Jeffrey L. Seglin's Blog, page 42

College food fight gets messy

This fall, a teenager, let's call him Ken, has been settling in as a freshman at a large state university. Three months in, he appears to have found a good rhythm in balancing his coursework and social life.
Ken has a voracious appetite. He's a slender kid, but the workouts and schedule he maintains keep him hungry. His parents helped him choose wisely when they chose the dining hall meal plan providing for unlimited meals and in-between snacks at the campus dining halls.
For the most part, that dining choice has worked well. Ken can choose from among the three dining halls on campus, alternating his choices depending on what specials might be on the menu each day.
"Some of my friends don't like the food at some of the dining halls," Ken writes, "so we go together to eat where everyone likes the food."
All was going well for Ken, until he met his nemesis, let's call him Larry. Larry is the manager of the dining hall where Ken often eats lunch. If you're on the meal plan Ken's on, you can eat all you want in the dining hall, but the rules are that you cannot take food outside of the dining hall. Occasionally, Ken says he's grabbed an apple or two or some other snack on his way out of a dining hall and the managers at the two other dining halls never say anything. But Larry stops Ken each time and tells him he can't take food out of the dining hall. 
"I'm paying thousands of dollars to go here and he won't let me take an extra apple," Ken protests. "He also stopped me when I was eating an ice cream cone I had made after lunch."
Ken has always complied when Larry called him out. He writes that once when Larry confronted him about an apple in his hand, he tossed it in the trash before leaving, "just to make a point."
Who's right here, Ken wants to know. "Shouldn't I be able to eat without being hassled?"
Yes, of course, Ken should be able to eat without being hassled. But Larry is simply doing his job. That the rules are inconsistently enforced from one dining hall to the next shouldn't matter since Ken is obliged to follow the rules of the dining hall he's in at the time.
Throwing away an apple in protest is wasteful and likely did not have the effect of changing the situation for which Ken yearned. Eating the apple on the spot before he left would have been fine.
But Larry was wrong to call Ken on the ice cream cone he was midway through eating as he was leaving. If the policy is in place to keep students from taking food to use outside the dining hall rather than purchase their own food later, telling students they can't finish eating items they've already started to consume misses the spirit of the rule and achieves nothing aside from a bravado show of authority.
The right thing is for Larry to let Ken finish eating his ice cream cone in peace and for Ken to honor the rules Larry is charged with enforcing by not carrying uneaten food from the dining hall. Each of them deserves respect from one another, regardless of how agitated they become. 
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 rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2017 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Should I post something when my social media group goes haywire?

Molly (let's call her that) works full-time for a small construction firm in the Northeast. Her husband, Desmond (also not the name he actually goes by) is a firefighter for their local fire department. They have two children, a third grader and a fifth grader, who attend the same school.
Molly and Desmond each regularly contribute their time to the school by supporting fundraising events and volunteering when the school puts out a call for parent volunteers for certain events. They've done this since their oldest child started school six years ago.
Recently, another group of parents started a social media site where parents can post information about the school, including notices of upcoming events, results of sporting events, or other news related to the school. The social media group is curated by a small group of parents who manage who gets to belong to the group and read the posts. People connected to the school who ask to join the group are rarely if ever denied access.
Molly regularly checks into the site because she often finds postings that are useful, whether it's the announcement of an upcoming bake sale, or news of one of the student's efforts to engage in a project supporting an area of the country recently hit by a hurricane. Desmond also belongs to the site, but rarely spends any time with it. In fact, Desmond rarely spends time with any social media, or the Internet at all.
A recent post to the social media group raised an issue with an effort that one of the other parents was undertaking at the school. A long discussion thread -- some agreeing with the post, others taking the poster to task -- followed.
Molly was incensed. "It seemed totally inappropriate for the site," she writes. "Some parents want to use the site to complain rather than to share information."
She was prepared to add to the discussion thread with a comment asking parents to remember the purpose of the site and to ask them to not turn it into a site for complaints and quarrels. She also planned to email the administrators of the site to ask them to take the post and discussion she found offensive down.
When she told Desmond of her plan, he urged her not to post anything. His concern, she writes, was that her request would have little effect and those engaged in the disagreement might "turn on her."
"Is it wrong not to post something if I really feel strongly about it?" she asks.
Molly needs to decide to do what Molly wants to do, regardless of what I or Desmond think. Do I believe that her comment will quell the masses rushing to disagree online? No. Social media sites have a way of taking on a life of their own. If the rules of engagement are not made clear or the site administrators don't do a rigorous enough job policing those who disregard those rules, the sites run the risk of becoming posts full of misinformation or rants.
The right thing, however, is for Molly to decide if she feels strongly enough to post a comment, even if it means she will become a focus of ire. Or she could simply decide to unjoin the social media group and, like Desmond, spend less time online. 
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 rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2017 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Is request half-baked or fully risen?

An independently run coffee shop has just opened its doors in a small city neighborhood. A few weeks after opening its doors, its owners posted a message to an online neighborhood message board addressed to its new neighbors. In the message, they indicated that on some days they have bagels, sandwich bread, and pastries left over at the end of the day.
"We wanted to see if anyone knows of families in the neighborhood who would want to take home what we don't use at the end of the day," the owners wrote. They asked that recommendations be emailed directly to the owners.

Neighbors began posting responses to the query almost immediately. Some offered suggestions. Others indicated that there are some city board of health restrictions that keep restaurant owners from donating extra goods to shelters or food pantries. 

But one reader of the column wrote me asking if it would be wrong to ask the cafe owners if, rather than a neighborhood family, it would be appropriate for the food to go to clinicians who work at a local neighborhood clinic. 

"If they're giving away the bread and pastry at the end of the day, could I just go in there and take it to be consumed the next day by the clinicians I work with?" she asks. Sometimes the baked goods might be consumed by the clients seen by the clinicians, she explains. "But sometimes we might eat them ourselves at our group meetings." 

Given that the clinic is on a tight budget, the reader believes that finding a free source for food that they usually have to purchase could let them use the funds saved to cover other costs. 

There seem to be two questions were raised by the reader. The first is whether it would be appropriate for her to ask for the baked goods for her clinical group even though the cafe owner specified families in the neighborhood. The second is whether she can simply go to the cafe and say she is picking them up for herself even though she knows she will be bringing them to the clinic to be used there. 

To the second question first. No, it would not be right to misrepresent whom she is picking up the baked goods for. That would be dishonest and misleading. Plus, there's no reason beyond having to explain a bit about why she wants the goods for lying or misleading. 

To the first question, yes, it's appropriate to ask the owners if they might be willing to donate the goods to the clinicians at the local clinic. While the owners specified families, the reader would be crossing no ethical lines by asking if the owners might be willing to broaden their target for the donated goods. 

The right thing is for the reader to contact the owners, thank them for their generosity, let them know what she has in mind, and then wait for their response. And the right thing for the owners is to choose to give the baked goods left over at the end of each day to whatever family or group it sees fit as long as it complies with all city health codes. 

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 rightthing@comcast.net. 

F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  


(c) 2017 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

The boss should buy his own drinks

When E.W. was promoted to manager of his division, he was thrilled. He loved his work and had a lot of respect for people who worked alongside him, some of whom he had worked with for more than a decade.
Several members of his division would regularly meet outside of work to socialize, whether for a meal at a nearby restaurant or a cookout in one of their backyards. E.W. hoped that his camaraderie with the group wouldn't change now that he "would effectively be their boss."
It's one thing after all to work alongside someone, quite different to take your marching orders from that person and be beholden to him or her for performance evaluations that could lead to promotions and salary raises. Still, E.W. was committed to fulfilling the duties of his new role and simultaneously show leadership while also maintaining the collegial tone they had all exhibited to get the work done.
Several months into his new job, E.W. was pleased that a bunch of the workers he now managed invited him to a favorite bar and grill for drinks and food after work. E.W thought it was a great sign that they felt comfortable enough to still invite him out to socialize with them even now that he was their boss.
When he arrived, a few other workers from his division were already there, so he wandered over to the tables they had commandeered. A big "hey" welcomed him and E.W. sensed all was good with his relationship.
It was then that one of the team stood up, put his arm around E.W.'s shoulder, and started walking him toward the bar.
"Let me buy you a beer," he said to E.W.
In the old days, before he was their boss, E.W. might have been fine with this. But in the old days, none of them had ever gone out of their way to buy him a beer. Their ritual was that they'd run a tab on food and drinks and divide it evenly among them at the end of the night.
Now, however, E.W. was their boss and he wasn't comfortable with having one of his direct reports buy him anything, even a drink, out of concern that any misperception might result from the action. The buyer might think he was currying favor with E.W. Or others who saw the exchange might perceive that E.W. somehow showed favor to the drink buyer over them.
"I told him thanks, but said I'd buy my own," writes E.W. Now he wonders if he was being too concerned and, as a result, insulted a guy who was just trying to do something nice.
E.W. was right to do exactly what he did. There had been no culture established of co-workers buying one another drinks, so there's no reason for that to change. Plus, if E.W. wants to set a clear precedent, doing it early on is the right thing to do. As long as E.W. is consistent in refusing to accept even minor gifts from his direct reports in the future, he needn't feel bad about having refused a drink from his former coworker at an after-work gathering. 
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 rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2017 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Does taking a gift signify approval of a neighbor's project?

There's a lot of construction going on in L.L.'s neighborhood. Empty lots are being dug up for foundations of new homes. Existing homes are going through massive renovations. Some homeowners are seeking zoning variances from the city to build multiple units on their lots. Trucks and workers arrive early every morning and the sound of machinery, hammers, saws and worker chatter fill the air.
L.L. is concerned about the extra car traffic that all the construction will bring to her once relatively quiet city neighborhood, but she also recognizes that many of the improvements being done will increase the value of her own property and create much needed housing, albeit only for those who will be able to afford it.
But one project in particular troubled L.L. The owner of a house on a large lot also owned an empty lot next door. He wanted to move his house forward on his lot and then build six new housing units on his land. To do so, he would need to seek a variance from the city zoning board. As part of this process, he solicited support from his nearby neighbors, including L.L.
L.L. thought his plans would change the whole tenor of the neighborhood and, with plans to have parking for 14 cars on his new project, would result in even more traffic congestion. When her neighbor shared his plans with her, L.L. told him exactly how she felt about his project and told him she would not support it in its current form.
The neighbor was not pleased, but he moved on and ultimately received approval for his plan to develop his residential property.
"A few weeks ago, he saw me on the street, walked over, and asked me if I wanted any of the daffodils that would be dug up as they started clearing out his lots," L.L. writes, noting that every spring hundreds of daffodils would bloom on his property. "I'd love some of the bulbs," she writes, "but it doesn't feel right to take anything from this man when I objected so much to what he was planning to do."
L.L. wants to know if she would be a hypocrite to take some of the daffodil bulbs her neighbor offered.
The neighbor already has approval to follow through on building his plan. He is doing nothing wrong by offering the daffodils to L.L. and, while he might be trying to keep the peace with his neighbors by being generous, he's going to build whether they approve of his project or whether they accept any bulbs.
By accepting the daffodils, L.L. doesn't signal to her neighbor or anyone else that she now approves of his project.
The right thing is for L.L. to accept the bulbs if she wants to accept the bulbs and to hope that she can transfer some of the beauty she used to enjoy witnessing with the coming of each spring from her neighbor's yard to her own so that she and others can enjoy the view. 
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 rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2017 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Can reader turn lost vacation into charitable deduction?

The reports of the effects of Hurricane Maria hitting Puerto Rico were devastating. Electricity lost. Homes destroyed and streets flooded. Deaths reported. In a season of horrendous natural disasters, Puerto Rico got hit especially hard.
While services are being restored to Puerto Rico and relief is finding its way to its residents, a reader from New England writes that she is at once devastated to hear the news and torn about the plans she had made for a winter trip there this coming January.
Back in the summer, S.N. had booked a condo through a vacation by owner rental site. The idea of another frigid winter in New England made her long to take a break someplace warm. She'd hoped to visit Puerto Rico for many years and this was to be the winter she would do it.
But then the storm hit. By the time October rolled around, she assumed that the chances that the island would be ready for visitors would be slim. She'd already paid for the week at the condo, but she was well within the time allowed to cancel her reservation and receive a full refund.
The problem, S.N. found, was that after contacting the vacation by rental site and being told she needed to get the owner of the condo to return the money, she couldn't get a response from the owner.
"I figured he was without phone or internet," she writes. While she feels for what he and others are going through, she still would like to cancel, receive a refund and rebook for another time.
She writes that she plans to pursue getting a refund, but she writes to ask if it would be inappropriate to take a charitable deduction from her taxes if she never hears from the condo owner and doesn't receive her money back. "If I don't get the money back, I figure he can use it for whatever restorative work he might need to do," she writes.
While it might seem callous to pose such a question, it's a fair one for S.N. to ask since she'd saved for the trip for some time and if she can't get her money back, she would at least like to know if it could be considered a donation to the relief effort in Puerto Rico.
I am not a tax expert, but I posed the question of whether S.N. could take a charitable deduction to a good friend who is. "Unfortunately, not," she said. "In order to take a charitable deduction, the gift needs to be made to a qualified 501(c)3 organization." The owner of the condo in Puerto Rico is not a 501(c)3 organization, so no deduction.
The right thing for S.N. to do is to continue to try to receive a refund if she wants one. And the right thing for her to do if she wants to help with the relief efforts in Puerto Rico is to give directly to a charity working on those efforts. Guidestar.com offers a guide to a number of reputable charities. Consumer Reports has reported that organizations including Save the Children, Direct Relief, Hispanic Federation and World Vision have people on the ground there. If other readers care to help, now is a good time 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 rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2017 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Middle school teacher struggles with students who don't like him

"How come some people don't like me?"
It's a question you hear from children and adults alike. Often it comes accompanied by sheer bafflement, given that so many others do find the questioner likeable. What makes the dis-likers dislike so much? "I teach middle grades mathematics," writes S.M., a reader in Florida. "I assure you, I only want what is best for each and every student."
But S.M. writes that there are "the traditional 5 percent" who seem to think it's them versus him, who want to blame him for their shortcomings as a student, as do some of their parents. I suspect the 5 percent observation is not a precise mathematical calculation.
S.M. is indeed baffled and has never understood why two students could be sitting side-by-side and the one with an A average in class loves him while the one with a D average hates him. "I'm only one person," he writes, "and I have to treat everyone equally."
The closest he writes that he can come to understanding why a student wouldn't like him is that he won't allow him or her to break the rules.
If S.M. is going to continue to teach, he's right to want to try to teach each person equally and to want what is best for each and every student. But he may be off in his assessment of why a small percentage of students each year seem to not like him.
Good teachers work hard at their jobs. Middle school teachers might have an especially challenging task where they are not only trying to work with students to master new material, but also trying to engage their students as they go through challenging developmental stages and wrestle with challenges outside of the classroom including the task of slowly seguing into their teenage years.
S.M. is also right that some students simply may not like to follow his rules and could initially resent him for imposing rules on them at all. Still, his job is to be fair and consistent, but mostly to work his hardest to educate his students.
But if it's the A students who love him and the D students who don't, S.M. might look to those grades as an additional explanation of why some students could be struggling to appreciate him as much as he'd like them too. If a student has a D average in class, he or she would seem to be having a challenge comprehending the material being taught. It is frustrating for anyone to feel like he or she is failing or close to failing in school or on the job. The anger S.M. experiences emanating from these students could be more about their frustration in being able to learn the material he's trying to teach as it is about them not liking him.
The right thing is for S.M. to worry less about his students liking him and more about continuing to try to do what he can to help them comprehend the material he's presenting them. If the students ultimately master the material, but S.M. still perceives that they don't like him all that much, he should focus more on successfully teaching them the math they need to now and less on how much they like him. 
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 rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2017 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

It's my party, but I won't pay for your ticket

When the guests started arrived for W.B.'s birthday celebration, she was excited. It'd been a long time since she had had many of these friends and relatives in one place together, so she was convinced it would be a grand affair.
Because W.B. lives in a city neighborhood in the Northeast, parking is scarce. Her guests would have to jockey for a space and seize upon any that they found open. They'd also have to make sure to read the posted traffic signs to make sure they weren't violating parking rules.
When she invited them, W.B. recommended to her guests where they might try to park since some streets were more restricted about parking than others. Her invitation list to this party was longer than usual since she had hit a milestone birthday, so she was hopeful everyone could park safely and legally and then enjoy themselves at her celebration.
The guests started piling in, food and drink was consumed, cake was eaten, gifts were given, and birthday wishes were spread. Her guests began to disperse, but a few stayed and helped W.B. clean up and get her apartment back in order. After the last of the guests had departed, W.B. was pooped. But all in all she writes that it was a great celebration.
The next day, one of the guests emailed her to say what a good time he'd had, to thank her, and to wish her happy birthday again. He closed by telling her that the party and good company had taken the sting out of getting a parking ticket.
W.B. felt terrible. As the day went on and other guests checked in, she learned that at least four others had also received parking tickets the night of her party.
"I'm feeling like I have some responsibility here," writes W.B. "Should I offer to pay their tickets?"
W.B. can offer to pay for the tickets if she wants, but she has no ethical obligation to do so. She went out of her way to recommend where her guests might look to park in her neighborhood, but even if she hadn't, it's not on her to check to make sure they'd parked their cars legally. Presumably, they can read a parking sign as well as she can.
If a guest had gotten a flat tire on the drive to her party, no one would expect W.B. to foot the bill for a new tire. Or if they felt a little flush on the way over and picked up a slice of pizza to take the edge off, no one would expect W.B. to reimburse for the pizza.
Knowing that some guests got hit with parking tickets may have taken some of the joy out of an otherwise positive celebration, but paying their tickets for them won't likely take away the sting. It strikes me that a good friend might have refrained from mentioning the ticket, knowing W.B. would feel bad. But none of them suggested she should pay.
The right thing is for the guests who received them to pay their own parking tickets, and to remember to park legally next time they visit W.B. 
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 rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2017 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

An ancient text teaches us that life's too short not to get along

"Soon you will be dead," can be a great admonition to yourself when trying to put things in perspective. It's also a common refrain in Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, the first offering of our ethics book of the month.
Stay with me. While Meditations was originally written in Greek by a first century Roman Emperor, it's highly readable and seems wildly relevant to a modern audience trying to cope with day-to-day ethical decisions. It's likely Marcus never intended his words to be read by others, but instead used his written observations to help himself gain perspective and keep on going even when all about him seemed filled with obstacles.
Several accessible translations are available in paperback. While I'm no Greek scholar, nor an expert on Marcus Aurelius, I'm a fan of Jacob Needleman and John P. Piazza's The Essential MarcusAurelius , (Tarcher/Penguin, 2008) for its language, although it does not feature all of the meditations. There's something therapeutic about making your way through the entire litany, recognizing that Marcus' struggles in dealing with people and leadership were consistent and ongoing. For a complete translation, Gregory Hays' (Modern Library, 2002) is a good read and the language quite accessible. (It's also fun to toggle back and forth between editions to glean the subtle differences in translations.)
Each meditation is short and can provide some perspective that the woes and travails we face today might not be all that different from those faced almost a couple of thousand years ago.
"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly," Marcus writes in meditation 2.1. "They are like this because they can't tell good from evil." Yet, Marcus copes with this observation by recognizing that no matter how flawed other people are, they are still people. "No one can implicate me in ugliness," he continues. "We are born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural."
Marcus recognizes in meditation 7.22 the power of forgiving others their mistakes and that feeling "affection for people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human." You can do it, he writes, "if you simply recognize that they're human too, that they act out of ignorance, against their will, and that you'll both be dead before long."
The right thing, Marcus suggests (and the only sane thing), is to take responsibility for our own actions. "Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do," Marcus writes in meditation 6.51. "Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. Sanity means tying it to your own actions."
As the first pick of "The Right Thing Ethics Book Club," it's an ancient text that can help to remind us that life's too short not to recognize that while we all may be flawed, the right thing is to find a way to work together by remembering we are all human beings, even if some of us are more meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly that others. 
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 rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2017 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Don't let the personal get in the way of the bigger picture

What ethical issues concern people the most?
This September marks the 19th year I've been writing "The Right Thing" column. What began as a monthly business ethicscolumn grew into a weekly general ethics column that is published in newspapers in the United States and Canada. Now, as I write what is column number 765, and it heads into its 20th year, it seems a good time to occasionally look back to try to make some sense of the ethical issues that concern readers the most.
While I've written about corporate malfeasance, lying executives and presidents, philandering CEOs, misguided values statements, overtaxed employees, petty theft, contested inheritances, uncivil political campaigns, cheating professional athletes, and roughly 700 other topics, the ones that garner the most attention are not what I would have expected.
Once the column has runs in the publications, which subscribe to it from the Tribune Content Agency, I post it to the column's blog. I've done this for almost 11 of the 19 years of the column's life. Among other things, the blog analytics allow me to see which columns are viewed the most. (It also allows me to see the column has a far larger readership from The Netherlands than I'd ever expect.)
Rather than large social issues involving politics, business or promiscuous scalawags, the most viewed column over the past 11 years was published in January 2006. The topic? Panhandlers who pick returnable cans and bottles from their neighbors' curbside recycling bins. It had almost twice as many views as It's the day-to-day ethical challenges we face that seem to interest us most. That's not to say that we're not concerned with the larger world around us, but who among us hasn't spent hours on the telephone trying to resolve a cellphone or cable television or internet service provider issue and come away feeling like it was the end of the world as we know it? These are not world shattering issues, but they are those that seem to consume us day in and day out. They too often are the issues that get in the way of us being able to address larger global issues such as war, famine and social injustices.
The right thing perhaps is to keep perspective. While we might be drawn to stories of recyclable cans, bad customer service and inappropriate job interviewers, we shouldn't allow these day-to-day issues to get in the way of doing what we can do to live an honest life and leave the world a bit of a better place than when we entered it. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2017 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.