Jeffrey L. Seglin's Blog, page 18
June 12, 2022
The Right Thing: Should charities spend so much on unsolicited mailings?
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.
(c) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
June 5, 2022
Should neighbor report landscaper’s suspicious activity?
When you think there might be something amiss with the construction job going on in your neighborhood but aren’t sure, what’s the right thing to do?
A reader from Boston we’re calling Lil emailed me recently to fill me in on all of the construction that’s been going on in her neighborhood for the past two years. Many three family houses have been sold and are being converted into luxury condominiums. Some formerly empty lots are now being populated by even more high-priced condos.
“All of the trucks in and out and the sound of pile driving has been constant,” wrote Lil. “Traffic is regularly blocked off in our neighborhood making it challenging getting in and out of our driveway. All of the activity has resulted in noise, and more rodent sightings than ever.” As she emailed me, Lil wrote that there are at least 11 condo projects in some stage of development within a block of her house.
“Now one of these projects has finally begun to do landscaping and put down sod in front of seven condos, three of which are already on the market,” Lil wrote. “But I saw from my kitchen window that the landscapers had attached a house to a nearby fire hydrant and were using water from the hydrant to water the sod they had just put down.”
Lil seems incensed about the landscapers tapping into the fire hydrant. “How could this possibly be OK to use water from a public fire hydrant to water the grass?” she asked. “What, if anything, should I do?”
It’s relatively simple for Lil or anyone else to look up the City of Boston regulations about connecting a house to a public fire hydrant for public use. When I did a quick search, I found it is against the law to make such a connection without permission from the city.
If the landscaper has used the hydrant without permission, it should be stopped and cited for its illegal activity. But unless Lil checks, she has no way of knowing if permission was sought and granted or not. It hardly seems prudent or right for Lil to have marched over to the landscaper and tried to disconnect the hose even if she knew they were tapping into the water illegally.
Like many cities, Boston has a public utilities division that can be called to seek information. Boston also has a dedicated 311 phone number, website and app for residents to call when they have questions about public services ranging from trash pickup and snow removal to illegal parking and rodent activity.
If Lil or other neighbors are concerned that any construction workers or landscapers in their neighborhood are violating the law or causing a public disturbance, the right thing is to report it as soon as possible and let the city agency inspect the scene. If the city receives multiple reports about the same construction project possibly violating the law or causing disturbances, the right thing for the city to do is to keep tabs on the project to make sure it doesn’t slip back into bad behavior after receiving an initial citation. Lil might not be able to have the landscaper undo what has already been done, but she could be instrumental in ensuring it doesn’t happen again.
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.
May 29, 2022
Is it wrong for a boyfriend to continue to support his ex?
A reader we’re calling Sammie wrote in search of an answer to a question that has been plaguing her about her current relationship.
Apparently, Sammie’s boyfriend made a promise to his former girlfriend’s father when he was on his death bed. The boyfriend agreed he would take care of the father’s daughter and family. Since making the promise, the boyfriend has broken up with the daughter, and the father’s wife has died as well.
Nevertheless, Sammie wrote that her boyfriend wants to honor his promise.
“It is ruining our relationship,” wrote Sammie. His ex-girlfriend will not go away, and he feels a sense of obligation to keep in contact with her daily by phone and text in spite how he has told Sammie he doesn’t really like her anymore. Sometimes the “taking care of” involves the boyfriend giving his ex-girlfriend money.
“When can he feel like he’s done enough?” asked Sammie. “When can he move on? When can his obligation be fulfilled? There is no way this can be a lifetime promise, can it?”
Sammie has asked me if I might have any insight, and if I did, if I could tell her what I thought.
Let me make two things clear. First, I have no idea what Sammie’s boyfriend actually promised to his ex-girlfriend’s father. Second, I am not a relationship counselor. If Sammie believes her relationship with her boyfriend is in trouble because of past relationships and she is committed to making this relationship work, meeting with a relationship counselor to sort out the particulars seems wise.
But it seems unlikely that the boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend’s father expected Sammie’s boyfriend to continue to take care of his daughter in the event they ended their relationship. Again, I have no idea since I was not there. But if the father was hoping for what was best for his daughter, a compelling argument could be made that taking care of her might involve encouraging her to move on after her relationship to Sammie’s boyfriend ended. By continuing to act as if he were still involved with the ex-girlfriend when he is not could be construed as either misleading her or keeping her from finding a new healthy relationship. If this is the case, then is this really honoring the promise to “take care” of her?
Sammie’s boyfriend has some choices to make. Does he want to honor the spirit of his commitment to his ex’s father? Doing so might prove tough, but encouraging her to move on might be exactly the thing needed.
He also needs to decide how important his relationship to Sammie is. If refusing to let go of a past relationship even if his behavior is proving to impede his ex’s ability to move on and toxic to the possibility of developing a strong bond with Sammie, the boyfriend needs to ask himself what he really wants.
The right thing for Sammie to do is to let the boyfriend know how strongly she feels about his inability to let go of the past relationship and then to decide if she might be better off becoming another ex until he’s able to let the first ex go.
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.
May 22, 2022
If 'I’ll get back to you' isn’t true, don’t say it
Apparently, I am a dinosaur when it comes to voicemail. I still listen to voicemails that I receive from people who call me and leave a message. I have my office phone set up to forward voicemail messages directly to me as email attachments so I’m notified of them shortly after the message is left.
Granted, fewer people leave me voicemails these days, but I still try to return messages from all but those who are trying to sell me something that I don’t want or to offer me the chance to earn substantial amounts of cash through what appears to be some sort of scam.
For most people, however, voicemail seems to be a place where messages go to die, and this is nothing new. Back in 2013, eVoice, a company that helps users manage phone calls by using virtual phone numbers, conducted a survey and found that 67 percent of respondents couldn’t even be bothered to listen to the voicemails from business contacts whose phone numbers they recognized. Eight-two percent didn’t listen to voicemails that arrived from unknown numbers.
Nevertheless, many people persist in maintaining voicemail boxes encouraging callers to leave a message. When you have no intention of listening to let alone returning a voicemail message, is it wrong to lead a caller to believe otherwise by ending your outgoing message with something along the lines of: “… I’ll get back to you as soon as I can”?
Some who have no plans to listen to or respond to voicemails have taken a more responsible approach by never activating a voicemail box in the first place, making it impossible for callers to leave a message. Others make it clear in their outgoing message that they do not respond to voicemail and that if the callers would like to reach them they should email them, text them, or perhaps just call back at another time. “Please don’t leave a voicemail” seems a reasonable message particularly when followed by “but instead you can contact me by…” with the relevant details included.
Any of these or similar approaches strike me as good when it comes to managing or choosing not to manage voicemail. If you have no intention of listening to voicemails let alone respond to them, then the right thing is not to mislead a caller into believing you will or simply not offer callers a voicemail option.
There are good reasons to eschew voicemails. Most people are busy keeping up with texts, emails, social media messages, and any number of messages that are more immediate and quicker to access than voicemail. Just as many people don’t have a sense of urgency to respond to a postal letter, many don’t have a sense of urgency to respond to voicemails. Fine. Good. Perfectly acceptable.
But telling people you will respond even if in an outgoing message you recorded months if not years ago is misleading. Callers who might believe the message they left is urgent should at least know you have no intention of listening to it or returning it so they can find some other way to reach you if they must.
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.
May 15, 2022
Has homeowner reached the last straw?
If ethics is indeed how we decide to behave when we belong together, then are you really doing anything wrong if many of your neighbors break the same agreed-upon rules that you break?
A reader from North Carolina we’re calling Lil wrote that she lives “in a nice community of 50 homes that has a homeowners association (HOA) and a ‘No Soliciting’ sign at the attractive community entrance garden.” Lil later clarified that the words on the sign are actually more specific: “No solicitation or distribution of outside materials.”
In spite of the sign, Lil reports that every so often someone will drive in with a pickup truck hauling a trailer containing several bales of pine straw, a common ground cover used by her and many of her neighbors in their gardens and around their trees and shrubs.
“I have occasionally hailed one of these ‘entrepreneurs,’ whose product is much more conveniently available this way, not to mention cheaper than other sources,” Lil wrote. But Lil noted that her actions and those of her other neighbors who partake of the goods not only violate the “no distribution of outside materials” rule, but also encourage return cruises through the neighborhood. “They don’t normally come knocking on doors (although they have done so), which I presume is what the HOA board most wants to discourage.”
Lil wrote that so far she has not noticed anyone shooing away the pine straw haulers, nor has she nor any of her neighbors received a notice from the HOA about being in violation of a policy. She would like to know my “ethical perspective” about both the “money-grubbing beautifiers of our neighborhood” and “outlaws like me.”
Since no one has complained as Lil and a few of her neighbors openly violate a rule they agreed to when they purchased their homes in the neighborhood, the simplest solution might seem to just let things lie. But that hardly makes it the best ethical choice.
Most HOAs have agreements that lay out procedures for how changes can be made to bylaws or restrictions. Some require a certain percentage of neighbors to be in agreement for any changes to be made. The right thing would be for Lil to explore such an option.
There’s a risk in doing so, of course. She might find that more neighbors are against the idea than are for it. She also might find that opening the discussion leads to a bigger discussion about how to limit distribution of materials only to these pine straw haulers.
But she also might find there’s a way to continue to purchase the pine straw from the random visitors that doesn’t violate the HOA agreement at all. Perhaps simply asking the pine strawers to set up deliveries ahead of time will do the trick. Perhaps the HOA allows lawn care workers to use the pine straw when working on a yard and might categorize these occasional visitors as lawn care workers.
Lil can only find out if her neighbors agree with her or if there’s a way to comply with the HOA rules if she approaches the HOA members. Sure, she may open a can of worms by doing so, but she also might discover that there’s an honest and straightforward way to cover up those worms with the pine straw she’d like to use.
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.
May 8, 2022
Must everyone contribute to a group effort?
What, if anything, should you do if some members of a group you belong to don’t contribute to an effort but never say why? It is a question that is facing a longtime reader from North Carolina we’re calling Bill.
Bill wrote me about what he describes as a “minor aggravation” that he doesn’t believe rises to the level of an ethical dilemma, but one that bothers him nonetheless. After joining a national support group for those living with a particular medical condition, the leader of the group drafted Bill to be one of his advisers.
As time went by, Bill appreciated “what a good and competent guy” the leader was. Bill believed that the other seven advisers from around the country might want to join him in showing some sort of appreciation to their leader.
“I emailed a suggestion for a custom-designed T-shirt, but said I was open to any other suggestions,” wrote Bill. All but two of the other advisers responded that they were supportive of the T-shirt idea and were willing to contribute just shy of $5 each for the shirt to be made. “I kept each of them informed and sought their input as the design developed.”
After the leader received the T-shirt, he was “enormously appreciative,” Bill writes, and he thanked all the advisers at the next Zoom session. “He wore the shirt and stood up so that all could see it.”
Bill was aggravated, however, that the two “quiet advisers” not only didn’t contribute to the T-shirt, but never even bothered to acknowledge or respond to his emails soliciting ideas for a gift.
“My ‘financial loss’ is of no consequence,” wrote Bill, “but I am tempted to ask them why they never weighed in at least.” Bill acknowledges that “it’s probably best to let sleeping dogs lie,” but he wrote to ask me what I believe is the right thing to do.
It may be aggravating, but if the emails that went around asked for voluntary contributions, then Bill is indeed right to let sleeping dogs lie. None of us ever know what another’s situation is, and while contributing $5 may seem like very little to one person, that might not be the case for everyone. If Bill wanted to avoid being left to wonder why the two didn’t respond in any way, he could have presented the idea for the T-shirt but indicated that he would only move forward if everyone supported the idea. If it was more important to the majority of the advisers to recognize their leader than to have unanimity, they did the right thing by moving ahead with the gift that they could afford from the contributions they did receive.
That doesn’t let the two silent advisers entirely off the hook. While they had no obligation to contribute to the gift, when asked about the idea for the gift, the right thing would have been for them to respond one way or another. If they had at least responded, Bill would have known it wasn’t the idea of the T-shirt itself that they had an issue with. Regardless, Bill’s goal of doing something to recognize their leader was accomplished, and that in itself should spark at least a small amount of joy for Bill.
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.
May 1, 2022
Is it wrong to call in sick to extend a vacation?
When, if ever, should you report a co-worker for violating company policy?
A reader we’re calling Andy wrote that recently a co-worker told him she planned to use a sick day as part of an upcoming vacation so she could use fewer vacation days.
“It didn’t feel right,” wrote Andy. “But I said nothing.” Andy added that their employer is not a private company but a public agency.
While on her vacation, Andy’s co-worker told him she was having such a good time that she decided to call in sick again to extend the vacation. “And she did it again the next day, so she ended up taking three sick days to pad her vacation," he wrote.
Andy knows this because his co-worker texted him as it was happening. She “admitted to feeling a bit guilty but tried to rationalize it by saying how often she covered for others who called in sick,” adding: “Don’t tell on me.”
Andy didn’t tell on her. But after she returned, he told her he was surprised and upset by her actions since he had always “seen her as very ethical.” He told her he believed everyone is entitled to take a “mental health day” from time to time but that using sick days to extend a vacation felt wrong.
After Andy asked her not to tell him if she decided to do something like this again, she agreed, but seemed taken aback and asked: “Isn’t it all my time anyway?”
Now Andy’s co-worker is angry with him. She “feels I was implying she doesn’t work hard (something I never said),” he wrote.
“My concern is that as a public employee, she is accountable to me and other taxpayers for using her time ethically,” he wrote. Her “attempts to justify her actions by saying how hard she works or how she has to cover for others … are not valid arguments, in my opinion.”
As a public employee and taxpayer, Andy wrote he felt it was appropriate to share his opinion with her on her actions. “Should I have said anything?” Andy asks. “Or would it have been better to let it go?”
If a public agency or private company wanted to avoid putting employees in the position of having to decide whether to lie about using sick days, perhaps they could give them a number of personal days to use any way they want. But that’s not the case here, and Andy’s co-worker was wrong to lie about being sick to extend her vacation.
Andy was not wrong to say something to his co-worker and to ask she not involve him in any future decisions she made about fudging the truth to her agency. Rather than being angry with Andy for questioning her actions, his co-worker might have been appreciative that he didn’t “tell on her.”
If Andy’s co-worker believes she is being taken advantage of by having to cover for others in her workplace who call in sick, the right thing is for her to tell her supervisor. But if she doesn’t really mind covering for others who are truly sick and was simply using that to justify her decision to lie to her company about being sick, then perhaps she should save her vacation days for vacations and sick days for when she is really sick.
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.
April 24, 2022
Stop unpaid college internships now
A few weeks ago, several other alumni of Bethany College and I were interviewed about our college experience. I loved my time at Bethany in West Virginia. I had transferred there after having attended a few other colleges, and from the first day on campus onward it felt like home. I made good friends, took challenging courses, and formed relationships with a few professors that remain strong.
When the interviewer asked me about my internship experience while in school, my response was short. I didn’t have any. There were plenty of internships available, but most all of them were unpaid, and even if I wanted to consider them, I couldn’t afford to work for free.
Twenty-some years after graduating, I was in my first job as a college professor at a small liberal arts college in Boston. Internships were a big deal for students at the college, and many of them were still unpaid. What complicated things further was that many of the internship sites would only hire interns who were doing the internships through the college. At the college where I taught, for many students this meant working for free and paying tuition for an internship course as well.
While internships can be a great way to get a foot in the door, to make connections, and to be exposed to the inner workings of a job, asking anyone to work for free is wrong. Asking them to pay tuition for the privilege of working for free is equally wrong.
The most obvious reason why unpaid internships are wrong is that the unpaid-ness of them makes it unlikely for those students who might not be able to afford to work for free to even consider one. As a result, those students lose out on potential training or job opportunities. In other words, the students who are least likely to have the advantage of getting a foot in the door are having that door shut on them because they can’t even consider walking through it.
Granted, internships are supposed to be learning experiences and not a cynical method of allowing employers to not have to pay for positions that are essential to keep the business running. But there is something unseemly about colleges making money by charging tuition to students solely so they can gain the privilege of working for free.
If unpaid internships are to continue, one solution is for colleges to offer free credits for students who were required to take an accompanying course. But this doesn’t address the fairness issue of accessibility to all qualified students and not just those who can work for free.
Some colleges do offer modest stipends to students working in unpaid internships. But the right thing is for businesses to pay for interns. Even if the pay is modest, that’s a start. And colleges should not charge students for internship courses that are essentially catch-all courses where all those completing internships are required to check in. If a business requires that a college sign off on student internship, the college can do that without seeing it as low-cost revenue stream. If a company can’t afford to pay for an intern, but insists it needs them to run the business, it’s time for them to rethink whether they are simply and, perhaps illegally, trying to find short-term employees to work for free.
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.
April 17, 2022
Do three wrongs make a right?
Deciding who is more wrong or the most wrong when all are engaged in behaviors that are wrong can be a challenge. But that’s what a reader I’m calling Thalia would like to know.
Thalia wrote that she was excited to be returning to the theater to watch the live performance of a play for the first time in more than two years. She had been a regular theater-goer prior to many venues shutting down or going virtual during the pandemic and was eager to return now that she had the chance.
“I was enjoying the play, but toward the end of the first act the glare from someone’s phone distracted me," Thalia wrote. Apparently, a woman sitting a few rows in front and to the left of Thalia was on her phone.
“The man next to the woman finally pulled his mask down and told her sternly to turn the phone off," she wrote. "She kept her head down and ignored him.” After audible tsk-tsks from the man, the first act ended and the woman with the phone left her seat.
Soon, the man returned to where he was sitting with an usher. “They looked like they were waiting for the woman to return so the usher could talk to her,” wrote Thalia. “But the whole time they were waiting, the man didn’t have his mask on!”
To get into the theater, everyone had to show their vaccination cards, and they were told masks were required. They were also asked to silence their phones and refrain from using them during the performance.
“While they were waiting, the usher never asked the man to put his mask back on,” wrote Thalia.
A phone-using woman, a maskless man, and an un-enforcing rules usher.
“Who was most in the wrong here?” asked Thalia.
Let’s start with who did the right thing here.
The man was right to ask the woman not to use her phone during the performance. Rather than ignore him, she could have told him it was an emergency call – if it was – something Thalia believes might have been the case since the woman didn’t return for the second act. The usher was right to return with the man so he could remind the woman not to use her phone during the performance.
But each player in this performance could have done better. If the woman received an emergency call, the right thing would have been to leave the theater to take the call in the lobby. The right thing for the man would have been to keep his mask on while lodging his complaint, not just because you lose some credibility when complaining about a rule-breaker while you are breaking the rules yourself, but because it was an effort by the theater to keep all attendees as safe as possible. The usher would have been doing the right thing by reminding the man to wear his mask.
If each had taken a moment to do the right thing, the disruption to others could have been avoided. Other than that, Thalia wrote that she thoroughly enjoyed the production.
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.
April 10, 2022
How not to behave when caught in a lie
My son, Ed, has been a high school English teacher for 27 years. In the late 1990s, he told me the story of an assignment he received from a student that looked suspicious.
Ed noticed that the typeface in the student’s paper was inconsistent, but also that a URL for a webpage was at the bottom of the last page. When Ed went to the URL on his computer, he found that the majority of the student’s paper had been cut and pasted from the website into a Word document, an original introduction had been written (thus the different typeface), and the student handed in the paper as their own work.
The student received a zero for the assignment and was asked to meet with his teacher. When Ed called up the webpage from which the paper had been lifted word for word, the student’s response was: “How did my paper get on the internet?”
Ed’s story came to mind as I was exploring how people respond to getting caught in a lie or misdeed. Sadly, a natural response to getting caught is to deny the action and, if confronted, to double down, insist on innocence, or to tell more lies to cover up the original lie.
I’ve told the story before of how as a 12-year-old, I found a pinball machine at a local arcade that had free games on it before I deposited any money and that kept offering more free games no matter how long I’d played, regardless of my score. When the arcade operator came over and asked if I had paid for the games, my initial response was to say “yes.” After his eyes went to the coin slot that was covered by tape, I knew I had been caught in a lie. He let me leave without comment, but the shame of getting caught stuck with me.
But for many, when the tape is not on the coin slot, the temptation is to go from fear of getting caught to shame of getting caught to panic that if you don’t embrace the lie with vigor, all is lost.
Such behavior is in common view not only among us common folk, but also in high relief among politicians, celebrities and others in the news. Often when the high-profile person is caught, their top-notch handlers go into action and concoct a sincere statement of contrition. It’s rare but sadly not uncommon for some to show no remorse and go on to engage in more lies.
It’s not always a lie. Sometimes it’s getting caught laughing at a joke told at someone else’s expense, recognizing that such behavior was wrong, and then doing something to compensate for our original inappropriateness but doing something far worse.
Most of us don’t have the luxury of high-priced handlers to do damage control. The right thing, of course, is to avoid lying or engaging in acts we know to be wrong before we do them. But when caught, the ethical response is to acknowledge the wrong, to avoid casting blame or excuses, and to apologize.
Sure, doing so might result in undesirable consequences. But more often than not, it’s not only the original lie we tell that wreaks havoc on our and sometimes others’ lives, but also the lies we tell to cover the lies we told.
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.
