree with one another. Being curious without being judgmental indeed seems the right thing to do.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.