Jeffrey L. Seglin's Blog, page 27
September 20, 2020
If a coworker shirks responsibility, do I report it?
If a co-worker isn't doing his or her job, whose responsibility is it to set matters straight? A reader from Northern California whom we're calling Wendy wrote recently about a new co-worker who seems to be fabricating her reported work hours.
According to Wendy, the co-worker has "left for lunch a half hour before she said she would, stayed way longer than she said she would and then disappeared for an hour in the afternoon without letting anyone know she'd be gone," writes Wendy. The co-worker has only been on the job for about three months.
Many people have found themselves in work situations where they feel like a co-worker isn't pulling his or her weight. Sometimes it's merely a matter of perception where co-workers really have no idea exactly how much work a colleague is doing, but are convinced it couldn't possibly be as much as they themselves are doing.
I'm reminded of the time I was working a summer job while in college and complained to a co-worker how much work had been dumped on me to stock the shelves of a couple of stores in the historical restoration town in which we worked. "We're all busy," my co-worker, who held her job year-round to support her family, responded. She was right. It's often easier to pass judgment on others when we don't really know the full circumstances, but that doesn't make it right.
However, Wendy's case seems clear. Wendy might not know why her co-worker is misrepresenting her hours or staging afternoon disappearances, but she knows it is having an effect on her and others being able to get their own jobs done.
"It's difficult because we rely on each other to answer the door when one of us is out, so not knowing when she is going to be out is an inconvenience," writes Wendy, adding, "not to mention that I believe she was on company time when these absences occurred."
Now Wendy is struggling with whether or not to report her co-worker's absences to their supervisor.
"I don't want to be a tattle-tale, but I have a tough time working with someone who is not there when she says she will be, and also with someone who may be cheating the company by not clocking out when she's off campus," writes Wendy.
My initial response is that it's odd that Wendy's supervisor has not noticed the co-worker's absences. Shouldn't that be a fundamental responsibility of supervising? But Wendy points out that the co-worker seems to time her absences for when the supervisor is not around.
Since the co-worker's actions are directly affecting Wendy's ability to do her own job, I believe if a conversation directly with the co-worker proves ineffective, the right thing is for her to then inform the supervisor. She can start by asking if the supervisor has ideas on how to best monitor who is going to be minding the door since she's found it challenging not knowing when her co-worker is going to be around.
If Wendy doesn't speak to her supervisor, she runs the risk of being held accountable for something not getting done because she was covering for a wayward colleague. But she also runs the risk of turning a blind eye to behavior she is convinced is dishonest, which can have lasting consequences for Wendy if it causes her superior to question her judgment. Ideally, the supervisor can work to set things right before the co-worker's behavior becomes the norm.
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 answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.
(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
September 13, 2020
Can I un-tell a lie on my resume?
Often, it's not the original lie we tell that presents the most problems for us, but rather the multiple lies we tell to support the first one. The work it takes to cover ourselves from getting caught can be consuming.
A long-time reader of the column whom we're calling Curtis finds himself struggling with a fabrication he made on his resume about five years ago to enhance his chances of landing his first job. "I falsified experience on my resume to qualify for my first job," he writes.
Since the job he was applying for required two years of experience and he only had one, Curtis falsified his work experience to make it look like he had a year's more experience than he did. He was interviewed by his prospective employer who offered him the job which he gladly accepted.
After two years on the job, however, the dishonesty plagued him, so he left the position to accept a different job. "I resolved to be honest going forward," Curtis writes, so he had applied for the new job without including any made up work experience on his resume.
For the past three years, he's been doing well on the new job, but recently he finds himself "extremely plagued" by working at a job where he is "profiting from" his earlier dishonesty. "I'm bothered on a daily basis and I feel terrible that I made up the experience and have made an effort to be honest in all aspects of my life."
Curtis indicates he plans to make amends "in other ways" including going back to school and starting over in his career or emailing his managers at his former job to apologize for his dishonesty. "I have even completely eliminated the first role from my resume," he writes, so instead of saying he has five years of experience, he says he has three. He sees this as "a bid to make up for my dishonesty."
Mentors in whom Curtis has confided urge him to accept that he was wrong to lie on his resume, but have implored him to move on since he applied honestly for his current job. Nevertheless, he still "feels a troubled conscience."
"How can I resolve this guilt?" he asks. "What advice would you give to move on?"
I'm not sure it's possible to resolve such guilt rather than to learn to accept it and to learn from it going forward. But to accept that guilt, Curtis needs to make sure he doesn't inadvertently compile the dishonesty by trying to pretend it never happened. Indicating on his resume that he's only worked three years when he's actually worked five doesn't erase that those original two years happened, no matter how he got the job.
It's up to Curtis whether or not to contact the managers at that first job to let them know what he did. But he should recognize that doing that won't change the fact that it happened.
His mentors seem to have given Curtis sound advice. Accept that the dishonesty was wrong, commit to avoiding it in the future, do good work, and move on. We cannot undo what's already been done, but once we recognize that what we did was wrong, we can do our best to commit to trying to do the right 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 answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.
(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
September 6, 2020
Should I apply for pandemic relief even if I don't need it?
I have many thoughtful readers who regularly strive to do the right thing. Several of them have found it challenging during the coronavirus pandemic to decide whether or not it is appropriate to avail themselves of opportunities to save money or improve their financial condition when they know they are not facing quite as difficult a time as the many people who find themselves unemployed or otherwise financially challenged.
M.L., a reader from Northern California, writes that she is in her mid-70s, retired, and lives comfortably on a monthly fixed income. In retirement, M.L. worked as a part-time teacher several hours a week. She didn't depend on the extra $300 per week she earned, but when the shutdown occurred back in March, she struggled with whether or not to apply for the new unemployment benefits that became available through the end of July.
"Clearly I am not in the state of need that many laid off workers are in and that the new law was passed to address," she writes. "When I told my sister that I might apply for the benefit, she asserted that it would be wrong to do so because the law was not meant for people in my less-than-destitute condition."
M.L. wrestled with the ethics of applying for the unemployment benefit, half of which she indicated she would donate to charities helping those more in need than she is.
Several hundred miles west in Columbus, Ohio, P.A., another longtime reader, has noticed online posts from friends who have worked with their mortgage and credit card companies to get three months free of payments, or no interest accrual, or waived fees. P.A. writes that she's happy companies are helping people during this time.
But she points out that she and her husband have been lucky and each has kept their job. "Would it be unethical for us to take advantage of these deals given that we can still pay our bills?" she asks. She thinks it would probably be wrong to do it. "It would feel like I am taking advantage of the situation and the companies."
Both M.L. and P.A. are struggling with the same central question: Should they try to improve their finances by taking advantage of offers that seem to be intended to ease the burden of others who have not fared as well during the pandemic?
If any of the programs M.L. or P.A. might apply to are specifically set up for those who meet a specific income or asset threshold and they don't meet those requirements, then obviously they should not try to get a little something for themselves.
But even during non-pandemic times, it always makes sense to manage your personal finances as wisely as possible. If you can refinance a mortgage for a much better interest rate, for example, it always makes sense to explore such possibilities. If M.L. or P.A. meet the eligibility requirements of programs being offered during the pandemic and they want to apply then they should apply.
The right thing, of course, would be for those companies or agencies offering special funds or arrangements to make clear who is and who is not eligible and implement barriers to keep the ineligible from taking advantage. If the goal is to address the needs of those most affected by the pandemic, then the program should be clearly designed to do so.
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 answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.
(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
August 30, 2020
If someone shows us who they are, believe them, don't vote for them
While each of these might sound like a laundry list of just how polarized and broken politics and politicians in the United States have become, none of these are new.
I am almost finished re-reading Robert A. Caro's four-volume The Years of Lyndon Johnson. Caro's deftness at capturing behind-the-scenes episodes throughout Johnson's life continues to be one of the best examples of reporting and writing. While the books begin with Johnson's childhood, the later volumes focus on his role as a U.S. Representative from Texas' 10th district from 1937 to 1949, as U.S. Senator from 1948 to 1961, and as 37th President of the United States starting in 1963, upon the assassination of his predecessor, John Kennedy.
I bring up the notion that abysmal behavior in politics is nothing new now because the temptation to dismiss any current instances as just par for the course might exist. You know, that's just politics and how the game is played. Such a temptation should be fought.
If we had given over to accepting past injustices because they've always been with us, then it's likely I would have been dismissed out of hand for several jobs because of my religion or my niece might have faced insurmountable obstacles to voting because of her race; or several other nieces would not have been permitted to serve in the military if their sexual orientation had become known.
Holding politicians accountable for unjust, immoral, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, and racist behavior should be part of our responsibility as citizens and voters. This goes for politicians of any political affiliation. Johnson was a Democrat. Nixon was a Republican. Each engaged in behavior that certainly doesn't represent the best of us. You can certainly add to the list with your own examples, both past and present.
Granted, we are all flawed. It is a ridiculous assumption that we could ever find candidates who have not made a mistake or two along the way. But most of us can discern, for example, the difference between a mistake and a worldview that governs your behavior. The latter should be disqualifying.
If we have evidence that candidates running for office, at any level, have engaged in reprehensible behavior, it seems a low bar to cross them off our list of people for whom to vote.
In his most recent book, Working, Robert A. Caro includes a chapter on how he got people to be candid with him when he interviewed them for his books. The gist of it is that he learned to "shut up" (his words) and listen rather than interrupt. By letting his subjects fill the silence, he got a fuller and truer sense of who they are and what they had to say. We can most definitely take this into our lives as we listen to political figureheads on all sides and attempt to hear what they say, completely divorced from our own opinions.
There's a quote often attributed to Maya Angelou that says: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." I would add that as they show us unjust behavior, the right thing is to fight to correct such injustices rather than to accept them as a fait accompli.
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 answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.
(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
August 23, 2020
Fighting fake news can start with 3 simple words: 'I don't know'
"I don't know." Getting acquainted with those three words seems more critical than ever, even though we are bombarded daily with globs of information, most of which is fairly accessible.
Nevertheless, when we don't know something - whether it's a detail we can't remember or when someone introduces a piece of new information - our tendency too often is to not take the time to get the facts. Instead, we allow ourselves to continue our unawareness of the underlying facts surrounding that unfamiliar information.
In pre-search engine days, we didn't have the time-saving luxury of using a search engine to look something up. In the mid-1980s, for example, when I struggled to remember the name of the actor who played Sir Thomas More in the movie "A Man for All Seasons," my go-to solution was to call my mother in Virginia, since I knew she was a big fan of the movie. Today, it takes me mere seconds to find the answer on IMDB.com.
For those of us who don't limit our news feeds or social networks only to sources or people who share our worldviews, we're regularly faced with posts that seem to contradict our views on a particular topic - whether it has to do with the efficacy of facemasks, the eligibility of a candidate for political office or any number of things. It's easy enough to scroll past those things we think are wrong or that contradict our understanding of something, but we're often left ignorant of whether such posts are factually accurate.
Regardless of the time it takes to check something out, the right thing is to embrace the "I don't know" and to look it up. It's also necessary to both be open to correction from others and take the time to call out when we see something fishy in a post or shared article. Friends do point out to friends when something they post has no basis in fact. This is especially true as the U.S. presidential campaigns heat up in their final few months. There are bound to be factually inaccurate declarations proffered by supporters of candidates from all parties.
When possible, the right thing is to call out friends who speak or post fallacious information, even if we support the same candidate as they do. This might not change someone's view on something, but allowing erroneous information to proliferate without calling it out makes us complicit in allowing the epidemic of misinformation to continue. Calling it out may not stop the spread entirely, but it's a start. Herd immunity may not yet exist for coronavirus, but we can develop it as a weapon against the scourge of fake news.
Luckily, we are not at the mercy of busy phone lines or snail mail in the search for verified facts. Beyond Snopes.com - which can be a decent source to check out hoaxes and bogus internet posts - there are plenty of sources to check out facts when it comes to political discourse. Some of the best include Politifact.com, which is owned by The Poynter Institute for Media Studies (full disclosure: I was among the first group of ethics fellows at Poynter in 2001), and FactCheck.org, which is run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The Associated Press (https://apnews.com/APFactCheck) and Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/fact-check) are two news agencies that also provide great fact-checking resources.
We have the tools we need to check out the information regularly thrown at us. The right thing is to take the time to check out the facts that we simply do not know and to encourage others to do the same.
And yes, in case you're still wondering, my mother did know who played Thomas More. It was Paul Scofield. You can look it up.
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.
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
August 16, 2020
How seriously should residents take local irrigation bans?
Water is at a premium this summer as heat bears down, rain remains an inconsistent presence, and more people are staying home during the pandemic than in past years. In some communities, town water departments have begun to impose limitations on the amount of water residents use to keep their lawns green and gardens blooming. One community in Massachusetts alerted its residents that water demand was 20% greater than last year and that the town is beginning to tap into its storage tanks to meet demands. As a result, in late July, the town's selectmen voted to ban the use of all automatic irrigation systems until further notice, unless those systems drew water from a private well. A first offense would result in a warning and any following offenses would result in fines and the resident's water service being shut off. Handheld watering is not banned. As the ban took effect, some residents reluctantly obeyed calculating that conserving water was for the greater good of their community. Others wondered how the town could possibly enforce the ban given that the most frequent time for built-in irrigation use was in the wee hours of the morning when it was still dark and difficult to monitor, doubting that the water department would take the time to track water usage for each resident. Still, others thought it would be unfair if they complied while their less civic-minded neighbors ignored the ban altogether. But the two most frequent questions I've heard from this particular town's residents were: Should I just keep watering and only shut the irrigation system off after receiving my first notice? And: Should I report neighbors whose sprinklers I continue to see going off after the ban begins? Technically, if your only goal is to avoid fines, waiting to turn off their irrigation until after the first notice seems OK since there are no fines assessed. The stakes only get higher on subsequent infractions. But while this approach may work to be able to keep watering and avoid having all water shut off to the house, it misses the point of the ban. The sooner the town's water usage returns to sustainable levels, the sooner the ban gets lifted. Continuing to automatically irrigate until caught likely only prolongs the ban, penalizing those who do comply and putting the town at risk for a continued water shortage. At best, it's unneighborly and poor stewardship. Now for the second question. It may be annoying to see your neighbors' sprinkler systems going off, but it should be the town's role to monitor residents' irrigation usage and to cite them if they run afoul of the ban. Unless a neighbor posts a sign, it seems impossible to determine by sight if they are using town water or well water. Neighbors reporting neighbors without sufficient knowledge seems just as likely to create ill will as it does to resolve the town's water shortage.
What does seem fair is for any residents that are truly concerned about the water shortage to ask the water department how it plans to monitor irrigation usage to ensure the ban can be lifted as soon as possible. The town doesn't make that clear on its public notice. We don't have a right to police our fellow citizens, but we do have a right to demand transparency from leadership. The right thing is for residents to comply with the ban as soon as it goes into effect and for the town to make clear to them how the ban will be enforced.
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.
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.
(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
August 9, 2020
The right thing to write about
Next month will mark the 22nd year I've been writing The Right Thing column on ethics. What began as a monthly business ethics column has evolved into a weekly column focusing on how each of us, when faced with an ethical challenge, goes about deciding the best right thing to do.
A lot happens in 22 years. In 1998, I wrote about how bosses, including then President Bill Clinton, might pay a price when caught in a lie. That was quickly followed by examining how much privacy employees should expect when using company email, whether it was acceptable for companies to expect their employees to work for free after hours, whether a corporate code of ethics was worth anything if the bosses didn't follow it, and how cultural differences about bribery made doing business internationally a challenge.
The country's mindset shift after the World Trade Center bombing on September 11, 2001, and questions about the "me too" mindset about disaster aid set in. The ethics of pay equity was covered, but so too was the question of whether the CEO of a handgun manufacturer paid too big a price professionally after he embraced instituting more gun safety features on his products.
Throughout, readers have continued to respond - negatively and positively - whether about doctors taking gifts from pharmaceutical companies or an employee donating a kidney to a boss or the kindness of a National Hockey League player to a 12-year-old fan. These reader responses have influenced how I have thought about writing the column and what I would write about next.
Responding to readers' emails (or in the early days, letters) has more often than not resulted in rich discussions even when the readers initially wrote to take issue with something I'd written. When Vice President Dick Cheney's lawyer took issue with a column I wrote about the then vice president's financial interests, for example, we ended up having a good long phone conversation. Only once did I not respond to a reader comment and that was after a reader wrote to offer to show me his new handgun after he took issue with my column on gun safety mentioned above. (I thought it best to leave that one alone.)
Some of the responses that touched me the most have been the ones from parents writing to thank me for a column that he or she could share with a child on learning to make difficult, honest choices. I send my weekly column off to my editor and remain genuinely touched when readers take the time to read it and even more so when they write to me about it.
I mention all of this now because throughout the past 22 years readers have regularly commented upon how as an ethics columnist I must never be at a shortage of topics to cover. They are referencing a particularly bleak set of circumstances in the news at the time they write, whether it was 1998 or 2020.
In the midst of our current pandemic, economic crisis, and the free-floating uncertainty enveloping us all, I am heartened that there is still an effort among many to work hard to make sense of what seems uncertain, be kind and strive to do the right 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.
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.
(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
August 2, 2020
Did the shop owner risk a customer's safety?
Customers were asked to make an appointment rather than walking in. Wait areas were to be closed and customers would be requested to wait outside or in their cars until their appointment time. Face masks were required for hairdressers and customers and hairdressers were to wear gloves while cutting hair.
J.K. had been working remotely at home since mid-March and had kept his contact with others to a minimum. Nevertheless, he was feeling quite shaggy and decided to call and make an appointment. His stylist assured him that she had incorporated procedures to keep her customers and herself as safe as possible.
Assured that she would be the only person allowed into the salon while his hair was being cut, J.K. made the appointment. On the day of his cut, he waited outside until his appointment time and then peeked inside the salon door where he saw all the chairs empty. It was only after he stepped in the door that he noticed another customer at the register (now separated by plexiglass from the customer) paying for her cut.
"I was disappointed that the owner hadn't made sure that no one else came in until the previous customer came out," writes J.K.
J.K. writes that the salon owner, the prior customer, and he were all wearing masks and the distance from the door to the register was more than six feet, the standard distance called for in social distancing. Nevertheless, he writes that he feels betrayed by the owner's assurances that she had established safe protocols for her newly opened salon.
"Wasn't it her responsibility to make sure I didn't walk in while the person before me was still in there?" asks J.K.
I appreciate J.K.'s concern. As everyone navigates his, her, or their way around the pandemic it is entirely reasonable for each of us to honor however careful or distant another person wants to be to feel safe. J.K. has not infringed on anyone else's rights over the past six months. He has, however, avoided putting himself in situations where he might find himself too close to a crowd or even other people.
But J.K. had a simple solution to his concern. As soon as he poked his head in the door and saw another customer in the salon - more than six feet away from him - the right thing for him to do was to turn around and continue to wait outside if he was concerned about his safety. The salon owner had done the work of making her salon as safe as she could. She was masked and gloved up. She only had one stylist working at a time. She was even taking the temperatures of customers as they entered the salon.
That J.K. happened to enter a bit too early may have felt unfortunate, but it was simple enough for him to make things right. And then to tip his stylist well.
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.
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.
(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
July 26, 2020
Learn to say 'no' if you'd really prefer not to
More than one reader has commented on how one aspect of working remotely during the coronavirus pandemic that they were actually looking forward to was fewer meetings at the office and more opportunities to be far more productive while working from home. Without office neighbors wanting to catch up or grab coffee or compare notes on one thing or another, surely they'd be able to focus more on tasks that needed completing. Without the plethora of meetings to eat up large portions of the day, surely they'd be able to put that time to more productive use.
As remote work settled in, many readers found, however, that colleagues lost none of their desire to chat and the number of Zoom meetings seemed to propagate seemingly at the rate of the Fibonacci sequence.
"We're being asked to go to more tutorials on how to use the technology than ever," writes G.L., a reader who has had his fill of such tutorials. Likening these tutorials - whether they are real-time, asynchronous video, or pdfs of best practices, to meetings about meetings - G.L., and I'm confident, others are a tad overwhelmed.
One challenge, G.L. writes, is that he recognizes that he's fortunate to have kept his job when he knows that unemployment levels have skyrocketed due to shutdowns and layoffs related to the pandemic. While not every meeting nor every tutorial is required by his company and he's certainly not obligated to respond to chatty emails or texts from coworkers, G.L. doesn't want to appear to be disengaged or as he puts it, "not a team player."
"Is it wrong for me to simply say no to some of these meetings or requests for time?" he asks.
G.L. raises a solid concern. Because so many companies shifted to remote work where possible during the pandemic, there seems to have been a strong desire to keep workers feeling connected to both their co-workers and their company. Occasionally, however, such efforts have gone beyond what the company or some employees need. Virtual yoga sessions on Tuesday afternoons seem to fall into the category of distinctly optional.
As clever as it might seem to read on a piece of imprinted wearables, it would spark joy in few of us to have a colleague like Herman Melville's Bartleby character who, when asked to do anything around the office responds with, "I would prefer not to" and instead spends the day staring out the office window at a brick wall. Don't strive to be a Bartleby, G.L.
But G.L. should recognize that if it isn't essential for him to attend every tutorial or respond to every gossipy email to get his work done and he really would prefer not to, the right thing is to simply say "no."
Doing your work as good as possible, being responsive to others so they can get their work done, and learning to focus on what matters and letting go of what doesn't might prove to be an upside to G.L. and other workers during a time when a lot of us are discovering how to work best as we go 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.
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.
(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
July 19, 2020
Can we complain if we didn't vote?
"If you don't vote, don't complain," is a slogan seen on bumper stickers plastered on cars, laptops, bulletin boards, and anywhere else the public might get the message. The message is clear: "If you don't vote, you forfeited your right to complain about how government is being run."
But is it fair to shut down others' opinions because they chose not to vote in an election? Millions of eligible Americans simply don't show up to vote.
More Americans typically show up to vote in presidential elections and the midterm elections two years later than they do in local elections. But even in these elections, the turnout barely reaches the halfway mark of all eligible voters. For the 2016 presidential election in the United States, 55.7% of eligible voters cast a ballot. For the 2018 midterm elections, more than 49% of eligible voters cast a ballot - a percentage widely heralded as being epic and not seen since the midterm elections of the mid-1960s.
Compare these percentages to Australia where in their 2019 federal election, 96.8% of eligible Australians registered to vote and 91.9% of those voted. Of course, in Australia, according to the Western Australian Electoral Commission's website, "Voting at State general elections, by-elections and referenda is compulsory." That's right. You get fined for not voting in Australia. For a first offense the fine is $20 Australian ($13.89 U.S.). It rises to $50 Australian ($34.73 U.S.) for subsequent violations.
It's hardly likely that the United States will join Australia and a handful of other countries that have compulsory voting. In the run-up to the U.S. presidential election in 2020, there will be an effort to get voters registered and out to vote by Tuesday, November 3, at the latest.
I regularly encourage students and friends to register to vote and then to vote, often offering a stamp to anyone who needs to mail in an absentee ballot because they are away from home. I've written before about my #oldguywithstamps Tweets and my belief that while we are not obligated to vote in the United States, it's the right thing to do.
Nevertheless, when I see the "If you don't vote, don't complain" bumper stickers, the message may be well-intended as a nudge to get eligible voters to actually show up to vote, but ultimately it sits wrong.
No matter how strongly I may believe that voting is the right thing to do, you have the right to choose not to vote. Exercising that right does not silence you as a citizen with the same Constitutional rights as those of us who do vote in each local, state, and federal election.
Sure, if you want any hope of effecting change, you give up a fundamental means of doing so when you choose not to vote. But you never lose your right to complain or to express an opinion about an issue or a policy. That's your right.
There are fancy social science equations for calculating the value of your vote if you want to change the outcome of an election. But it doesn't take an equation to make clear that if you don't vote you lose a chance to have a voice in the outcome, no matter how much you complain afterward.
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.
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin
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(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
