Jeffrey L. Seglin's Blog, page 46

A powerful conversion after lousy customer service

When his daughter was planning a trip to Iceland, J.K., a reader from Boston, read the travel materials supplied by the tour group organizing her trip and discovered that she would need a plug adapter if she wanted to plug in any of the electronics she might bring with her. What the materials didn't say is whether she would also need a voltage converter since Iceland operates on a 220-volt system and North America operates at 110.
Most laptops, cellphones, and tablets have an automatic voltage converter built into their plugs, something that J.K. confirmed by reading the tiny print on the plugs themselves. The only item his daughter would need to be able to charge those items is a plug adapter.
J.K. researched online to find out what kind of plug adapter she'd need for Iceland. Then he rifled through his desk and found that he had just the kind she needed.
What J.K. didn't have was a voltage converter. His daughter would need one to charge her camera's battery. Again, he took to the internet and found a local office supply store that seemed to carry several different types.
When J.K. and his daughter got to the store, it wasn't clear which, if any, of the plug adapters was also a voltage converter. The packaging on each item was sealed tight so they couldn't get to the instructions or specifications.
On his smartphone, J.K. searched for a toll-free number for the company that manufactured some of the converters in stock, found it, and gave it a call. After finally getting through to a live customer service person, J.K. read the various model numbers to him and asked if any of them was also a voltage converter. The customer service representative said he would look the item up on his computer to see, ultimately telling J.K. that there was nothing on his screen indicating the items were voltage converters, so, "No, I suspect they're not."
After a bit of back and forth, J.K. got off the phone. He went to the information desk to ask if someone who might know something about the adapters could help him. When the clerk came over, he asked if he knew if any of the adapters was also a voltage converter. The fellow took a look at the packages and pointed out very small print (even smaller than J.K. remembers seeing on the plugs of his daughter's electronics) that indicated one of the items was indeed also a converter.
He bought it and it worked great for his daughter while she was in Iceland.
"Wasn't it unethical for the guy on the phone to tell me the adapter wasn't also a converter when he really just didn't know?"
Bad training? Maybe. Poor customer service? Perhaps. Not giving its customer service representative the tools they need to do their jobs competently? Certainly. The manufacturer could and should do a better job of training its customer service representatives to know its products.
But incompetence doesn't make the guy unethical as much as it makes him and the manufacturer look incompetent. Were it not for the knowledgeable office supply store guy helping them out, the manufacturer might have lost the business.
Fortunately, J.K.'s daughter got what she needed, and the pictures she shared with her father when she got home made them both happy. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a 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.

If I suspect my co-worker is cheating, should I report it?

For several years, a reader has struggled with how or if to address what she sees as unethical behavior in her workplace. At the large organization where she works, all hourly employees are "required" to record their work hours on a telephone "punch in and out" system. One of her co-workers for years has not used the telephone system and instead has submitted a handwritten time card, which the boss then inputs into the system.
"Those of us who work with that person know that lunches taken are not one hour, but closer to two hours most days," the reader writes. "Every day."
She also reports that his start times are actually later than what she and some of her coworkers believe is being reported. Plus, he's leaving before he puts in a full eight-hour day.
"The boss has always come in late, so may not know this," the reader writes. She and her co-workers believe, however, that the boss does know that the information he's inputting into the system is not accurate. He certainly knows that the co-worker is not meeting the "requirement" of using the telephone system to accurately record his hours.
After the boss retired about a year ago, a new administrator "has allowed the same fraud" to continue.
While she and her co-workers don't want to "tattle or be responsible for someone losing their job," they want to know how to get this to stop.
"Our company is always talking about doing the right thing and principles of responsibility and we are tired of this fraud being perpetrated by the employee and administration," she writes. The company has a compliance hotline, but she isn't sure that it is anonymous.
"Should we write a letter to the administrator?" she asks. "Or should we continue to ignore it?"
If the reader has evidence that the coworker is behaving unethically and defrauding her company by getting paid for hours he doesn't work, then she should report it. The challenge, however, is that without seeing the co-worker's paycheck or the handwritten information he submits, it's hard to know how much time he's actually reporting or how much time the boss has been recording for him. She and others may have witnessed the coworker violating the company rules by not punching in to the required system, however, so that violation seems backed by evidence.
If the suspicion exists that the coworker and the boss are behaving unethically and this is causing the reader and others concern, the right thing would be to first use the compliance hotline that the company has in place. Since the behavior is clearly resulting in the reader and her coworkers' questioning how seriously the company is about employees doing the right thing, her next step might be for them to ask for a meeting with the administrator to discuss their concerns.
Sixty percent of workers who responded to a KPMG surveyon integrity in the workplace indicated that unethical behavior is likely to result if employees believe a company's "code of conduct is not taken seriously."
The right thing for the reader's company to do is to take her and her colleagues' concerns seriously and make sure that management is holding everyone to the same ethical behavior on the job. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a 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) 2015 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

How much to cry over drunken wine

Once a month, a group of long-time friends makes a point of meeting one another for lunch at a downtown restaurant. A few weeks ago, the four friends met at a sizeable new upscale eatery that had taken over the entire food court of a shopping mall in the middle of the city near where each of them live. The new place isn't really one restaurant, but a grouping of different types of food purveyors -- some sit-down restaurants, some small fresh food shops, a few aisles of groceries, and assorted other merchants.

After meeting at the mall, their first goal was to decide where to eat. They chose one of the small sit-down restaurants. They received menus, studied them, and then prepared to place their orders. Each of them chose to order a glass of wine to accompany her meal. After the first three ordered, the last of the friends requested a glass of merlot. The waiter responded that they didn't carry merlot, but that he'd be glad to serve her a comparable substitute. She agreed.
When the orders came, the merlot seeker took a sip of her wine. It was not quite the type of wine she typically enjoyed, but after being encouraged by her friends to send it back if she didn't like it, she decided to keep it.The friends ate their meals, catching up with one another throughout.
Finally, when the bill for the meal arrived, the merlot seeker was surprised that while her friends' glasses of wine were each $11, the wine that the waiter had chosen for her as a substitute for merlot was $19.
"Instead of choosing something for me that resembled a merlot," she writes, "it seems clear that he decided to sell me one of the more expensive glasses on the menu."
Even though the merlot seeker offered to pay a bit more for her share of the bill, her friends told her not to be ridiculous and that they'd split the bill evenly four ways as was their custom.
"Now, I think I should have said something to the waiter," she writes. "Was I wrong not to?"
She wasn't wrong not to say anything at the time if she chose not to. But it also would not have been inappropriate to broach the topic with the waiter.
The right thing, however, would have been for her to ask the waiter what wine he was recommending after he made the offer and to ask him to show it to her on the menu. Doing it that way might have made her feel less self-conscious than asking about the price, although it would have been fair for her to do that as well.
The waiter should have offered to show her the wine on the menu without her having to ask, or to tell her the price. That would have been the right thing to do and it would have enhanced the possibility that the friends would be return customers. She drank it, so she paid for it. But their next gathering, she says, will be someplace else. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a 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) 2015 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

When prospective recommenders love me but hate the business

For many years, T.T., a reader from New Jersey, had wanted to work for a particular large company. He thought he had the ability and experience to do well there and believed that the company would be a perfect place to advance his career. When a position for which he believed himself to be qualified became available, he seized the moment by updating his resume and writing the most compelling cover letter he could muster.
The job posting also asked for applicants to have three recommenders send in letters attesting to the applicant's strengths and weaknesses, as well as how the applicant might fit in with the company. Now in his mid-30s, T.T. had a good track record at the places where he'd worked and he figured that finding people to write strong recommendation letters would be no problem.
He emailed three people with whom he'd worked, asking each of them if they would be willing to write a letter on his behalf. The first response he got assured him that she'd be glad to write the letter, asking T.T. to provide her with an up-to-date resume, a copy of the job description, and perhaps a copy of his cover letter so she had a sense of how he saw himself fitting into the job.
But the second person T.T. asked responded by telling him that he was not a fan of the company, its values, or the products it produced, and that T.T. could do better. When the third person responded in a similar manner, T.T. was now in the position of having to find two other people who would be willing to write recommendation letters for him.
"This doesn't seem right," T.T. writes. "I'm not asking them to buy products from the company. I'm asking them to write a recommendation letter for me."
While T.T. thinks it's fine for different people to have different opinions about particular companies, he doesn't believe that these opinions have anything to do with how he's performed on previous jobs or how people he's worked with perceive his own values and work ethic.
"All three of them had written recommendations for me in the past," writes T.T. Why should it make a difference what company I'm applying for a job at? T.T. asks. If they're willing to recommend me, shouldn't they be willing to do so regardless of where I apply?
No one should ever assume that someone he or she asks to write a recommendation letter is obligated to agree to do so. Prospective recommenders have every right to decline the invitation to write such a letter, regardless of their reasons for not wanting to write one. If a recommender doesn't want to write T.T. a letter because they have strong feelings about the company to which he's applying, then that's their reason.
It makes no sense for T.T. to try to convince someone who doesn't want to write a letter to write one. The right thing is for T.T. to thank them for considering his request and then to move on to someone else who might be agreeable to write him a letter that could help him get the job he wants. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a 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

When travel plans are about to sink

When S.W. booked a trip for her first ocean liner cruise, she was excited. Now retired, S.W. had been looking forward to traveling and a trip on a large ship that was on her travel wish list. She'd even convinced a friend to book the same cruise so they could share a stateroom. 

The cruise is scheduled to depart five months from now. S.W. and her friend left a small deposit two months ago, which they knew they'd lose if they'd canceled the trip.

In the two months since she left the deposit, S.W. has been having second thoughts about the trip. The recent death of a close family member as well as some health issues of her own had caused S.W. to think that she might want to use her travel budget to go see family rather than be on a ship for a couple of weeks. 

S.W. thinks she might be able to tell the cruise line that she's canceling her trip because of a death in the family, although providing a death certificate as proof would likely be a challenge since the family member's death would have been more than a half-year before her cruise is set to embark. If she cancels, she figures she'll lose about $100. But she'd also be leaving her friend and ship roommate in the lurch, forcing her to decide to either find a new roommate to book the cruise or to cancel the trip herself. 

S.W. asks if it would be wrong to cancel her trip and leave her friend without a roommate, and also whether it would be wrong to tell the cruise line that her family member's death is the reason she plans to cancel. 

If S.W. no longer wants to go on the cruise, she shouldn't feel obligated to take the cruise. No one should feel obligated to travel when they don't want to, particularly on a large vessel in the middle of an ocean. She should feel no guilt whatsoever about changing her mind. 

If she does decide to cancel, however, particularly because she convinced her friend to go on the trip with her, she should let her friend know that she's no longer planning to go on the journey. She should do this soon so that her friend has as much time as possible to decide whether she still wants to go without S.W. 

If the reason for her decision to cancel was to attend a family funeral, then it would be fine for S.W. to let the cruise line know that that was her reason. But since there is no memorial service planned for when the cruise would take place, the death in S.W.'s family doesn't present an obstacle for her to go if she wants to. Misrepresenting the facts to the cruise line as a reason for the cancellation would be wrong, even if it mean S.W. might also get her $100 back after canceling. 

The right thing is for S.W. to decide whether she wants to go on this cruise or not, and then to be honest with her friend and the cruise line about her decision to cancel. 

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a 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) 2015 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

BuzzFeed & Trump, and Obama's Farewell Speech

After BuzzFeed released the unsubstantiated dossier on President-Elect Trump, many media outlets asked about the ethics involved in BuzzFeed's decision.

I spoke with Wisconsin Public Radio's Central Time on the issue. You can read the archived interview here (8 minutes). 

I also spoke with Voice of America on the topic here, and Vanity Fair here. 

Some thoughts on President Obama's farewell speech and his focus on values, cynicism, and engagement appear here.

Journalistic Ethics Following Release Of Trump Dossier

After BuzzFeed released the unsubstantiated dossier on President-Elect Trump, many media outlets asked about the ethics involved in BuzzFeed's decision.

I spoke with Wisconsin Public Radio's Central Time on the issue. You can read the archived interview here (8 minutes). 

I also spoke with Voice of America on the topic here, and Vanity Fair here. 

Some thoughts on President Obama's farewell speech and his focus on values, cynicism, and engagement appear here.

When to use little white lies on resumes? Never

While the job market for recent college graduates is a bit stronger than it might have been eight years ago, finding a job that's a good fit can still be a challenge. Even though they can be useful, networking websites can only go so far in identifying potential job offers. It still can be an anxiety-filled process to search for a job, particularly when your professional experience might not yet be all that substantial.
Recently, a reader told me of an experience she had when trying to fill a position at her business. She received dozens of applications for an open position, many from seemingly qualified applicants. One applicant worked for a business that the reader knew well. She grew surprised when the applicant described her duties on her resume that closely resembled those of someone else the reader knew worked there. She thought that the applicant might have replaced this other person, but there was no way to tell from the resume. Since the skills and experience the applicant described mirrored those the reader was looking for, she called her in for an interview.
At the interview, the reader discovered that the applicant reported to the person the reader knew at the other business. In the interview, it became clear that the applicant had neglected to indicate that she assisted with many of the tasks she had listed on her resume, but didn't really have the direct experience running and managing operations that she'd suggested she'd had.
The applicant was quite forthcoming in the interview about what responsibilities she actually had at her current job, and that the roles she mentioned on her resume consisted of assisting someone else.
"So you don't actually have a management role where you currently work?" the reader asked the applicant.
"No," she responded. The interview ended and the applicant never got the job.
Now, the reader wonders whether she had an ethical responsibility to raise the issue with this applicant of providing misleading information on the resume she'd submitted.
The reader's experience raises how tempting it might be for job seekers to pad their resumes by embellishing their actual experience. Sometimes, such padding might consist of outright fabrications where expertise or experience is listed that an applicant clearly doesn't have. Other times, applicants such as the one with whom the reader met try to make their current job responsibilities appear to be more than they actually are. Each type of embellishment is wrong and easily found out with some quick due diligence by an interviewer. Then there is the padding that is hard to verify, such as claiming skills or hobbies that might be relevant to a prospective employer but for which there is no actual record. Such embellishments are also wrong.
The reader did the right thing by asking the applicant pointed questions to get at whether the experience she listed actually reflected the experience she had. Her responsibility is to her employer to do the most thorough due diligence possible on each applicant to make sure that the person they hire has the experience needed and claimed.
The right thing for the applicant or any applicant is to make themselves as attractive to a prospective employer as possible, but never to use big or small lies to try to get a foot into the door. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a 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) 2015 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Visitors to an empty house worry neighbor

The home sales in a city neighborhood in the Northeast United States have been brisk. Older multifamily homes have been scooped up by real estate developers, gutted, renovated, and then sold as high-priced condominiums. At any given time, A.K., who has lived in and owned a home in the neighborhood for the past 30 years, has noticed that at least three houses are under construction.
In late November, the house next door to A.K.'s was sold. While the house had been fully occupied, it had been in a state of disrepair for many years with porch railings missing, window panes broken, and trees overgrown. Within a week of the sale closing and the former occupants moving out, the new owners had a dumpster delivered to the property and hired a demolition crew to begin ripping out cabinets, windows and walls.
The new owners had been good about letting A.K. and other neighbors know their plans for the house, by stopping by in person, leaving a letter, or emailing to alert them to any plans that might prove disruptive. They'd be given a heads up that demolition workers would be taking a day's break to allow for large trucks to make their way onto the property so that arborists could begin to trim back several of the trees on the property.
Shortly after the arborists finished, A.K. took a walk over to the neighboring house to see how work was progressing. No workers were on site. But then A.K. noticed a car with two men pull up next to the house. One got out and kept talking on his cellphone. The other got out holding a wooden paddle and started checking doors. When he found one that wasn't locked he walked in.
"I asked the guy on the phone if he was working with the new owners," A.K. said. The guy told him he wasn't, but that he was in the demolition business and would like to work with them. As they were talking, his partner with the paddle exited the house, yelled over to the cellphone guy that the place was a mess, and then the two of them drove off.
"Should I say something to the new owners or mind my own business?" A.K. asks.
A.K. has no obligation to say something to the new owners about visitors to their property. But A.K. says he isn't only concerned for them but about the possibility of kids or others getting into the house and getting hurt in the process. Since there's no electricity or heat in the house any more, he's also concerned that someone might start a fire to keep warm and end up burning down the house as well as a few neighbors' houses in the process.
"But it's really none of my business," A.K. writes.
Given his concerns, it is A.K.'s business. The right thing is to use the contact information that the new owners had given him and let them know about the visitors. It's up to them how to respond. If they do nothing and A.K. believes others' safety is jeopardized by the house being unsecured, he should contact municipal authorities. Worrying about being judged for not minding his own business should be secondary to making sure he and his neighbors remain safe. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a 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) 2015 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Should I expect my waitress to rise to the occasion?

During the holiday season, every year for the past 14 years, A.L, a reader from the Northeast, accompanies her daughter and her two grandsons into the city for an outing. The outing regularly includes a theater production or movie, but always includes a meal at a downtown restaurant. Given her grandson's appetite, the tastier the food and the bigger the portions, the better.
For the past several years, the restaurant of choice for these outings has been an Italian restaurant that serves traditional Italian dishes and freshly baked bread that the boys consume with vigor. Last year, as A.L. and her family were finishing their meal, the waitress came over to the table with a small loaf of bread that she had wrapped up for each grandson to take home with him. "I have a teenage brother so I know how teenage boys are always hungry," the waitress told A.L. and her daughter as she handed them the bread. They hadn't ordered the bread and there was no charge for it. The boys devoured the bread on their walk through the city after their meal.
This year, A.L. and her family are planning to go to the same restaurant as part of their outing. She loved that the waitress offered the bread at the end of the meal the previous year, something that none of their previous waitresses had done. She'd love it if the meal ended with a nice freshly baked takeaway again this year.
"Would it be wrong for me to tell our waitress this year about our experience last year and see if she might do the same?" asks A.L. "But I don't want to get anyone in trouble by asking."
A.L.'s concern is that the prior year's waitress might have broken one of the restaurant's rules by giving them bread as they were leaving. She doesn't want to call attention to the prior year's offering if it would risk getting someone in trouble. Still, the grandsons do love the bread.
The restaurant doesn't charge customers when they ask for more bread with their meals, so it's unlikely that the prior year's waitress did anything wrong or that this year's waitress would say no. There would be nothing wrong with A.L. telling this year's waitress about their experience last year and asking if it might be repeated. The waitress might respond that she's not permitted to give them extra bread and then A.L. would have to decide if she wants to purchase it for the boys to eat on their walk.
The right thing would be for A.L. to decide how important it is to her to leave the restaurant with the bread snack for her grandsons. If she'd like to explore the possibility of it happening again, she shouldn't hesitate to ask the waitress for help in making it happen.
If A.L. believes that the simple gesture would make the traditional outing even a bit more special, then it's worth putting her concern aside and trusting her waitress to respond graciously and professionally to her request. A.L. shouldn't tip her waitress any less if she can't comply with the bread-to-go request, but if the waitress does come through, A.L. might tip her even better. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a 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) 2015 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.