Pondering on ethics

[hrj]

So yesterday evening I was doing my beginning-of-the-month accounts (reconciling the checkbook, writing out the monthly bills, reconciling receipts against the charge card bills) and discovered that a couple of credit card charges that should have come through on the June bill hadn't come through on the July bill either. One was from the books-on-tape store that went out of business back in May (for an item I bought at their closing sale), so it may not be surprising that a charge got lost in the shuffle. Their business phone is disconnected now and I have no idea if I'll be able to track anyone down to inquire about the charge. The other was from Sur la Table, which is just a block off of my regular lunchtime bike ride, so I stopped in to show them the receipt and inquire about the problem.

It's not like this is unusual for me, but it tends to get the weirdest reactions. During the interactions with the store clerk, I offered a succession of explanations, starting with the most important and eventually ending up with the most trivial.

"Because it's the right thing to do." [incomprehension]
"Because there's no such thing as 'free' -- I can pay for it now or I can pay for it later in increased store prices or the loss of a place I like to shop if it goes out of business." [further incomprehension]
"Because it's fun to mess with people's minds by being agressively honest." [smile and shrug]
"Because it screws up my financial records." [dawning comprehension and approval]

Why is it so hard to get people to believe that you've done the right thing simply because it's the right thing? Because you want to help create a collective reality in which that's just what people do?

Comments

[blaurentnv.livejournal.com]

Do you mind if I borrow this for one of my current classes? It's a class of criminal justice majors and we've been discussing ethics. They don't seem to get that laws don't dictate ethics.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Fine by me.

[kahnegabs.livejournal.com]

I've noticed some weird reactions regarding money too. Not long ago a clerk gave me a 20 instead of a 10 in my change. I didn't notice it until I got to my car and was putting the bills away. I went back into the store and told her. She was angry that I caught her in a mistake, rather than grateful to have her till balance. How odd!

[etfb.livejournal.com]

I'd love to see a study done on this across different cities and countries. I'm sure I've done something similar in the past here in Canberra (Australia) and never had reactions of incredulity. Maybe it's cos SF is such a godless and sinful place or sumthin'...

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Well, that may be true of SF ... but this was Berkeley. Quite a different thing. :)

If I had to make a wild-ass guess about how a culture comes to such a state of suspicion (other than the basic assumption that everyone is naturally selfish and self-centered and out to get everything they can), it would come from two sources. Institutions dealing with customers and money, having come to an acceptance of the principle that financial errors that benefit the customer are a done deal and tough luck, have extrapolated that concept from the customer having a legal right to the profits of a financial error to the customer having a moral right to the profits of a financial error. (I.e., "I caught you in a mistake, so I win.") This exceptions to this being, of course, banks and the government, who will cheerfully fine you for having benefitted from their error -- in addition to retrieving the erroneous funds.

The second source of suspicion derives from a genre of confidence games that open with a similar scenario -- i.e., you win someone's trust by appearing to be overly honest, then when they have performed some financial action to "match" your honesty, you take off with the goods. (There's a classic one involving "found money" that the con man offers to share with the mark -- the mark is induced in some manner to put up matching funds then is given the money to hold while the con man disappears to make arrangements ... only there's been some sleight of hand and the mark is actually holding a wallet full of blank paper.)

[mastersantiago.livejournal.com]

I would say that it's because doing the right thing is far to frequently a foreign idea to most people.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I tell them that to not do it violates my compact with civilization. They don't get that, either.

[madfilkentist]

I don't understand compacts with civilization, either. I understand that I should pay what I owe.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly.

[(Anonymous)]

This is the kind of event that makes me such a proud parent. (And you know I love to balance the books, too.) Mom

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Sadly, the cynic in me says that the fact that people are surprised by your honesty says lots more about them than about you :/

[hrj.livejournal.com]

In some ways, I don't think it's so much an expectation of dishonesty as that I've violated the expected script. I get exactly the same incomprehension in stores when I decline to sign up for their "customer discount card". If you simply tell them that you don't have one of their cards, you'll get the hard sell. So usually I respond that I don't "do" customer cards. About half the time I'll still get the hard sell, at which point I'll either get snappish and put on a "what happened to the customer is always right" attitude or all attempt to give a logical explanation. Unfortunately, most store clerks can't wrap their brains around:

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (tm). Any discount you're offering me has to come from somewhere. This means that either I'm converting an overt cash register payment into a hidden payment of some kind, or it means that someone else is paying more in order that I can pay less. Neither of these is a system I choose to participate in. When I get value for something, I like to know exactly what the other person is getting in exchange, when, and why."

The incomprehension at "it's the right thing to do" is nothing to the incomprehension at TANSTAAFL. Clerks are, however, quite cheerful about accepting, "Customer discount cards are too much hassle to keep track of and they make my wallet too fat." The problem is, that isn't my objection.

[brooksmoses]

I don't think they're actually offering a discount with those cards, though -- they can't be, given that they expect nearly all of their customers to have one. Sort of like the department stores that are always running "sales"; it's not so much a sale as a way of making the usual price sound like something special.

What they're offering is to not overcharge you, in return for letting them track your purchase info and stuff more easily. It's sort of like blackmail run backwards or something. (But I think the real reasons for it are more for dressing up their usual prices as "special sale prices" rather than for the purchase tracking, really.)

[wulfsdottir.livejournal.com]

I've had similar experiences. I don't understand it, either.

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the level of corruption that has always existed at the highest levels of American society has finally percolated nearly to the lowest? (I say "nearly" because I still encounter striking levels of honesty among very poor people.)


Seriously, this is pervasive, and I doubt very much that it has a single cause, or even multiple causes that can be identified.

[mbumby.livejournal.com]

*sigh*. There was once that an ATM spit out n+1 bills into the trough, and the sheer heck I went through in order to give them their $20 back convinced me never to try that again. (Yes, it happened once more.)

When the mistakes that people make are upwards of $10 they're usually quite grateful when I give them their money back, but in the smaller numbers they seem to tend towards annoyance at having to open the till again.

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

It's possible that they actually get in more trouble for opening the till when not making a sale than for being a few dollars off. A clever cashier will set the bill aside until the till is open anyway, but I've worked with quite a few who weren't that clever.

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

I wish I had a good answer, but I don't. We ran into this a couple of times at Mervyn's, where I thanked the person, apologized for making them go somewhere else, and referred them to the back desk. I sometimes gave them a $10 "gosh, we made a mistake so here's $10 for you" gift card, as well.

When I observed other cashiers handling it, and the bemused younger ones seemed to have Not Clue One, I would frequently step in and send the person to the back. I was disappointed when the older, 35-years-of-service plus woman would act suspicious of the customer. She had seen every con on the book, tho, so I imagine she was very battle-hardened at that point.

The general opinion seemed to be that since we charged 28% on our credit cards, we should let the customer get away with it. Sigh.

[dame-cordelia.livejournal.com]

I've had similar experiences with being given too much change, and at this point have come to the conclusion that it's frequently not worth it to give back the extra because the cashier gets so with me.

If honesty was really the best policy in the cashier's mind I would receive a smile and a thank you. If I am in a small business their reaction is likely to be appreciative, but in a chain store they just don't seem to care about taking care of the company they work for. At least, that is my interpretation of the interaction.

[cellio]

I've had similar experiences and share your frustration.

[ermine-rat.livejournal.com]

Funny, I found $40 on the ground at a train ride in Felton two weekends ago. No one was around, though the teller looked at me with a grin and said "score!". Some guy ran up a few minutes later, and asked if someone found $25. I said it was $40 and gave it to him, he looked surprised. The teller looked almost offended, but said nothing. I wonder if the teller would have kept the money had she seen it. I wonder if she thought I only gave it back because she saw me. I wonder how frequently we see our own weakenesses in other people, even if it is undeserved.