Jeffrey L. Seglin's Blog, page 5

When yard sale customers pay but don’t pick up their goods

How long must you wait for someone who purchased an item but never picked it up at a yard sale?

Back during the first week of September, a reader we’re calling Alice participated in her neighborhood’s annual neighborhood yard sale. Dozens of houses participate every year and Alice has long enjoyed clearing out her attic, basement and closets of things she no longer needs or wants but that might provide some use to someone else.

Alice lives in a neighborhood in a large New England city that is easy to get to by subway and has plenty of on-street parking, so the yard sale is frequented by people from all over who attend to see if they can find something specific they might be looking for or to be surprised by something they never knew they needed until they saw it for sale.

Every year, Alice finds enough stuff to place out on a folding table in front of her house. She makes about $100, a bit more if the weather is particularly nice, and even more if she has some old pieces of furniture to sell.

The weather this year was perfect, according to Alice. A warmish fall day in New England with no rain in sight. The posted yard sale hours were from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. The steady stream of potential customers began right at the start and continued throughout the day. Because Alice was at the start of her block, every once in a while someone who bought something would ask if they could pick it up later in the day, especially if it was on the larger size and if they were already carrying quite a few items from others’ sales.

At about 11 a.m., Alice sold a set of dishes and a few pieces of glassware to a customer. After he paid, she offered to put the items in a box and he asked if he could pick up the box at the end of the day. She agreed and then he placed a sleeve of plastic drinking cups he had purchased elsewhere into the box and left them on Alice’s front steps.

By the end of the day, the customer hadn’t returned. Nevertheless, Alice left the box on the steps overnight in case he returned the next morning. No appearance. Three days passed and the customer never arrived for the pickup. Finally, on the fourth day, rain was predicted so Alice moved the box to her basement and figured the customer would ring the bell if he ever showed up.

It's been more than two months now and there has been no sign of the customer. Alice wants to know if she’s obligated to hold onto the goods.

I am not an expert in yard sale law, but it seems that if Alice were moving or truly didn’t have space to store the items, she would be OK getting rid of them. But given that the box is not taking up much space in her basement and it contains an item that the customer bought elsewhere, the right thing seems to be to hold onto the item to see if the customer shows up, even if it’s at next year’s sale. If it becomes a burden to do so, then Alice should be clear finding a new home for the goods.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of  The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice , is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin. 

(c) 2024 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

What running a light decades ago taught me

Is it OK to take glee in wanting someone who made the same mistake as you did to get caught?

Several decades ago when my parents were still alive and living in Williamsburg, Virginia, the woman I’d eat bees for and I decided to make the drive from Boston to Williamsburg to pay a visit. We decided to break up the trip by stopping overnight in Washington, D.C., to visit some friends and to explore some of the many museums there.

One evening we were driving through Georgetown to meet our friends. I was driving. I approached a stoplight that was turning yellow and soon to turn red. Instead of slowing down and stopping, I proceeded through the yellow light and took a right turn onto a side street. I was greeted by a police offer waving me to pull over next to another car that had apparently already been pulled over for running the light.

As the officer approached my window, I rolled it down, and she began by asking if I knew I had run a red light. Before I could even consider deciding whether to acknowledge the truth or come up with some lame excuse, the driver in a car that had already been pulled over shouted over to her: “Give him a ticket too.”

The officer broke off her conversation with me, looked over the top of my car at the gentleman in the other car, and then waved me on with what I recall was an exaggerated wave of her hand and simply told me: “You can go on.”

My assumption has always been that had the other guy not shouted out at her, I too would have received a citation for running the light. Was she right to give me a pass on my infraction? Probably not. I was wrong and deserved a ticket. Did I argue with her? No.

Certainly, the other driver was upset that he had been pulled over and ticketed. I would have been too. But that he felt the need to vocally make sure that others were punished simply because he had been wouldn’t have made his ticket any less expensive. Sure, the fair thing would have been for me to be treated as he had been and I likely would have been had he let the officer do her job.

That incident from back in the mid-1980s has stuck with me all these years. It reinforced a sense that each of us should try to take responsibility for our own actions rather than make sure everyone goes down with us. Did I know whether his infraction was greater than mine? No. Could the officer simply have decided that a warning for me running the yellow light was enough? Sure. Perhaps she was simply showing me kindness rather than reacting to the berating she received from the other driver.

That incident also made me more careful at stop lights while driving, not just in Georgetown, but anywhere. I’ve not been stopped for running a light since. But if I am, the right thing would be to acknowledge my error, pay my fine and move on.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of  The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice , is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin. 

(c) 2021 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Don’t get angry. Get to work

What is the right way to act when something doesn’t turn out as you would have liked it to?

Most of us have found ourselves in a situation where we would have preferred a different outcome. Often such events don’t rise to the level of calamity, but instead result in a disappointment.

It rains on our walk to work. A favorite sports team loses a close game. We drop a pen between the front cushion of our car and the middle console and can’t fish it out. These and other such incidents rarely result in apoplectic rage.

But there are occasionally events that do seem to fill us with a palpable sense of rage. A tyrannical manager wreaks havoc on our workplace without being called out for his or her behavior. A teacher seems impatient with our inability to grasp a complex topic in the classroom. A politician we claim to loathe wins an election against our favored candidate.

One response to these more severe incidents is to embrace an anger that we carry with us as it festers. Rarely does this anger result in a positive outcome. More often the anger causes us more harm than it does the person to whom it is directed.

A quotation attributed to Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher of the first and early second century, captured how anger may not be the most constructive of emotions: “Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.”

So what then is the right thing to do when things don’t go your way, when you find yourself waking up to a situation that at least for the moment seems untenable?

Rather than allow anger to consume us over an outcome we didn’t like, a different tack might be to double down on whatever efforts we have done to accomplish a task or to fight for a cause and channel any energy born of disappointment into finding new ways to reach those goals.

At the 1980 Democratic National Convention, Sen. Ted Kennedy rose to address the crowd after his rather disappointing run for the presidential nomination against sitting President Jimmy Carter. With the writing help of political operative Bob Shrum and others, Kennedy delivered what turned out to be one if not the most memorable speeches of his career. He ended with these words:

“For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

Those words seem useful to heed when things don’t go as we had hoped. If we were truly concerned about a cause, that cause doesn’t disappear because we didn’t get our way. Rather than stew in anger or regret, the right thing seems to be to double down on any efforts to engage in whatever work is needed to set things straight.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of  The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice , is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin. 

(c) 2021 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Become informed and vote

Should an uninformed voter be allowed to vote?

Back in March, I responded to a reader who asked what a conscientious person should do when he or she or they couldn’t invest a lot of time researching candidates. The reader was concerned that many media sources weren’t neutral and he had no desire to rely on an “equally uninformed friend.”

Then in July, I wrote about an old friend who regularly chides me for encouraging all eligible people to vote. My friend claimed not to have voted since the 2012 election cycle. He was insistent that his one vote didn’t matter and was likely not to make a difference in any election, be it for candidates running for national or local election.

There is no litmus test for how informed eligible voters must be before they vote. But, I urged back in March, if someone wants to be a conscientious voter, there are plenty of resources available to find out where local and national candidates stand on the issues. While talking heads on cable news programs may claim that this candidate or that hasn’t taken a stance on an issue, voters would be wise not to take that claim at face value and instead take the time to look at the many resources that collect information on which candidates stand where and on what.

There are many nonpartisan websites that are available to provide prospective voters with a guide on where candidates stand on what issues. When it comes to presidential candidates, some of these websites provide a simple “pro” or “con” on where a particular candidate stands on an issue. On one of these sites, ProCon.Org, which is owned by Encyclopedia Britannica, a user can view the pro-con page and then click on any issue to get more details on what a particular candidate has said about that issue.

Another useful site on which any voter can parse the issues is VoteSmart, whose founding board several decades ago included Republican and Democratic leaders including former presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford as well as former presidential candidates Barry Goldwater and George McGovern, among others. What’s particularly useful about the VoteSmart site is that you can click on a candidate and an issue and see what they said about it as well as where and when they said it.

While the deadline to register to vote in many states has already passed, some might still be open. To see what your state’s voter registration deadline is, you can consult a site like Ballotpedia. If you are unsure whether you are registered to vote, there’s a website where you can check that too. The National Associations of Secretaries of State website lets you choose your state and then provide your name to see if you’re registered. My state even lets me call up the November ballot that contains not only the people running for local, state and national positions, but also any referendum questions that happen to be on the November ballot as well.

My old friend who maintains his vote doesn’t matter might talk to Chris Poulos, a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives. In 2022, he defeated his opponent by 1 vote.

If you want to be an engaged citizen, the right thing is to register to vote, determine which candidates and issues mirror your own stances, and then vote.

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, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2024 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Are rules meaningless if not enforced?

If rules are not enforced, is it wrong to ignore them?

Two different readers shared two different but similar stories recently.

One of the readers recounted how a neighborhood baseball field had signs on its fence indicating dogs were not allowed on the field. Another reader wondered about passengers who pulled over to the side of the road to dump plastic garbage bags into public waste cans that had signs on them indicating no household trash was allowed. In each case, the reader mentioned that these weren’t one-time observations of rules violations.

The baseball park was regularly full of dogs and owners unless a baseball game was in progress. The reader noticing the household trash in the public bin regularly saw different people depositing a bag of trash from their car.

Neither of the readers ever witnessed any official policing the area. Officials did, however, regularly ticket illegally parked cars in the lot next to the baseball field.

Since the number of dogs being let onto the field seemed to be growing, that reader asked if it was implied that it was really OK for dogs to be allowed to roam since the regulation was not enforced.

The reader's question reminded me of a public presentation I once participated in in Madison, Wisconsin.

The presentation was about ethics in business and a local interviewer was asking me questions on stage. When the time came for audience questions, a gentleman stood up and pointed out that a sign on the door of what seemed to be a newly renovated auditorium indicated that no food or drinks were allowed in the auditorium. He questioned whether the two bottles of water next to the interviewer and me sent a message that the rules didn’t apply to us. He was trying to make a point about the inconsistency of the rule application even if most might find it acceptable for a speaker to need a gulp of water during a presentation. Nevertheless, he was right to raise the question.

If rules or regulations are set, then presumably they are set for a reason. In the case of the dogs, it could be a public health issue if the walkers are not rigorous about picking up after their pets. By forbidding the dumping of private trash in a public bin, it might be an effort to make sure that the bins aren’t overflowing or that people aren’t taxing the public services offered in a town in which they might not live.

But just because the rules are not being enforced does not mean it’s OK to not follow the rules. “But that guy did it,” is not justification for others to do something wrong as well. The right thing for individuals is to follow the rules. And the right thing for whoever has jurisdiction over the baseball field or trash can is to enforce the rules as much as they would enforce parking regulations.

And while it might seem understood, it wouldn’t hurt for that sign on the auditorium door to add the phrase, “unless you’re presenting on stage.”

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, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2024 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Fly me to the moon

Should companies honor reservations for a spaceflight made before civilian spaceflights existed?

Polaris Dawn, a spaceflight operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, traveled into space on Sept. 10 and successfully returned to earth on Sept. 15. Four private citizens operated the spacecraft. The operation was funded by Jared Isaacman, a billionaire, who reportedly paid about $200 million for the flight.

Isaacman’s flight on Musk’s spacecraft reminded me that at some point in my childhood, I’m pretty sure I signed up to reserve a flight to the moon.

I vaguely recall that when I was between 8 and 11 years old, I signed something to make a reservation to take a flight to the moon when they became available. A little bit of research suggests that my fuzzy recollection wasn’t simply imagined, but rather might have been part of a marketing campaign done by Pan American Airways called “‘First Moons Flight’ Club.” Between 1968 and 1971, Pan Am issued more than 90,000 cards to people who made reservations for a flight to the moon, although apparently informal reservations with Pan Am began as early as 1964.

While I have a memory of signing up, I have no memory of ever receiving a card. But somewhere, someone may still have a registry of everyone who signed up, including me.

Had Pan Am not gone out of business in 1991, presumably it would still be sitting on that list. Sure, it may have been nothing more than a marketing gimmick to engage customers who were caught up in space adventures around the time of the first moon landing on July 20, 1969. But if Pan Am were still around would it have an obligation to honor those reservations more than 50 years after they were made?

My guess is that legally Pan Am likely would have had no such obligation, as long as no money changed hands. My research suggests no money was requested. I am confident back then I had no money to send in to secure my place in line.

But should flights into space have become available and Pan Am were around as one of the purveyors of such flights, I believe the right thing would be to try to contact those on the list to gauge their interest. Granted, since the list was compiled well before the days of email or cell phone numbers that follow you around, many of the people would be challenging to track down. Nevertheless, the company could make a good faith effort to make good on the promise of space travel dangled decades earlier.

Since Pan Am is no longer with us, it seems a prime opportunity for Elon Musk’s SpaceX or Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin or Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic to do what they can to get hold of that reservations list. Wouldn’t it be grand for us to be given first dibs on hopping on board?

Of course, Pan Am never told us when the flights would become available. Nor did it name a price for each seat. I suspect most of us would have to take a pass at plunking down more than several hundred thousand dollars for a seat on Virgin Atlantic to several hundred million to book the whole craft on SpaceX. Still, when a company lures us in by promising the moon, the right thing would be to ask before assuming we can’t afford the adventure.

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, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2024 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Should restaurants promise more than they plan to deliver?

Should businesses be careful in what they promise in their marketing materials?

Back in February, my son-in-law and I drove a truck and trailer cross country to deliver his son’s (my grandson’s) belongings to him. We figured the trip would be about a 30-hour drive from the Boston area to Colorado Springs, Colorado. We planned to share the driving and figured we could make it there in a couple of days if we left early in the morning each day and drove into the evening.

A bit of weather slowed us down, but we still found ourselves making good time. At the end of the second evening of driving, we stopped late for dinner at a chain restaurant that served breakfast all day and featured a country store selling nostalgic snacks and items; guests entered and left the dining area through the store.

The service was not particularly swift. After we had been seated for quite a while, we overheard a manager apologizing to a large party for how long their food had taken and how when food finally did arrive, it had not been what they’d ordered. The manager apologized and offered them free dessert.

We spent our time studying the sizable breakfast menu. I was particularly pleased that the menu indicated that any eggs would be “cooked to order.” When the waiter arrived I confirmed that “cooked to order” meant any style and they assured me that was the case. I placed my order for two poached eggs on toast and my son-in-law placed his order as well. Several minutes later our waiter returned to tell me that they don’t do poached eggs.

Now, in the scheme of things, telling customers you serve eggs any style or “cooked to order” when you know there are some styles you simply won’t do or orders you won’t take is not the end of the world. Should I have made a fuss? Maybe. But to what end? It was not likely that I was going to force the chef to poach an egg he didn’t want to poach. At the time of night we were eating after a long day of driving, if I chose to leave in a huff, I would go to bed hungry.

I responded to our waiter that it kind of means they don’t honor what’s on the menu. I ordered eggs over easy instead, and they nodded and took the order.

Businesses should make sure that they deliver on what they advertise. If they have no intention of doing so, then the right thing is for them not to promise otherwise and hope no one calls them on it. The restaurant had an extensive menu with many options and it served breakfast all day. Certainly that was enough without making false promises.

It took a while, but our meals finally arrived. My son-in-law’s meal was not what he had ordered. He told our waiter that they had delivered several side dishes, all of which were the same and none of which was what he had ordered. The waiter took his plate back to the kitchen for corrective action. No one offered us a free dessert.

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, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2024 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

How we lose can define us

How important is it to be a good loser?

The year I was a senior in college, the band Steely Dan released its song “Deacon Blues.” A lyric from it has always stuck with me: “They got a name for the winners in the world. I want a name when I lose.” Walter Becker and Donald Fagen followed those lines with: “They call Alabama the Crimson Tide,” to make their point about how winners (in this case, the University of Alabama’s powerhouse football team) got a name. But then in an effort to provide a name to the loser narrating the song: “Call me Deacon Blues.”

It may not be a happy message, but the song gave a name to the losers of the world if we wanted to use it: Deacon Blues.

Losing, however, is not always a dire experience. Sure, approaching challenges with a desire to win can be a good practice. But even DJ Khaled, who sang, “All I do is win,” has had his occasional high-profile run-ins with losing. (You can look it up.)

From an early age, how we behave when we lose can help define our character. We learn it’s not OK to walk off the field of a baseball game if the opposing team is beating us by a dozen runs. We learn that it’s not OK to quit a competitive board game when it becomes clear we are going to be decimated. We learn not to walk away from the corn hole toss when our opponent’s bean bags seem magnetized to go in the hole while ours always fall short.

When we agree to a game, we agree to the rules of that game and there’s a sense of grace and honor to stick with that game even when we lose. There is no honor in trying to change the rules of the game halfway through or crying foul every time an opponent comes out ahead. There is no valor in claiming that you couldn’t possibly have lost a baseball game since your team scored more runs than it ever had scored in a game before, even if such parsing ignores that fact that the opposing team won because he scored even more runs than your team.

Sure, winning is great. It’s a blast to the ego to come out on top. But part of the understanding of competition is that not everyone is going to win.

Learning to accept our losses graciously, to congratulate our opponents on their victory this time, and then to go off and perhaps work hard to try to win the next time; these are some of the marks of an honest competitor.

And when we lose, as each of us will at something sometime, it’s not because the outcome was rigged. Sometimes we just lose, and then we move on. Call yourself Deacon Blues if it helps, but the right thing is to show some honor in defeat.

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, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2024 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

 

Is it a yard sale faux pas to re-sell items from a neighbor’s trash?

Is it OK to make a profit off items you got free or paid little for at a neighborhood yard sale?

As in many neighborhoods across the United States, every year, a neighborhood in Boston has a neighborhood yard sale right around Labor Day. It’s a chance for people to clean out their basements or attics or cupboards or desks of things they don’t want and try to lure their neighbors to take on possession at a modest price. In this particular neighborhood, the running joke is that in five or so years, whatever item you sold will make it’s way around the block after being sold house to house to house.

The setup is a communal affair with a neighbor creating maps to post on telephone poles indicating which houses are participating. Mentions of the sale go out on closed groups on social media as well. At the end of the sale, people leave boxes out with free items they couldn’t sell. A side benefit is that neighbors get out and chat with neighbors.

But occasionally a question arises over whether someone’s tactics are inappropriate.

A reader we’re calling Anthony regularly sets up a table of items in front of his house. Typically, his wares consist of clothing he no longer wears, kitchen items he’s rarely used, or the occasional piece of furniture that seemed like a good idea at the time he purchased it.

Anthony noticed that a few weeks before the yard sale, one of his neighbors put out five or six dining room chairs to be picked up by the trash. Before the trash collectors arrived to swoop them away, Anthony saw another neighbor take them two at a time to his house down the block.

On neighborhood yard sale day, Anthony saw that the neighbor was selling the chairs he had rescued from the trash for $10 a piece or $50 for six chairs. Something about his neighbor’s action struck Anthony as being wrong. Shouldn’t the person throwing out the chairs have gotten the money if people were willing to pay for the chairs? Should Anthony say anything to the prior owner or the new seller?

No, Anthony has no reason to say anything to anybody. There is absolutely nothing wrong with what his neighbor did. If the person tossing the chairs wanted to make some cash, he could have tried to sell them at the yard sale. He chose not to.

There also would be nothing wrong if one of Anthony’s neighbors bought something at the yard sale early in the day from one of his neighbors and then tried to sell it for more on his own table of offerings. This is how yard sales work. You accumulate stuff you don’t want anymore and you try to make a bit of cash by selling it.

The right thing is for Anthony to sell his stuff, enjoy his neighbors, and if in the future he sees some nice chairs being given away for free that he believes might sell at the annual yard sale, to grab them.

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, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2024 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

How up-to-date must your business card be?

How obligated are you to make sure all information on any business card you share is up-to-date?

Some people using business cards have shifted to a digital business card where users can share information electronically. Information on these cards can be updated relatively swiftly, making it simple for users to keep their information up to date.

But millions of paper business cards are still printed and in circulation. Updating a paper business card takes a bit more effort than updating a digital business card app.

Some users changing jobs or titles might not have a printed business card in hand soon enough to share at an upcoming sales call, marketing event or other encounter that seems to call for a business card. If the phone number, email address and company affiliation are all still accurate, is it dishonest to use an old business card that contains other information that is no longer factually correct?

It might seem like it’s no big deal to go ahead and share. What’s the big deal? Often, it might not be a big deal and any change might mean little to anyone other than the card holder and his or her or their colleagues. But this is not always the case.

If, for example, someone had been the head of a department or the director of a program, but no longer held that role, then sharing a business card with that title on it would be misleading. It would suggest to a recipient that the card sharer held a position of authority at a company they didn’t really hold. The recipient might not care, but that doesn’t erase the fact that the information on the business card does not accurately reflect the role of the person doling it out.

The right thing is not to use a business card with information on it that is not accurate. But if someone is sold on wanting to share a business card, there are honest options from which to choose as the new business cards are being printed.

One is to simply tell the recipient that new business cards are being printed and offer to tell the person any contact information, which they can record. Another inelegant solution is to cross out anything inaccurate on the existing card and leave the contact information. Or even users sold on continuing to use printed business cards can make use of a digital business card to hold them over. While some digital business cards charge a fee, there are some free apps available. In such cases, it seems wise to clear the use of digital business cards with your employer who may or may not recommend using such services.

While there are numbers floating around about how many millions of business cards are printed every day, it’s hard to quantify how many of those actually get used. It’s more than likely that the vast majority of business cards shared don’t make it far beyond the closest wastebasket.

Perhaps it’s wise to figure out if a business card serves any real purpose before you have a few hundred printed up. It may be hard to turn the offer of a business card down without appearing rude, but perhaps letting someone know you’d rather just put their contact information in your phone might be welcomed.

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, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2024 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.