Jeffrey L. Seglin's Blog, page 47

If my handyman did time, do I give him another chance?

For years, H.F. has helped out his childhood friend's stepson by hiring him for odd jobs around his house, mostly yard work. Even as he grew into adulthood, the friend's stepson had trouble holding down a full-time job, instead relying on his stepfather for support him. H.F. regularly employed him for the occasional odd job.
After H.F.'s friend died, he kept hiring his friend's stepson for the occasional job as a way of helping him stay on his feet. When the friend's stepson worked, he worked hard and did a good job.
But H.F. says that the stepson began to start asking to be paid before each job was complete. H.F. never agreed to do this, but he says he suspected something was going on in the stepson's life that made him a bit more desperate for money.
One weekend, H.F. got a call from the stepson's mother letting him know that H.F. had been arrested for trying to break into a store after it had closed and steal the cash register. Before he could leave the store, the stepson was caught by the police and arrested for burglary. He was convicted of a misdemeanor and sentenced to several months in jail.
Now that the stepson has served his time and is out of jail, he's been living with his mother and has been in touch with H.F. to see if he might have a few odd jobs he could do for him.
H.F. says that he always hired the stepson for the occasional job around his house out of loyalty to his old friend, and because he would have hired someone else anyway to do the same work. But now he is wondering whether he should continue to hire the stepson given his recent arrest and conviction for attempted burglary. All of the jobs H.F. hires him to do are around his house, and, if he's being totally honest, he wonders whether it's wise to risk having the stepson steal anything from him.
"In all the years I hired him to do work, he never stole anything from me that I know of," H.F. says. He says he has no reason to believe that that will change now that the stepson is out of jail.
H.F. says he's inclined to hire the stepson for the occasional job he needs done around his house. But he wants to know if it's wrong to trust the stepson given his criminal record.
While it was good of H.F. to give the work to his friend's stepson when he needed a job done, he was under no obligation to do so when his friend was still alive and before the stepson went to jail. He's also under no obligation to do so now.
But he's also not wrong to give the stepson the work and a chance to make some money now that he's served his time. The right thing is to decide if he's comfortable with the stepson doing work around the house, set up clear parameters about how much and when he will get paid, and to monitor the work the stepson does. In other words, to do business with the stepson exactly as he had in the past.
If H.F. needs the work done and feels comfortable having his old friend's stepson do the job, he should do it. 
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 pretend to support my boss's spouse's candidacy?

A reader, let's call him Chuck, from the Southwest United States finds himself at odds with many of his colleagues when it comes to political views. The reader considers himself less conservative than most others with whom he works, but he writes that he never flaunts his views nor criticizes those of others unless he finds something they say specifically offensive. Chuck has found that keeping politics out of the workplace has been relatively easy -- up until recently.
This past fall, Chuck's boss's spouse was campaigning for a local position. While his boss always espoused that he had no party affiliation but was an independent, his spouse ran on a conservative ticket with a conservative platform. For much of the year leading up to the November election, Chuck's boss spent time working on his spouse's campaign. But up until a few weeks before the election, his boss had kept his campaigning out of the office.
A few weeks before the election, Chuck's boss arranged an assortment of his spouse's campaign collateral material in his office and sent out an email to others in the company inviting them to come and get a button, bumper sticker, magnet, or yard sign supporting his spouse for office if they wanted one.
Chuck, who writes that he has never shied away from being blunt. "My desire for gainful employment softened my resolve," he writes. He "reluctantly" took home a bumper magnet so it would seem as if he supported his boss's spouse. "It never made it past the waste basket at home." Chuck isn't sure that his boss didn't check his vehicle to see if the bumper sticker he took was in use.
The boss's spouse lost her election to the more liberal opponent.
"Was I wrong to insinuate that I would support a candidate based on personal/professional connections rather than on my own political biases and platform affinities?" asks Chuck. "The courageous choice would have been to point out the inappropriate nature of the request at the time it was delivered, but I failed to do this. Instead, I offered a feigned agreement of support and collected the bumper sticker for corroboration."
Now, Chuck asks: "What role does ethics play in calling out a superior's unethical behavior?"
I'm not a labor lawyer, so I won't speak to the legality of Chuck's boss sending that email to his colleagues. But ethically, Chuck is right that it was inappropriate for the boss to do so.
Chuck's concern about keeping his boss happy so he can remain gainfully employed is fair, but Chuck didn't have to respond to his boss's email. He knows that by taking a magnetic bumper sticker, he might have been sending a signal to his boss that he intended to support the boss's spouse.
If Chuck didn't feel comfortable bluntly confronting his boss by telling him how inappropriate his email and campaign paraphernalia was, the right thing would have been for Chuck to simply ignore the email and not show up to collect any campaign material.
And the right thing would have been for Chuck's boss's boss or someone from the human resources department to tell Chuck's boss that he was wrong to send the email and he should never use company email for such purposes again. 
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 agree with my uncle's politics to make him stop talking?

When he was eight years old, my oldest grandson, Evan, asked if each of us gathered around the table for Thanksgiving could say something we were thankful for or to sing a song. We were in the middle of eating at the time, so the request came kind of randomly, yet we obliged. One by one, we expressed thanks or sang a short tune.
In the U.S., Thanksgiving tends to kick off a season of family gatherings. While it is always an issue, given the particularly contentious presidential election that just ended, I have received more than the usual number of questions about the right way to talk with family about politics when thrust around the same dinner table. The questions come with even more vigor from those who know they are about to break bread with some loved ones whose views run quite counter to their own.
A reader from Massachusetts wrote that he and his partner were specifically asked ahead of time not to talk about politics at a dinner to which they were invited. The host mentioned she knew that family at the dinner had strong, yet opposing, political viewpoints. She preferred such potentially difficult conversations not be brought up over dinner. "What should we do if politics do arise?" the reader asks.
I ascribe to the notion that the host gets to set the rules. If it's tradition or a request that no politics (or some other topic that might prove heated or, in some cases inappropriate) be discussed at the dinner table, the right thing to do is to honor the host or the tradition.
But a tougher question facing many is what to do if there are no established rules. What if someone around the table states a political position with which you disagree? Should you sit quietly? Verbally support that person's view to avoid unpleasantries? Nod in agreement? Flee the premises?
There's no ethical upside to pretending to hold a position that you don't simply to appease another guest. If the discussion is indeed a discussion, then it's perfectly appropriate to offer a different viewpoint if you have one. Fleeing is generally a poor option, particularly if you're enjoying your meal.
But offering a different viewpoint is different from trying to convert your dinner guest to thinking like you do. If you go into a discussion believing that your goal is to convert those to think like you do, it's unlikely you'll succeed. A good discussion involves as much listening as it does talking. And it's important to gauge others at the table to make sure any discussion doesn't make them uncomfortable or simply bore them.
At family gatherings, we know the people and we know the traditions. The right thing is to honor the same traditions we've always honored, not to pretend to hold views we don't simply to keep the peace, and respect those with whom we're talking.
It's also good to remember that politics isn't the only thing families and friends talk about. We talk about our kids, our work, our hobbies -- any number of things that don't require taking a particular side.
When all else fails, suggesting that each person at the table take turns expressing their thanks for something or breaking into song might not be a bad option. 
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.

Must I tell a Facebook friend I dumped him?

Lots of people are using social media. If you believe the reports, Facebook now has 1.79 billion, WhatsApp has 500 million, LinkedIn has 467 million, Twitter has 284 million, and Instagram has 200 million monthly active users.
On each of these sites, users build a network of friends, contacts, or followers who can see whatever they choose to share on their accounts. Likewise, users can see on their own feeds whatever their friends, contacts, or followers choose to post on their own accounts.
While on some social media platforms it's possible to adjust settings so that you remain friends but not see everything everyone else posts on your own feed, some users grow weary when those in their network are overzealous in their postings. Too many photos of what they ate for lunch, or videos of perky cats dancing to Bruce Springsteen songs, or articles about political candidates they loathe or love can push some social media users to want to remove someone from their network or, if their posts have been perceived to be offensive, to block them.
A reader, let's call him Joe, recently decided that he'd had enough of a friend of his posting suspect news articles to Facebook and chose to unfriend him. "He was a Facebook friend," Joe says, "not a friend friend."
Unfriending someone on Facebook is as simple as clicking a couple of buttons. The unfriended doesn't receive any notification he's been dumped. The only way the friend could discover this is if he notices he's not seeing posts from Joe on his own Facebook feed anymore, or if he goes to Joe's profile page and notices that they are no longer identified as friends.
"Is it wrong for me to have dumped him without telling him?" Joe asks. "If his posts were enough to make me not want to be connected to him anymore, should I feel obligated to tell him that's why I unfriended him?"
Many social media users regularly clean their lists of friends, contacts, or followers. Sometimes they do this because they no longer have a desire to see whatever those people post. Sometimes, they simply can't remember who the person is or why they are connected to begin with.
While Joe's Facebook friend might be hurt or surprised that he and Joe are no longer friends, Joe is under no obligation to tell him or anyone else on his social media networks if he decides to sever ties.
If Joe (or you) are so offended by something someone in your network posts that you believe it's important to take a stand and let him know that you found a post offensive, then by all means, take that stand. But if you've simply tired of seeing posts of a particular type and relegating that person to those to whom you are still connected but who don't show up on your feed doesn't feel like enough, then you have every right to dump them while feeling no remorse for doing so.
It's up to each of us to decide just how social we want to be on social media and with whom we want to be social. 
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.

Facebook Live: Q&A: How to talk politics with family

What's my bracelet really worth?

Several years ago, M.C.'s home insurance broker advised her that she should consider having any valuables she had at home appraised just in case there was a theft or damage to the property. M.C. took the advice and contacted a local jewelry store to do the appraising. She left her jewelry at the store and a week or so later she received the appraisals which M.C. filed with her insurance company.
Among the items M.C. had appraised were several pieces of jewelry she had purchased or received as gifts over the years -- an assortment of rings, bracelets and necklaces. One of these pieces was an art deco bracelet with amethyst and small diamond chips in it that her mother had found years before and had given M.C. after she commented that she liked it.
When the appraisals came back, the found art deco bracelet was determined to be a white gold with amethyst small diamond chips and valued at $450. M.C. was tickled that a bracelet she had no plans to sell and that was found on the street by her mother had such value.
Several years passed. M.C.'s still occasionally wore the bracelet, but not as frequently as she had before since the safety latch never held closed consistently and it proved a nuisance to keep on her wrist.
One morning as she was reading her daily newspaper over breakfast, M.C. saw an ad from a jewelry store announcing that it was doing free appraisals. The store was a different one from the one that had done the appraisal several years before. M.C. had the day off from work, so she decided to go downtown to run some errands and to pop into the jewelry store to see how much the bracelet might be worth now.
The clerk greeted her, admired the bracelet, and then told M.C. that he wasn't really sure what metal the bracelet was made of. "First, he told me he thought it was 14-karat gold," M.C. writes. If it is, it'd be worth about $130, he told her. But then, he asked M.C. to hold on and he went and retrieved a small vial. He used a dropper to drop some liquid on the bracelet. After a few seconds of looking over the bracelet, he asked her to wait while he consulted with his manager.
When he returned, the clerk told M.C. that they thought the bracelet was gold filled and had no value. M.C. never mentioned the other appraisal to the clerk. She thanked him and went about her day.
"Now, I'm wondering," she writes, "if the bracelet is stolen or if it gets destroyed in a house fire or something, am I obligated to tell my insurer that this other jeweler didn't agree with the first appraiser?"
The right thing is for M.C. to feel just fine about sticking with the original appraisal. The first appraiser took time to study the bracelet and then returned a detailed written appraisal to M.C. The second jeweler, which ran the come-in-and-get-your-stuff-appraised ad as a gimmick to lure customers into the store, seemed unsure and never wrote up an official appraisal.
While she still has no plans to sell the bracelet, M.C. can rest easy knowing that the official appraisal on record with her insurer is one that can be trusted. 
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.

Am I responsible to fix utility's error for my neighbor?

It had been a long day at work for C.L., a reader from Boston. She'd started work early and was home right before 6 p.m. As she walked up the sidewalk to turn into the walkway to the stairs to her house, she noticed a door-knob-type notice taped with masking tape to her fence.
It was from the Boston Water and Sewer Commission (BWSC). At the top of the notice in red type were printed the words, in all capital letters: "Final attempt notice to customers. You must schedule within 24 hours." Scanning down the note, another boldfaced sentence in red type read: "To avoid potential disruption of our water service an appointment must be made within 24 hours."
As C.L. read on, she learned that the BWSC was requiring all of its customers to have new automated water meters installed in their homes. The engineering firm responsible for the installations instructed readers of the notice to call within 24 hours to set up an appointment to let an engineer into the house to make the change.
Since the note indicated that BWSC's operators were standing by until 7 p.m. on weeknights, C.L. called the number given to make an appointment. The operator told her that she would call her back later that evening. C.L. would have to take time off of work to let the representative into the house, so she was eager to take care of business. No one called back that night.
The following day, C.L.'s husband, R.L. got home from work in the late afternoon. The phone rang and a perplexed operator indicated that C.L. had called about the change.
"We're confused because your meter was already changed out last September," the operator said.
"Then why did someone from your company leave a note threatening in red letters to shut off our water if we didn't call you right away?"
The conversation continued, until R.L looked more closely at the notice and saw that in scrawled handwriting at the bottom of the notice, the address for a house a block away from his appeared. He explained this to the operator and they both agreed that the notice had been delivered to the wrong house.
"Then why did your people deliver the notice to the wrong house if this is so important?" asked R.L.
"I'm in Louisiana, so I don't know," the operator responded.
"Will you make a note to make sure that the house that should have received this gets a new notice?" he asked. He was assured it would.
Now, C.L. and R.L. want to know if they are obligated to find the right house and leave the notice they got there, just in case BWSC screws up again.
It's the BWSC's responsibility to do its job, or have its representatives do theirs. C.L. and R.L. have no responsibility to re-deliver the notice. But they should take a stroll down the street and leave the notice for its intended recipient. It's both the right thing and the neighborly thing to do. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a 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.

We all want a name when we lose

It's tough to lose.
After losing the Super Bowl last January, Carolina Panthers quarterback, Cam Newton, was widely criticized for appearing to be a sore loser during his post-game press conference. Granted, I've never played football at the level at which Cam Newton plays so I've no idea the emotional havoc that Newton's 24 to 10 loss to the Denver Broncos wreaked on him.
Most of us like to win. While the saying didn't originate with him, legendary Green Bay Packers coach is widely quoted for his "Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing." Later in life, after receiving criticism for the sentiment being too harsh, Lombardi offered a corrective by observing that what he actually said was that winning "is not everything, but making the effort to win is." (A terrifically researched origins story for Lombardi's famous quote was written by Steven J. Overman for Football Studies.)
Is there a right way to lose?
It's a challenge to lose, particularly to lose gracefully. But most of us have faced losing at some contest in our lives.
I'm taken each time I see my grandsons play in a high school soccer match, not just with pride in seeing them play well and together with their classmates, but particularly after each game they lose when they line up and shake the hands of each player on the opposing team, as well as the two referees before they return to huddle with their coach. Sure, occasionally a player mutters an obscenity under his breath so an opponent who was particularly rough or unsportsmanlike during the game can hear, but out of earshot of the officials. The tradition of shaking hands after a loss or a win tries to send a message to the players that there is grace both in winning and losing.
A copy of a letter from President George H.W. Bush toPresident Bill Clinton that greeted Clinton on his desk in the Oval office his first day on the job in the White House after he had defeated Bush in a U.S. presidential election went viral a couple of weeks ago. "Your success is now our country's success," Bush wrote. "I am rooting for you." It's hard to find a stronger example of gracious losing.
Learning how to lose well is an ethical act. "Ethics is how we behave when we decide we belong together," wrote Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers in A Simpler Way . "Daily we see this interplay of ethics and belonging in our own lives. We want to be part of an organization. We observe what is accepted or rewarded, and we adapt. But these ethics are not always good. We may agree to behaviors that go against personal or societal values. Months or years later, we dislike the person we have become. Did we sacrifice some essential aspect of ourselves in order to stay with an organization? What was the price of belonging?"
The right thing is to enjoy winning, but to learn to lose gracefully.
In "Deacon Blues" Steely Dan sang: "They got a name for the winners in the world. I want a name when I lose." The goal should be to work to avoid being named "sore" when we lose. 
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 do I need to tell my prospective lender?

For more than 30 years, JLK, a reader from Georgia, has been working hard at his job. He's been contemplating retiring next year or the year after. Right now, JLK rents an apartment, but he has his eye on buying a foreclosed house in a neighborhood close to family members.
At first, JLK planned to wait until retirement to attempt to buy the house. Given that he'd need a mortgage to afford the purchase, he figured that a lending institution would be less likely to offer one to someone who is retired and on a modest fixed income from his retirement savings.
Based on this perception, for a while, JLK decided that trying to buy the house of his retirement dreams was a nonstarter. But then a friend asked him why he planned to wait until he was fully retired to buy the place. Aside from having to move all of his stuff while he was still engrossed in his full-time job, JLK couldn't think of a compelling reason to wait.
"A bank is much more likely to offer you a mortgage when you're still working and bringing in your salary," JLK says his friend told him.
True enough, JLK thought. But given that he knows he might retire in a year or two, he wonders if he's obligated to tell the bank of these short-term plans when he applies for a mortgage.
"Would it be wrong to ask for a mortgage based on my current salary when I know that that salary is very likely to be substantially lower in a couple of years?" he asks.
JLK is concerned that if he withholds the information from a mortgage lender about the fact that he might soon decide to retire that he would be misleading the lender. Somehow that feels a shade of wrong to him.
Focusing on the "might" in JLK's comment about soon retiring is helpful in responding to him about the right thing to do in this situation. While he indeed might retire in a year or two, he also might decide to put that action off for longer. He might do a lot of things that could affect his financial condition in the future -- run up credit card bills, pay for a pricey cruise by drawing down some of his savings, skip a car payment or two. Right now, however, he's still working and still drawing a salary and that, plus his other financial history, should be what he provides to any place he applies to for a mortgage.
If JLK wants to try to buy the house and he can afford to do so by obtaining a mortgage, the right thing is to apply for one and go from there.
Putting the purchase off because of what might or what might not happen may result in JLK losing out on something he really wants. "Life moves pretty fast," the eminent philosopher, Ferris Bueller, once said. "If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." JLK should try not to miss out on this opportunity. 
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.

Hedging for a final invoice agreement

Late this summer, E.C., reader from New England, discovered that the privet hedge that surrounded his yard was dying. The hedge had lived in the front and side yard since he purchased the house more than 30 years earlier. So E.C. was faced with the decision of whether to replace the hedge or to have it ripped out and replaced with something else.
That decision didn't take E.C. long. Because the hedge had taken hours every couple of weeks in the spring and summer to trim and weed, he had longed for a hedge-free yard for probably 29 of the past 30 years he'd owned the house. Now that the hedge was dying, he saw a perfect opportunity to create a lower maintenance yard.
After interviewing several different landscapers, E.C. hired one to remove the hedge and then to re-grade his yard and put down new sod where the hedge had been as well as throughout the rest of the yard. He received an estimate for the job, agreed to the price, and the work began.
On the third morning of the project, the landscaper mentioned to E.C. that he might want to have a dry well constructed in the front yard to keep the drainage from the gutters getting too close to the home's foundation. The cost of the dry well was not part of the original estimate for the landscaping. The landscaper told E.C. he would let him know how much the dry well would cost so E.C. could decide if he wanted to add that to the work being done.
E.C. went off to work. The landscape crew continued to work, and no word was ever spoken about the dry well again while the work was being done.
When the project was completed, E.C. loved how his new yard looked. Neighbors did too. The landscaped was pleased with the work too, and asked E.C.'s permission to put a sign in the front yard mentioning the landscaping was done by his company. E.C. agreed and the sign went up.
A few days later, E.C. received an email with an attached pdf from the landscaping company. The pdf was of an invoice for $1,306 for the dry well. If he paid within 10 days, E.C. could get a 10 percent discount and pay $1,175.
E.C. responded with an email that he had no idea that they went ahead and constructed the dry well so he was surprised at the additional cost. The landscaper apologized and said that they determined it was really needed and they installed it the day he and E.C. discussed the possibility.
Ultimately, the landscaper offered to accept $986 to cover materials and told E.C. he would eat the labor costs as a show of good faith. E.C. agreed, but wonders if he did the right thing by paying anything rather than fighting the cost for the un-agreed-upon work.
While E.C. could have decided to try to fight the cost since he hadn't agreed to it up front, his decision to agree to pay the $986 for the work done was the right thing to do. Had E.C. consulted a lawyer, he might urged him to fight the bill. But E.C. did the right thing by agreeing to what both he and his landscaper believed was fair. 
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.