Jeffrey L. Seglin's Blog, page 16
October 16, 2022
How old is too old to go trick-or-treating?
(c) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
October 9, 2022
Readers share stories of small acts of kindness
A few months ago, I wrote how small acts of kindness could soften the blow of a rotten day. My truck had broken down and over the course of 45 minutes as I waited for AAA service to arrive, several people had offered water, a jump and other things that served to lessen my frustration and make the wait more bearable.
I’d encouraged readers to send me stories of how they or others engaged in acts of kindness. Many obliged.
J.D. wrote how he found two $20 bills in the change dispenser at his local Safeway grocery store in Santa Rosa, California. He looked around to see if he could identify a customer leaving, but could not. Instead of pocketing the cash, he found a clerk and asked her to put the $40 in an envelope to give the person who’d left it in case they returned to claim the money.
At a small dinner party she gave with her wife for “two old friends, two newish friends, and two brand-new friends,” A.B. was embarrassed after a bit of food lodged in her windpipe and she spit it onto the floor. “A newish friend jumped up, got a dish towel and got busy cleaning up the mess.” A.B. was mortified and started to apologize, but her friend just kissed A.B. on the cheek and said, “You have nothing to apologize for.” It was “a private, quiet moment,” A.B. wrote, but it “was a moment of grace I will never forget.”
When B.M. and four members of her family, all in their 80s, were on the way home from a funeral in Pine Creek, Wisconsin, they stopped at a restaurant. When they went to leave, they discovered they had a flat tire on the driver’s side back tire. “Our server came out with a little air pump and pumped the tire up,” wrote B.M. The tire didn’t hold the air, so the server ran across the street to a convenience store, picked up a plug repair kit and started to work on repairing the tire. Another diner who had just picked up his takeout order told B.M. he would bring his food home and return to help. He returned in his truck with a portable air compressor that they used to pump up the repaired tire. “The man jumped in his truck and left before we could thank him,” wrote B.M. “We have never been so thankful.”
In July, L.G. gained emergency custody of her newborn grandchild. “I am older so I didn’t have any of the necessary things to bring a baby home from the hospital,” wrote L.G. She posted requests on neighborhood websites asking for help. “It was amazing the support I received. Many items were donated by complete strangers: a bassinet, clothes, diapers, bottles, wipes, bouncy seats, blankets, lotions and soaps." Her neighbors “really came through for a grandma in need.”
Finally, V.C. writes that he tries “to do something nice for someone daily.” It might be giving another car the right of way, “or just keeping my mouth shut instead of making an unkind remark.” V.C. doesn’t consider himself a saint. “The world is so frustrating and sad right now that I just try to make it a little better.”
Just trying to make the world a little better with a small act of kindness strikes me as 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) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
October 2, 2022
Why can't customers put things back where they belong?
Shortly after I moved to Boston in 1978, I was introduced to the original Filene’s Basement, an off-price retailer that sat below Filene’s Department Store. Every item in Filene’s Basement was labeled with a discount price and the date it went on sale. Its automatic discount system took another 25% off after 12 days. After 18 days, the price was cut by 50%. Twenty-four days after it went on sale, the price was cut by 75%. If the item hadn’t sold after 30 days it was donated to charity.
The store was a great place to buy name-brand shirts, ties, shoes, suits and other items. There was also a legendary annual sale on bridal gowns. The markdown system resulted in some customers trying to misshelve items in hopes that no one else would buy them before the price was reduced.
The purposeful misshelving came to mind after hearing from a reader who found the incidents of misshelved items at her local grocery store to have markedly increased. “I don’t know if people are lazier than before about putting an item back where they found it if they decide not to buy it,” wrote a reader we’re calling Rochelle, “or if it’s because the store can’t find enough workers to keep the shelves properly stocked.”
Whatever may be causing it, Rochelle wanted to know if it’s wrong for customers not to return items to the appropriate shelf if they decide not to buy them. “I’ve seen people misshelve items right in front of clerks and have yet to see anyone call them on it,” wrote Rochelle. “That’s just wrong, right?”
While there’s nothing illegal in misshelving grocery store items and the action doesn’t rise to the level of world calamity, it can be an additional labor expense for grocery stores and an inconvenience for other shoppers who might not be able to find what they are looking for even if an item is in stock. A computerized inventory system might be useful to identify items in stock, but it’s useless in discovering where an item might have been misshelved.
Some simple reasons to knock it off with the misshelving: If the labor cost for a grocery store rises, it would be unusual for it not to pass the cost onto the consumer. Sometimes customers are really in need of the misshelved item for themselves or a child and they simply can’t find it.
Since human behavior is what it is, grocery stores might consider adding an area near the cash registers where customers can place items they decide they don’t want but are simply too tired to walk 100 yards to return to their rightful place, even when some of them are noticeably wearing step-tracking devices on their wrists.
At the original Filene’s Basement, which shut its doors in September 2007, customers misshelved items to try to get a better price. Rochelle’s fellow customers misshelve mostly because they are in a hurry or lazy. Whether out of being lazy or strategic, neither was right.
If customers don’t want to take the time to put an item back where they found it because it’s the right thing to do, maybe they can embrace it as a self-interested way to get a few more steps in.
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) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
September 25, 2022
Daughter and dad showdown at the Golden Corral
“Dad, which one’s your favorite?” a daughter asks her father as they and her brother are eating chicken in a Golden Corral commercial.
“I’m going to go with Josh,” the dad quickly responds. To which Josh quips, “Yes,” as he pulls down his fist in a signal of victory.
“I’m sorry. What?” the daughters asks. “I was talking about the types of chicken.”
“C’mon, you know I love all my chickens,” the dad responds, apparently putting more thought into the feelings of his chickens than he does his kids. There appears to be at least one more female child at the table who presumably is not the father’s favorite either.
As advertisements go, it’s not the most offensive ad ever run. But it does seem an odd choice for a restaurant that bills itself as having a mission of delivering “a pleasurable dining experience for families across America.” Clearly, the daughter in the ad who, unlike Josh, doesn’t even have a name, may not have found the experience so pleasurable.
Golden Corral offers buffet-style meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I cannot vouch for the quality of the food since I have never eaten in one of its restaurants. The closest one to me is 48.9 miles north of me in a different state, according to the company’s website location finder.
But the company does appear to be community-minded, based on some of its ongoing efforts. It has an annual military appreciation night, where it provides free meals to active and retired members of the military. It sponsors Camp Corral, a free weeklong camp for children of wounded or deceased members of the military. It also has a GC Cares Assistance Fund for its employees who are in need. Eighty-five percent of its employees say Golden Corral is a great place to work, according to the Great Place to Work Institute. None of these things are referenced in the advertisement.
Teasing a child that she might not be as favored as her brother may have struck an advertising firm as gentle ribbing in which many families engage. But making the daughter the brunt of a joke in an advertisement selling endless plates of differently prepared chicken seems callous. Granted, the father does come off as a bit of a jerk. But that too is an odd choice for an ad trying to lure us in to eat as much chicken as humanly possible in one sitting.
There’s no ethical upside in trying to sell more chicken by sending a message that it’s OK to make a child feel bad about herself. The right thing for any company leaders to ask themselves when creating advertisements is: What message are we sending with this ad?
I’m sure the Golden Corral advertisement is meant to be funny. I’m equally confident that some viewers chuckle upon seeing the advertisement for the first time. But in an effort to get a cheap laugh, is Golden Corral truly sending the message it wants to send? Humor can be a funny thing.
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) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
(Fourteen years ago, I wrote about another couple of ads (Ikea, Pizza Hut) in which the message was curious. You can find that column and the ads here.)
September 18, 2022
Mother and daughter's relationship stalls over auto-fixing partner
A reader we’re calling Carla wrote to ask whether her mother is a hypocrite and behaving unethically. By Carla’s account, she and her mother got along famously until Carla began a relationship with the person who has been her partner for more than two years. She and her mother still get along about most other things, Carla wrote, but when it comes to her partner, their relationship has stalled.
“My mother doesn’t like my partner,” wrote Carla. Carla wrote that her mother has told her on several occasions of her dislike for her partner and that she wished Carla would break off the relationship and find someone new. Carla writes that her mother is not specific about what she doesn’t like, but she makes her dislike clear. What’s more, Carla’s mother refuses to talk directly to Carla’s partner.
But here’s the rub. Carla’s mother loves that Carla’s partner knows how to fix cars that are broken down or in disrepair, especially when those cars belong to someone in Carla’s family. “She will think nothing,” Carla wrote, of asking Carla’s partner to travel sometimes hours away to help one of Carla’s siblings or cousins when they have a car problem. “She once asked them to fly to a different city to help!” wrote Carla.
“My partner always says ‘yes,’” wrote Carla. Without hesitation, they will make time to travel to the relative’s car, assess the situation, pick up some parts at the local auto body shop if needed, and then get the car running again — so far, without fail.
“If she hates my partner so much, isn’t it wrong for her to keep asking for their help?”
As I regularly do when I am faced with a question that seems to fall outside the specific realm of determining the right thing to do, I must state that I am not a relationship counselor. That Carla’s mother can’t accept her choice of a partner when Carla seems safe and happy in her relationship strikes me that there is something going on in the relationship between Carla and her mother that could use some expert help. I am not the guy to give it.
But I will try to help Carla sort of what the right thing might be to do here for both Carla and her mother.
If Carla is upset that her mother asks for her partner’s help when her mother doesn’t have a kind word to say about them, the right thing for Carla to do is to decline the requests, which always get filtered through Carla. If Carla’s mother continues to want the help, then the right thing is for her to contact Carla’s partner directly to ask them. The partner can say yes or no. By talking with Carla’s partner directly, an unintended consequence might be that she grows to appreciate them more.
If Carla’s mother refuses to contact Carla’s partner directly for help because she doesn’t like them and doesn’t want to talk to them, then perhaps the right thing is for her to find someone else she can ask for help when she needs it.
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) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
September 11, 2022
Should you be a lender or a borrower?
In Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” Polonius advises his son, Laertes, who is about to leave Denmark for France: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” I’m not confident that his advice was meant to be iron-clad, but it came to mind recently after hearing from a reader we’re calling Val.
Val wrote that a recent exchange with an old classmate left him perturbed. About a decade ago, when Val was a graduate student with scarce resources, his old classmate offered to give him the textbooks he had used for a course Val subsequently took.
“It was generous of him,” wrote Val. But a few weeks ago Val was taken aback to receive an email from the old friend asking him if he could return the books he had loaned to Val. Val was floored by the request, since it was never clear that the books had been on loan, and because so many years has passed since the transaction. Complicating the request further was that Val no longer had the books. He had passed them on to another student who was in need.
“Doesn’t this seem wrong?” Val wrote.
Val’s story reminds me of a story my parents once told me about how angry they were after a friend who had loaned my father a suit to interview for jobs when he was starting out had contacted them years later asking for a return of the suit. “Pretty nervy,” my father had said. The return request created a rift between my father and his friend that never fully healed and that he still talked about decades after the incident. He too couldn’t return the suit since he had long separated from it after several moves as he went along in his career.
As a kid, I always thought it was kind of severe for my father to allow a disagreement about a borrowed suit to upend a friendship. But then, he too was never clear that the suit was a loan rather than a gift to help out a friend.
Confusion over a loan vs. a gift gets at the issue in both Val’s and my father’s stories. Each misinterpreted a kindness as something other than what it was. There was no malice involved; it was simply a misunderstanding.
I’m a firm believer that it is OK to be both a borrower and lender. Lending something to a friend in need can be a great kindness. But the right thing to do when making a loan is for the lender to make it as clear as possible at the outset of the transaction that he or she or they would like whatever is being loaned to be returned when the borrower is through needing the item.
The right thing for Val to do is to tell his friend he misunderstood the book exchange and paid the favor forward to another student in need. His friend may be upset, but Val should be honest and let his friend decide how to respond. My hope is they will not let this misunderstanding get in the way of their friendship.
I wish my father had done the same. In the interest of following Polonius’ other well-known line from “Hamlet,” that “brevity is the soul of wit,” I’ll just end things here.
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) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
September 4, 2022
Stop, watch, and enjoy the unassisted triple plays when they come along
On July 8, 1994, the woman I’d eat bees for and I were fortunate enough to be at Fenway Park for a Red Sox game against the Seattle Mariners. It was a Friday night, and neither team had a winning record. Neither team would have a winning record by season’s end. But it was Fenway Park, which remains one of the more beautiful baseball parks in the Major League Baseball.
The Red Sox were losing 2-0 in the top of the sixth inning. The Mariners had runners on first and second. Then Marc Newfield hit a line drive to shortstop John Valentin. The runners had taken off as soon as the ball was hit, so after catching the ball, Valentin stepped on second base and then ran to tag the Mariner who had been trying to make his way from first to second.
And then there was silence.
Valentin ran off the field, and his teammates began to follow him, but many fans had no idea what had just happened. As it dawned on the crowd that Valentin had just made an unassisted triple play, the crowd erupted in approval. There was no social media at the time, and few fans had cell phones with them, so it took the public address announcer to confirm that we had just witnessed one of the rarest plays in Major League Baseball: making all three putouts in one fell swoop.
Had we had cell phones, undoubtedly devices would have been held up, and for the next several minutes, a healthy portion of the fans would have been consumed with their phones rather than with the game. Replays would have been running immediately. Texts to friends in and out of the park would have been sent.
And that would have been fine. Using social media to share joy over a communal witnessing of a rare event would not have bothered me. Sharing joy can be a good thing.
It’s when social media gets in the way and is sometimes used as a bludgeon toward players, coaches, and even other fans that a line is crossed. When at a sporting event, it’s hard to escape someone pointing their phone at other fans and making short video recordings while offering running commentary complaining about their behavior, whether that behavior is talking loudly, scarfing down sloppy hot dogs, or something else. What the recorder fails to recognize is that they are being no less disruptive or annoying than the loud talkers or sloppy eaters or whoever’s behavior is bugging them.
People talk loudly at baseball games. They serve sloppy food that gets eaten sloppily. It’s not the opera, for goodness’ sake. Not everything we find disagreeable needs to be reported on social media. If the loud talkers aren’t paying sufficient attention to the game or if the sloppy eater is paying more attention to the ratio of mustard-to-relish on his hot dog than to the scoreboard, don’t distract everyone else with your phone.
Better and perhaps the right thing would be to enjoy the game. You never know when the next unassisted triple play might come along.
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) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
August 28, 2022
Is it unseemly to ask my doctor's widow for a referral?
At times when you want to get something, but getting that something involves doing something you don’t feel comfortable doing, what should you do? That’s pretty much the question a reader we’re calling Bri wants to know.
Bri has chronic back pain. For about 30 years, she has paid regular visits to the same chiropractor. Bri wrote that her sessions with her chiropractor offered relief from back pain. At first Bri visited the chiropractor weekly, but as time went on and she was able to manage the pain better, the sessions became monthly.
About three years ago, Bri’s chiropractor died after a brief illness. Bri wrote that she was devastated at the news, not just because of how good a practitioner she found him to be but because she got to know him over the years and truly liked him. Her chiropractor’s wife managed his office, and his daughter often worked the reception desk when she was on breaks from school. Bri wrote that she didn’t know how she would ever be able to find a replacement for her chiropractor.
Her concern has turned out to be as challenging as she worried it would be. Over the past three years, she has tried working with four different chiropractors, but none used an approach that was similar to her former chiropractor’s. She also had the sense that the chiropractors she tried were mostly trying to fit in as many patients as possible, so she often felt her sessions were rushed. What concerned her more is none resulted in the same kind of pain relief she had experienced working with her former chiropractor.
“I know that he probably knew others who practiced similarly to him,” Bri wrote. “But sadly, he’s not around to ask.”
But Bri also suspects her former chiropractor’s widow would likely be able to recommend other practitioners with a similar approach.
“I don’t feel comfortable asking her for recommendations,” Bri wrote. “It seems unseemly given that I’d be asking her about a replacement for her dead husband.” But Bri is at her wits' end and wanted to know if it indeed would be wrong to contact her former chiropractor’s widow for a recommendation.
It may make Bri feel uncomfortable to make such a request, but there is absolutely nothing unseemly about doing so. She would be wise to avoid broaching the subject by asking about “a replacement for your dead husband,” but instead she can remind the widow how good she found her chiropractor to be and was hoping she might be able to recommend someone who possibly could come close to using a similar approach.
While I can understand that Bri doesn’t want to make it sound like the only downside to her chiropractor’s death was her loss of him as a practitioner, she might find that his widow would actually appreciate being reminded of how valued he was by his patients when he was alive.
If Bri wants a reference and believes her former chiropractor’s widow might provide, the right thing to do is to ask her.
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) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
August 21, 2022
There are times when a winning move is not reflected in the score of the game
There are times when determining who the winner of an event is doesn’t always match up to the final score of the game. Consider the recent Southwest Little League Baseball playoff game between a team from Pearland, Texas, and another from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Whoever won the game would clinch a spot in the 2022 Little League World Series.
Shortly after that game on Tuesday, Aug. 9, news of it went viral, not because of the outcome of the game, but because of an event that occurred in the bottom of the first inning when Isaiah Jarvis of Tulsa was up to bat against Kaiden Shelton of Pearland. Shortly after their faceoff, a clip of part of their exchange was shared widely.
In the video, Jarvis wearing a powder blue uniform, awaited a pitch from Shelton. The pitcher had been doing well against Jarvis, having him at an 0-2 count. One more strike and Jarvis would be out. But the next pitch hit the portion of Jarvis’ batting helmet covering his left ear. His helmet flew off and Jarvis hit the ground. Shelton, the pitcher, can be seen walking off the mound toward the first-base line. Moments later, Jarvis arose after being attended to first by a coach from the opposing team who came to home plate and then a first aid worker. He was applauded by the crowd as he took first base, but pitcher Shelton still appeared to be shaken. In the video, he was looking down at the pitcher’s mound, holding the back of his maroon cap with his right hand, and he appeared to be fighting off tears.
“I thought I really hurt him, and I was really scared,” Shelton later told a Houston television station reporter. “I’m just glad he’s better.”
Before any coaches or teammates took to the mound to console a young pitcher clearly struggling to gain his composure, Jarvis looked in his direction and noticed the boy was in despair. He tossed his batting helmet aside and walked from first base to the mound and, as Shelton was still grasping the back of his cap, Jarvis put his arms around Shelton’s waist and hugged him. As Jarvis pat Shelton on his left shoulder, Shelton’s teammates on the field and his coach walked out to console him as well. Before he turns to walk back to first base, Jarvis reportedly said to Shelton: “Hey, you’re doing great. Let’s go.”
The game continued, but the focus of most people has been on that less-than-two-minute clip of what went down in the bottom of the first inning.
In a post-game interview with a Tulsa reporter, Jarvis acknowledged he wanted to let the pitcher know he was all right when he saw him struggling. “Who knows?” Jarvis asked. “He could have saw me as trying to fight him. I was proud of myself for being brave like that.”
Pearland won the game and moved on to the World Series. But a true winning moment was when Jarvis did the right thing and without hesitation decided a fellow player’s well-being at that moment was the most important thing.
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) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
August 14, 2022
Should we try to shut up loud-talking cellphone users?
It’s not unusual to come across a piece of information we weren’t meant to see. Perhaps a manager forgot to remove an original document containing confidential information from the copy machine where he was making copies. Or a colleague took a break from her desk but left an email open on her computer for anyone to see.
In such cases, I believe the right thing is to alert the document owner or email user. Better still is for each of us to be careful about keeping those things secure that we hope to keep secure.
But what should you do when you are in public and overhear a conversation that seems to be highly personal? That is the question a reader we’re calling Eve asked after a recent trip to a popular wholesale retail chain.
“I was standing on line with my cart waiting to check out,” wrote Eve. “The guy in the line next to me was wearing earbuds and talking loudly into his phone.”
At first, Eve found the situation annoying. “What makes people think it’s OK to have loud conversations in public?” She wondered why the shopper didn’t have “the courtesy” to stop listening through his earbuds and just talk into his phone.
But then the fellow shopper’s conversation got very personal and animated. “He started shouting into the phone and was yelling about something to do with child care,” wrote Eve. “It seemed totally inappropriate and not the kind of conversation you’d want the rest of the world to listen in on.”
Eve wants to know if she should have said something to the fellow shopper or asked a manager to ask him to keep his private conversations private.
While I agree with Eve that people who have loud conversations into their phones in public spaces – whether it’s in a store, on the subway or during movie coming attractions – can be annoying. At some stores, signs are posted asking customers to refrain from using their cellphones while checking out, presumably so the clerk doesn’t have to shout at them to get their attention.
I’m not of the mind, however, that it’s Eve’s job to be the loud-talker police at the store or to report a fellow customer if loud talking erupts. If a store has a policy against talking on cellphones while checking out, then it’s the role of store employees to enforce the rule. It’s not Eve’s responsibility.
The right thing is for the store or office or any area where such loud public cellphone talking might take place to make clear what its policy is and to try to enforce the policy. If it doesn’t enforce the policy, it only adds to the annoyance of other customers.
Trying to be thoughtful to other customers and to workers is also a good practice. When it’s possible to have a conversation with anyone at any time in any setting, it might be easy to forget others might be made uncomfortable by hearing our personal conversations. If Eve’s loud-talking fellow customer could have waited a few minutes until after he had checked out and then taken the call once he was out of the store, that would have been 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) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
