How do you respond to a new neighbor's gossip?

What’s the right thing to do when a resident new to your neighborhood mentions gossip she heard about a neighbor?

A reader we’re calling Rita was out walking when she saw a woman we’re calling Prudence walking up the stairs to her house. Prudence lived three doors down and across the street from Rita.

“Are you our new neighbor?” Rita asked Prudence. Prudence confirmed she and her partner had purchased the house and moved in a few weeks earlier to a newly built house in the old neighborhood.

“Would you like to see the house?” Prudence asked. Rita accepted the invitation and headed up the stairs to the front door of the house.

A quick tour and some small talk about where Prudence had lived before and how much she liked the new neighborhood followed. Rita offered to share any information about nearby stores and services Prudence might find useful.

Prudence thanked her and commented on how welcoming everyone in the neighborhood had been.

But she caught herself in her comment when it came to referencing, Simon, her neighbor directly next door. “Well, except for next door, but everyone has told me about him,” Prudence said.

Rita knew Simon. He had always been kind when it came to helping to clear a walk of snow or to say hello when she passed him by. Simon stayed to himself and rarely spent time outside of his house other than his backyard. But his house and yard were immaculately kept.

Rita knew that Simon had had some run-ins with parents of youngsters in the neighborhood who would run through his flower beds or leave their bicycles or scooters leaning up against the wall in his front yard. On at least one occasion, Simon yelled loudly at his neighbor’s children, which resulted in the parents calling the police to complain. Nothing came of the complaint and Simon continued to stay to himself and tend to his yard.

“I heard he’s a bit of a problem,” Prudence told Rita.

Rita responded that she’d never had an issue with Simon, but now believes she should have said more so Prudence’s view of him was not colored by others in the neighborhood who had a beef with him.

“Should I have said more?” Rita emailed me. “Should I have told Prudence how awful those little kids were? Or how the parents overreacted and began to speak ill of him to anyone who would listen?”

Rita did the right thing by responding just as she did to Prudence. She told her what she knew of Simon personally. Had she gone further, she likely would find herself spreading gossip about different neighbors, which may or may not have been true, since Rita had never actually seen the little boys trample Simon’s garden.

Simply nodding her head in agreement when Prudence said something about Simon would have been wrong. But by offering an honest assessment of her dealings with Simon she treated both Simon and Prudence with respect.

Rita wrote that she’d left Simon a plate of freshly baked cookies shortly after her exchange with Prudence, something she had done from time to time over the years. He was an older person living alone and Rita figured he could use some kindness from a neighbor.

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, emeritus, 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.

Puzzling over returning flawed puzzle

Often, how to respond ethically to some of the more mundane things in life that puzzle us the most.

A reader we’re calling Pamela recently wrote to comment about how much she loves her local library. The library is located in the center of her town in a big old sprawling building. It’s well stocked and rare that Pamela can’t find what she is looking for.

Her library also has a “library of things” it lends out to cardholders. Games, gardening tools, slide to JPG converters and assorted other stuff are available to lend.

Pamela also noticed recently that the library has a sizable jigsaw puzzle collection that falls outside the jurisdiction of other collections.

The library doesn’t ask people to check the jigsaw puzzles out, but simply to take whatever one they want and then to return it when they are finished with it. All they ask is that the borrower fill out a small sheet of paper inside each jigsaw puzzle box that asks if any pieces are missing.

Aside from that, there’s no obligation and no record of any of the puzzles having been borrowed. It's a total honor system when it comes to borrowing, using, and returning.

It took Pamela a few days to find time to get around to the jigsaw puzzle she had borrowed. When she did, she realized it was a more challenging puzzle than she had anticipated, so it was taking her longer to complete it. “A lot of dark green to figure out,” wrote Pamela.

As she neared the puzzle’s completion, it became clear to Pamela that pieces were missing. At first, she thought one piece for certain was missing. By the time she had placed all the pieces in the box, it was clear that three pieces were missing.

“Either I dropped them somehow,” wrote Pamela, “or someone who borrowed the jigsaw puzzle before me hadn’t bothered to fill out the note about missing pieces.

“Should I even return the puzzle?” Pamela asked. “It’s missing pieces and they’re just going to get rid of it anyhow. Or should I just throw it out?”

Pamela is correct that it’s unlikely the library will keep her borrowed puzzle given the missing pieces.

But the agreement when she borrowed the puzzle was to return it when she was through and to fill out the missing-piece questionnaire before she returned the puzzle.

Granted, the library doesn’t know Pamela has the puzzle, since the borrowing was based on an honor system and didn’t go through the usual checkout process. But just because Pamela could toss the puzzle and never get caught or questioned about it does not make reneging on her initial borrowing commitment the right thing to do.

It might take more time to make the return. Ultimately, the library might not care.

Pamela should either call the library to ask whether she needs to return the jigsaw puzzle given its missing pieces or she should simply return the puzzle as she promised to do — not out of fear of getting caught, but because it’s 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, emeritus, 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.

 

Is it OK to call something 'gourmet' or 'homemade'?

Two related questions from different readers arrived this week, each related to food labeling.

From a reader we’re called Howard, we received the question of what can be called “gourmet” food. From another we’re calling Jesse, we were asked what “homemade” means when attached to prepared food at his neighborhood grocery’s delicatessen counter.

While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has published guidelines for many food labeling items such as “organic” or “natural,” I’ve been hard-pressed to find anything definitive by it or any other agency that clearly lays out the qualities a food must have to be called “gourmet” or “homemade.”

“Whose home do they mean?” Jesse asked in his email. Good question.

Near as I can fathom, when something is labeled “homemade” like cole slaw, potato salad or roasted vegetables, it simply means the food wasn’t made by a machine, but instead was cooked and assembled by a human being.

It’s more likely that the homemade stuff was made in the deli’s kitchen or a central kitchen rather than anyone’s home. The regulations for selling food made in a home kitchen are estimable enough to thwart that preparation route as an option.

The “gourmet” moniker is typically a marketing maneuver used to suggest the finest ingredients were used in its preparation to make it all fancy-like. But who determines what makes such ingredients fancy enough to warrant a gourmet label is unclear or nonexistent.

It seems akin to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s response in 1964 when asked how he determined something was obscene: “I know it when I see it.” Hardly satisfying, but nevertheless it persists.

That all gets us back to Howard’s and Jesse’s overarching questions about whether it is wrong to label something as “gourmet” or “homemade” if neither the seller nor the customer knows what each label means.

As consumers, we face similar situations regularly. What, for example, does “supersize” mean when affixed to a package? It’s used to entice us and make us believe we’re getting more bang for our buck at the cash register.

There’s nothing wrong with such marketing tactics, as long as the seller is not trying to label something that is clearly not what they are trying to sell.

As consumers, the right thing is to educate ourselves to have a glimmer of a sense of what it is we are buying. Looking at the ingredient label is far likelier to be useful than to rely on a word like “gourmet.”

Referring to the unit price tags on store shelves that inform consumers how much items cost per a consistent weight measure is a far better method of determining value than relying on words like “jumbo” or “super.”

Are sellers trying to manipulate us to buy stuff because they use fancy labels that are hard to define consistently? Yes.

But if consumers really care about the food they are consuming or the amount they are spending on it, the right thing is for them to be as informed as possible.

Grocery stores already help with this by featuring unit price tags. Ingredient labels are another method.

If the ingredients include things you can’t identify, it’s good to question how willing you are to put food in your body when you don’t know what it’s made from.

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, emeritus, 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.