Jeffrey L. Seglin's Blog, page 17

The Right Thing: 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.

Is it OK to piggyback on my spouse's work Zoom account?

One business that was particularly helped in its growth by the pandemic has been Zoom, the online video meeting platform used by individuals and businesses to connect with one another. For its fiscal 2021 year, Zoom’s total revenue was up more than 300% from the prior year clocking in at $2.7 billion. If you haven’t used Zoom yourself, it’s more than likely you know someone who has, and that someone might even be living in your household.

It is this increased reliance on Zoom that led a reader we’re calling Medea to email with a question. Medea is self-employed and has been using a free account on Zoom to meet with clients. The free accounts allow users to meet for up to 40 minutes before they are disconnected. For a couple of years, using the free account has worked fine for Medea since her meetings typically didn’t go longer than 40 minutes. But recently she has had several meetings run longer than the free account allows.

“I have sometimes disconnected and then reconnected on a new 40-minute Zoom call,” wrote Medea, but she observed that doing this could come off as amateurish to her clients.

Medea’s husband also uses Zoom frequently for business, but he uses the account paid for by his employer that has no time limit on meetings.

“Would it be wrong for me to occasionally use my husband’s work account when I anticipate a meeting going longer than 40 minutes?” Medea asked. “Nobody at his company would notice and I know my husband sometimes uses his Zoom account for a personal meeting anyway.”

Medea may be correct in assuming that no one at her husband’s company would notice if she used the Zoom account paid for by his business for her own business meetings. But just because no one might take notice doesn’t make piggybacking onto another business’s account without permission from that business the right thing to do.

If Medea’s husband or anyone uses their business Zoom account for an occasional personal call, they should make sure they are not violating company policy by doing so. Just as I’ve long believed that companies should consider letting employees use their office computer to book personal flights or make personal purchases while on a break from work, letting them use a Zoom account occasionally for a personal call seems wise as long as those calls don’t rack up long-distance charges for the business. Regardless of what I believe, however, an employee should always make sure they are not violating company policy in such usage.

As I see it, Medea has two choices. If she wants to continue to enjoy the free service offered by Zoom, she can make sure none of her meetings go longer than 40 minutes. If that proves to be impractical or impossible, then Medea should pony up and purchase her own Zoom subscription which would be a legitimate cost for her business. Medea is no less responsible for the costs she incurs to run her business than her husband’s business is.

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.

 

Should cable or satellite companies reimburse for outages?

I have this vague recollection from when I was a kid in the late 1960s of watching a football game between the Oakland Raiders and the New York Jets. During the last minute of the game when the Jets were ahead in the score, the network broke away from the game to begin the scheduled broadcast of the movie version of "Heidi." This was in the days before the internet or social media, so it took a while for those of us who had been watching to learn that Oakland scored two touchdowns in that last minute to win the game 43-32. Apparently the final score was announced during the movie, but I didn’t watch the movie.

Fans who were watching missed out on an exciting conclusion, but aside from collectively grousing, there was no real way to compensate for the lost viewing time.

I was reminded of the incident after receiving an email from a reader I’m calling Fiona, who had been watching some live proceedings of something or other on television recently and then had her cable service go out before the proceedings ended. The "Heidi" game was broadcast in pre-cable-television days when advertising rather than monthly fees paid for the broadcast. Now that cable and satellite-dish users pay for their service, Fiona wants to know if she’s right to believe her cable provider owes her a rebate for the time her service was down.

“I pay a lot for monthly service,” wrote Fiona. “Shouldn’t they reimburse me when they can’t provide that service?”

Fiona is not the first reader to raise such a question. Do I believe cable or satellite companies should prorate monthly fees if they can’t provide service? Yes.

Many service providers, however, include language on the agreements we sign off on that ask us to agree that they are not liable for such periodic service interruptions. That likely covers them legally from being expected to reimburse customers even if it doesn’t feel right to have to pay for something we don’t receive.

Some service providers do provide for reimbursement for outages but place specific parameters around what’s covered, when it can be reported and how old the outage can be before it’s no longer considered for reimbursement. Few if any make it as clear as it could be to users about what they should do in the event of an outage when it comes to seeking reimbursement.

The right thing for cable and satellite-dish companies is to make their policies clear and as simple as possible for users to use. But while users are waiting around for their providers to do this, the right thing for them to do after experiencing such outages is to contact the service provider to report the outage as soon as possible and to ask for reimbursement. Even if a company representative points to where its contract indicates no outage reimbursements are made, there are times when a service representative might have some leeway to keep a loyal customer relatively satisfied.

If access to television is limited by a power outage, that’s not the cable or satellite company’s fault, and they shouldn’t be expected to reimburse in such instances. But when it comes to its own services, if the company can’t provide the service, the right thing is not to charge for that time it can’t.

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.

 

Should airlines make baggage check fees consistent?

Like many other people, I had put off traveling by airplane during the pandemic for as long as I could. The idea of long lines at the airport and cramped seats never had much appeal to me, but even less so when various strains of COVID-19 were being spread. After more than two years with my feet planted firmly on the ground, however, I traveled from Boston to Denver last weekend to visit my oldest grandson and his wife, who are stationed near there.

Ticket prices are higher than before, check-in processes remain byzantine, and airport lines as joyous as ever. But a question about the right thing arose concerning checked baggage from fellow passengers sitting at the gate waiting to board.

A public address went out announcing that the plane was full (oh joy) and that anyone who wished to check their carry-on baggage could bring it to the desk and check it for free. “I paid $35 for each bag I checked ahead of time,” a passenger seated next to me in the waiting area said. “How is that fair that I paid to check my baggage and now they’re letting others check it for free?” A discussion ensued about what would keep prospective travelers from bringing their bags with them to the gate rather than check them ahead of time to avoid the baggage fee.

Different airlines have different policies and different fees for checked bags. (We were flying on United.) A traveler could try to game the system and bring his baggage to the airport to try to get it checked for free rather than pay ahead of time, but since airlines are inconsistent in making such offers, he runs the risk that no such offer to check it at the gate will be made. On our return flight, for example, no such offer was made on an equally full flight. Airlines also run the risk of incentivizing passengers to try to drag more carry-on luggage onto the plane to avoid paying bag fees.

Is it fair that airlines charge some passengers for the bag check service and not others? No. Is it legal? More than likely it’s as legal as different passengers paying different amounts for the same seat depending on when they booked and through what site or service.

The right thing ultimately is for airlines to try to make their baggage-checking policies as clear as possible before passengers head to the airport. If there’s a chance that baggage-checking fees might be waived at the gate or if passengers might be charged extra for trying to bring a bag that’s too large onto the flight, airlines should make that clear. Some passengers might always be willing to risk having to lug their bags around in hopes that they can get their bags checked for free at the gate. As long as they know and accept that risk, they’ve done nothing wrong.

Fewer passengers did seem to check their bags so our wait for ours at the baggage claim area was shorter than I remember it being. Waiting for passengers to find and remove their bags from overhead compartments made the wait getting off of the plane longer.

While the inconsistency in charging for checked bags might be unfair, the visit with our grandson and his wife remained priceless.

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.

Acts of kindness can soften the blow of a rotten day

It’s time again to ask you to share moments of kindness you’ve experienced. Let me start by sharing my own recent experience.

 

The Thursday after this year’s July 4 Monday holiday, I was running an errand to look for an inexpensive desk chair for someone. None of the local stores had any in stock. Instead, I decided to check to see if the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, which sells donated items, had any in stock. I made the drive, parked in the lot and looked around the store, but I didn’t find any office chairs.

 

When I got back into my 16-year-old truck that had just passed state inspection the week before, I turned the key in the ignition and absolutely nothing happened. I kept the hood up so AAA road assistance could find me in the ReStore parking lot. One of the volunteer workers at ReStore came out to tell me I could wait in the air-conditioned store if it got too hot outside.

 

Over the course of the 45 minutes or so it took the first AAA person to arrive, three different customers saw my hood up and offered to give me a jump if I needed one. I thanked them but told them AAA was on its way, which it was. When its representative arrived, it became clear it was not a battery problem, since the battery seemed fine.

 

“Likely a starter issue,” the AAA rep said. So he called for a tow truck and I called the service that had worked on the truck in the past to make sure we could tow the truck to its lot.

 

“You can bring it in, but we might not be able to get to it until next week,” the receptionist told me, pointing out how busy they were after the July 4 weekend.

 

Two hours later the tow truck arrived, brought the truck to the auto service lot and dropped it off. The manager of the service took my information and then walked out to the truck to take a look and listen with one of his mechanics.

 

“If all it is is your starter, we’ll try to fit it in this week,” the manager told me.

 

The following morning, I got a call letting me know the problem was a corroded wire to the starter rather than the starter itself. They also changed out the terminals on my battery, which showed some corrosion. Parts ran about $36 plus a couple hours of labor.

 

Those several hours of inconvenience I hadn’t anticipated included several moments of people showing genuine kindness when it would have been far easier to ignore me. Granted, my mechanic was doing his job and elevated my loyalty, but he easily could have put off the work for a week and sold me more than I needed and I likely wouldn’t have been the wiser.

 

When I have the opportunity, I like to believe I do the right thing by showing the same type of kindness to those in need.

 

Now, it’s time for you to share some acts of kindness you’ve experienced. Tell me who and where you are and email your stories to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. I will try to share some of your stories in the weeks ahead.

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.

Is it OK to retrieve discarded plants from a dumpster?

There are dozens of gardening groups on Facebook. A reader we’re calling Violet belongs to several. On one, Violet recently read a post from a member that recounted an experience in the garden area of her local Walmart. Violet shared the post and the subsequent comments on the post with me.

 

The poster was looking for some hosta plants to fill in a new garden. A worker there was clearing some “half-dead” plants and told the poster they were not for sale. When she asked him what plants he was referring to, his responded “all these” and motioned to all the plants in the area where he was working. She figured there were about 30 hosta plants, many of which were “decent-looking.” He told her the plants were to be thrown away and were already out of the store’s inventory system.

 

“What a shame,” the poster wrote. “I wish I had the nerve to go dumpster diving in the morning.”

 

It was the poster’s final comment that led to a heated discussion.

 

Some posters warned her that the plants might be diseased and she would be foolish to retrieve them.

 

Another asked: “Is it stealing if you take something that’s getting thrown out? I never actually would, but still ...”

 

Still another recounted her own experience at a different store when she inquired about soon-to-be discarded plants. “I was told they could not let me buy or take them as that would be stealing and I would be prosecuted,” she wrote. “Some really stupid policies if you ask me.”

 

Violet asked me if it indeed would be wrong to take discarded plants from a dumpster if she happened upon them.

 

I am not a lawyer specializing in trash, but it seems fair game to take something if it is clearly disposed of as trash and that trash is in a public area. Many cite the U.S. Supreme Court case of California v. Greenwood as support for this stance, even though the case didn’t specifically involved disposed plants. The case is often cited as support for the legality of some cases of dumpster diving.

 

There are, however, important limitations. If the trash is on private property or the receptacle in which it is dumped is clearly labeled private property, then taking anything might cross into the category of theft. There are also variations in the legality of removing trash based on specific municipal regulations.

 

In the case of the post on the Violet’s gardening group, the likelihood is that the plants were to be disposed of in a dumpster on Walmart’s private property.

 

It seems a shame that Walmart couldn’t find a way to at the very least add the dying plants to a compost so they could prove useful if they chose to no longer sell them. But if Walmart disposes of them on its private property, the right thing would be for Violet or others to ask permission to retrieve any discarded plants. The store’s management might not prosecute if someone retrieves the plants, but if the store says “no,” Violet and others should take the response as an indication to let the hostas lie where they’ve been tossed.

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.

Seek the right questions to ask before assuming you have the best answer

 A former editor of my column once suggested I regularly step back and tell readers what informs how I think about ethical issues I write about (in 24 years you cross paths with many good editors). My sense is that he believed such disclosures would provide a certain level of transparency with readers about who I am and how I think about stuff. Gayden was always a strong, supportive editor who is largely responsible for me writing The Right Thing column as long as I have even though he has not been my editor in more than a decade.

 

Occasionally, I have mentioned in the column that sometimes when people find others to be unethical it results from coming at ethical decisions from different approaches to ethical thinking. One group might embrace a rules-based approach to ethics where the belief is that if a rule can’t be applied equally to everyone, it’s not ethical. Others might adhere to more of a utilitarian view, seeking the greatest good for the greatest number of people. It’s clear that people belonging to either camp might find the other viewpoint to fall short of what they believe to be ethical behavior. Sometimes when we disagree with others it’s not because they are unethical. It’s that they view the world differently.

 

Over the past couple of weeks, we have experienced events that have resulted in many people searching for answers about issues they view quite differently. These events were preceded by a couple of years of the pandemic regularly placing us into unknown territory when it comes to seeking answers about how to stay healthy, show concern for the health of those around us and adapt to new ways to continue staying connected.

 

The past couple of weeks of reports of mass shootings, Congressional response to gun control, Congressional hearings on the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, and U.S. Supreme Court rulings on gun ownership and reproductive rights have elevated a collective search for answers that is increasingly loud and varied. A regular scan of social media suggests that many people believe they have the precise answers that might make some sense of all these events and affect a desired change.

 

In his most recent novel, Yonder, former colleague Jabari Asim writes beautifully and often harrowingly about the plight of several enslaved people (whom he refers to as “Stolen” in his book) on a plantation in 1852. In one scene from the book, one of the Stolen, named William, is speaking to another named Ransom, who is a Black preacher.

 

“You’re supposed to have all the answers,” William says after finding Ransom’s advice wanting. Ransom chuckles and responds: “I don’t even have all the questions.”

 

Answers such as term limits for legislators and Supreme Court justices may prove fruitful in the long run, but they will not result in immediate relief from many of the issues people are facing. Recommending short-term solutions to address the challenges that lie ahead also seems sound.

 

But at times when so much is in flux and the stakes seem high for so many, it strikes me that the right thing is to continue to try to find the right questions to ask before we assume we have the right answers. Only then can we hope to find some reasonable way to help protect those with whom we live.

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.

Are anonymous comments on websites OK?

Should people who post comments on websites be allowed to be anonymous?

 

A few weeks ago I wrote a column focusing on an email from a reader I called Lil. She was seeking advice on what to do, if anything, after noticing a landscaper working on several luxury condominiums in her neighborhood had attached a hose to a public fire hydrant so he could water the newly laid sod in the front yard of the condos.

 

My advice was fairly straightforward and mostly involved checking with her city’s public works department to make sure the landscaper had permission to use the water. Her city happened to have a 311 number to call or an app to use to file such questions.

 

The online reader response to the column came swiftly. Some commenters agreed with Lil’s concern. Others suggested that perhaps the landscaper had permission and a temporary meter had been attached to the hydrant. But it was other commenters that led Lil to get back in touch and ask if I agreed with their assessment that she should mind her own business. One wrote “you go, Karen” using the in-vogue name used to describe people who are perceived to be do-gooders who get righteously indignant over petty issues. (Apologies to Karens everywhere.)

 

It’s not irrelevant that the commenters were not required to use their own names, and most hid behind an anonymous and sometimes goofy moniker. On some websites you can click on these names and see how many posts they’ve made on articles on the site so far. (The “you go, Karen” commenter had made 1,191 comments in seven months.)

 

I’ve written about allowing anonymous website comments before. I’m not a fan of anonymous posts online. The anonymity itself does not concern me. Readers might have any number of legitimate reasons to not want their names made public to a large readership. I still believe it shows more integrity to put your name behind the stands you take, but it remains an individual’s choice whether to do so or not on many sites, including the one I keep that’s associated with this column.

 

It seems wrong to allow anonymous comments if the commenter is using anonymity to avoid responsibility for being offensive, obnoxious, name-calling or shaming. Since many sites, including the one on which Lil saw herself told to mind her own business, allow readers to see other comments a poster has made, it seems relatively simple for the owner of the website to assess whether a commenter has a pattern of abusive comments. If they do, the site should consider removing the offensive comments or restricting the poster after making clear what crossed the line.

 

The website featuring Lil’s question also allows readers to “report” commenters for spam, profanity, abuse or harassment, misinformation, violence, inappropriateness and several other categories. If Lil believes any of the anonymous commenters fall into any of the categories, the right thing is for Lil or any reader believing similarly to report them. And the right thing for the website moderators is to take any such reports seriously even if it means losing a voluminous poster of anonymous and sometimes offensive reactions.

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.

How much should I disclose to future employer?

 How fully do you need to disclose information about yourself to a prospective employer?

 

A reader we’re calling Mary posed the question to me after she interviewed for a job via Zoom and was called back for a second interview in person. She wrote that she wants the job, but she is concerned that if she fully discloses health challenges she’s had in the past, it might affect her chances of landing the new job.

 

This is the point in my response when I feel obliged to disclose I am not an employment lawyer, nor an expert in employment law. But judging from her question, Mary knows these limitations and in posing her question to me was more concerned about how forthcoming she needed to be from an ethical perspective.

 

“Would it be dishonest not to tell them that I’d gone through some serious health issues in the past?” asked Mary.

 

If the job for which Mary is applying requires some physical qualifications such as the ability to lift objects of a certain weight and Mary knows she is not capable of meeting these qualifications, she should disclose the limitations to her prospective employer regardless of past illnesses. If the advertisement for the job or job description she might have seen included specific qualifications she knew she didn’t meet, Mary should have considered not applying.

 

But unless Mary’s health issues pose a danger to her prospective colleagues, it’s not clear to me why it should come up in the process of her job interview.

 

She raised a slightly different question when Mary said: “I’m worried that if I get sick again and it comes out that I had been sick before that my bosses would be upset that I hadn’t told them that I had been sick in the past.”

 

Here Mary seems to be concerned she must anticipate and disclose any future event that may have a negative impact on her ability to do the job for which she’s applying. If the health issues she experienced were indeed in the past, it doesn’t seem necessary for Mary to supply a list of everything that may or may not happen to her should she take the job. An employer is unlikely to tell Mary that while the company is financially healthy now, its business might take a nose dive later because, after all, in the early days of the company it was touch and go about whether the company would be able to stay in business.

 

Many things may happen in the future if Mary is offered and accepts the new job. Her old car might break down on her drive to work one day and she could be late and hold up an important meeting. The company might be purchased and layoffs might ensue. We can contemplate all the possible downsides as applicants and employers. But it’s also possible Mary might thrive in the new position and the company will survive and thrive in spite of any obstacles it faces.

 

In interviewing for the job, the right thing is for Mary to be honest about her capabilities to do the job and for her interviewers to be honest about the specifics of the job for which she is interviewing.

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.

Should charities spend so much on unsolicited mailings?

Are the charitable donations you make to various organizations going toward the work that organization sets as its mission or do they go to pay for marketing efforts to elicit more donations? That’s essentially what a reader whom we’re calling Iris wants to know.

Iris is among the millions of Americans who donate to charity every year. She donates small amounts to several different charities whose work she supports. But she’s noticed lately that more and more charities are sending her solicitations that include everything from customized return address labels and notepads to pocket calculators and embossed canvas bags. “These are not thank you items,” wrote Iris. “They’re sending these before I contribute another dime.”

Iris uses some of the stuff sent to her even if she doesn’t contribute. But she’s concerned that the charities to whom she does contribute do similar mailings. “I feel like my dollars are going to mailings rather than good work,” she wrote.

“Is it wrong for charities to spend so much money on mailings to try to raise money?” Iris asked.

There is nothing wrong with charities sending out solicitations for donations. In an effort to find new donors, they employ various techniques. Iris was clear in her email to me that she hates unsolicited phone calls from charitable organizations even more than the mailings she receives. The numerous mailings Iris and others receive may annoy them, but reaching out to prospective donors using various methods is often necessary if a charity wants to stay afloat.

The cost of the marketing efforts and other overhead should not, however, be so much that they outweigh the funds spent directly on whatever work the charity is set up to do. Websites like Charity Navigator (charitynavigator.org) analyze the spending of many charities so donors can get a sense of what percentage of donations gets spent on what.

Nevertheless, Iris raises a good question about whether charities should spend so much soliciting donations from people who don’t want to receive the solicitations partly because they would rather the money go to the work of the charity.

Iris may be receiving many mailings because she donates to several different charities rather than choosing fewer to which she gives larger donations. If Iris wants to make sure that the charities she donates to don’t sell her name to other charities for them to use in soliciting donations from her, she can check to make sure that her chosen charities assure donors that their names will not be shared. (Charity Navigator includes this information in its assessments.)

Iris can also choose to give anonymously or to take advantage of any charities that allow her to check a box indicating she doesn’t want her information shared.

While the Data and Marketing Association (DMA) lets people put their name or email on a no unsolicited mail list (www.dmachoice.org), it’s not a guarantee that every charitable organization will stop sending mailings.

That Iris continues to contribute to causes she deems to be worthy strikes me as a good thing. I’m hopeful she and others will continue to do so. But the right thing for Iris or others in her situation to do is to take as much control of how many unsolicited mailings they receive by letting the charities know that they would simply prefer the charity not to spend the money on solicitation mailings.

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.

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