The closer someone is to you, the harder it is to think straight when relationship problems, and the ethical issues they include, arise. Let’s see what the principles of ethical intelligence have to say about:
• Work-life balance
• Being a tightwad
• Taking vacations
• Relationships with local businesses
My friend Joanne’s grandfather Charlie prided himself on never having missed a day on the job. He had grown up in poverty and wanted to make sure that his family was provided for in a way that he himself had not been. The upside was that his family, which included Joanne’s dad, Brian, had a comfortable place to live, plenty to eat, and new clothes when they needed them. The downside is that Charlie missed all of his six children’s high school graduations. He never attended any of the kids’ baseball games, choral concerts, or swim meets. His son Brian grew up without seeing his dad very much.
Not surprisingly, Brian adopted the same work ethic, but with a twist: he did take time off for his two kids, but work was always involved in some way. Brian was the head of the PTA, a deacon of the church, and the coach of Joanne’s softball team. Late every evening, after a busy day at his job and various community activities, Brian would plop himself down on the couch to watch TV — and promptly fall asleep. Joanne’s memories of her father, now deceased, are usually associated with work of some kind. She loved her father dearly but wondered what he would have been like away from the many jobs he undertook. “I’m grateful for all he did for my brother and me,” Joanne told me recently, “but I wish we had just ‘hung out’ once in awhile. I would have liked that, but it’s too late now.”
No issue presents a greater challenge to your ethical intelligence than what is referred to as “work-life balance.” The way you approach it determines not only the quality of your life but also the quality of the relationships you have with your family, friends, and community. Work-life balance is an ethical issue because the fourth principle of ethical intelligence, Be Fair, calls upon you to give others their due, and one of the things you owe to others (and yourself) is your time. In fact, as I suggested in chapter 2, your time is the single most valuable resource you have because everything you do is based on its availability. It is also irreplaceable; once you’ve spent it, it’s gone for good. How you allocate your time between your career and everything else speaks volumes about your commitment to fairness. It shows how ethically intelligent you are with respect to every important relationship you have.
Before we consider what an ethically intelligent balance between work and life might be, I should say that I don’t like the phrase “work-life balance.” It suggests that you have your career on the one hand and everything else on the other, but work is a part of life, not apart from it. Still, this is the term used in business journalism, so to be consistent, I will use it, under mild protest.
There are several reasons why our lives are so out of balance:
• Economic pressure
• Ready access to work
• Overvaluing our careers
Let’s consider how to approach each one with ethical intelligence so that you can have a healthy balance between your work and everything else in your life.
According to a 2011 Gallup Poll, Americans worry more about money than we do about anything else, including job security, health care, and war.1 We’re still reeling from the recent financial crisis: pensions have been eliminated, portfolios have diminished in value, and savings accounts are being tapped for day-to-day expenses. In light of our shaky economic future, it makes sense that we have so much anxiety about our income. It’s even worse, of course, for those who have lost their jobs in the wake of unprecedented nationwide job cuts. From December 2007 (the beginning of the Great Recession) until February 2010, 8.7 million jobs were lost in the United States.2 In his book How Starbucks Saved My Life, Michael Gates Gill tells of his lucrative business going under and having to work at the coffee chain to get by.3 People like Gill have had to work twice as hard to make half as much as they used to (or less). These folks aren’t working seventy hours a week because they want to; they’re doing it because they have to.
But it’s one thing to have to work two jobs just to be able to put food on the table and pay the rent or mortgage. It’s another to work so much to be able to afford lavish trips, expensive clothes, or a certain lifestyle. Instead of working longer, couldn’t you shift your priorities so that you’re able to spend more time with family and friends, exercise more often, or even just read some of those books you’ve been thinking about? In other words, there are several possible responses to the economic downturn: work more hours to be able to maintain one’s standard of living or get an even higher one; or work the same number of hours, or even fewer, and place a greater emphasis on the most valuable thing that money can’t buy — time with the people you care about.
Try this exercise: Write your obituary. Start with a headline that summarizes your main achievement in life and includes how old you’ll be when you die. The first paragraph expands on the headline and includes where and how you’ll die. The body of the obituary presents the highlights of your life in chronological order. The final paragraph or two describes something you did or said that captures your essence.
It sounds like a morbid thing to do, and no one wants to confront the reality that our lives have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But this exercise will help you see the narrative arc of your life. Knowing how you’d like to be remembered can prompt you to reexamine your work-life balance and, if necessary, make some changes for the better.
Gone are the days when leaving your office meant leaving work behind. Many of us choose (or are expected) to use our BlackBerrys, iPhones, laptops, and social networking to remain constantly available to our bosses, clients, and colleagues, but this can get out of control. It’s flattering to believe that you’re indispensable to your company and that only you can do the work you spend so much time doing. But this is rarely true, however painful that may be to accept. Be honest with yourself: Are you spending so much time on the job because you must or because of habit, ego, or some other reason? You owe it to yourself and the people you care about to work smarter, not harder, which means unplugging from the Internet and cell phone every day and focusing on friends, family, and your own body, soul, and spirit.
But what if your boss expects you to be constantly available? This is ethically unintelligent management. Even professions such as health care, which require round-the-clock availability, do not and cannot expect their practitioners to be on call all day, every day. Would you want the physician caring for you in the hospital to make decisions about your care if he or she has not slept in thirty-six hours? For a long time, medical residents were required to submit to a punishing schedule that made restorative sleep hard to come by. But then a young woman named Libby Zion died in a New York hospital, and it became known that one of the residents caring for her was exhausted from overwork. Following this tragedy, the brutal schedule for residents was modified to preclude their having to work more than eighty hours a week averaged over a four-week period. It is also no longer permissible for residents to have shifts that last for a day and a half straight.4 Whether or not you’re a physician or nurse, and whether or not there are immediate life-or-death consequences to your being always on call, it is unfair for your employer to expect you to be accessible all the time.
When people I know complain about having to respond to every work-related email or phone call they get after hours, I ask them, “Have you told your boss you need some time away from work each day?” The answer is always the same: “No, I haven’t.” I appreciate how difficult it can be to stand up to one’s supervisor, but there is an immutable law of human nature worth keeping in mind: if someone can take advantage of you, he or she probably will.
Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” By the same token, no one can expect you to work around the clock without your consent. You have a right to time off, and it is up to you to have that right respected.5
I can’t wait to get to work each day, and I usually have to force myself to stop to do other worthwhile things such as eat and sleep. There’s no better feeling than writing something I’m happy with, giving a talk that connects with people, or doing a lively interview on TV or radio about things that matter. I can hardly believe I get paid to fly around the world to talk with folks about ethics. My career is a dream come true.
But there should be limits to even the most exciting career. Jack Torrance, the main character in the film The Shining, was right when he wrote, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” (True, he was a murderous lunatic who wrote this sentence thousands of times, but the idea is still valid.) It’s great to have a career that one is passionate about and to view one’s job not merely as a means to a paycheck but as a calling. Yet it’s wrong to define oneself exclusively by one’s career. Even if what you do for a living is the most important thing to you, is it the only thing that’s valuable? If not, giving an undue amount of your time and energy to your work is unfair. It deprives those other areas of your life — family, friends, community activities, hobbies — of something priceless and irreplaceable: you. In the context of work-life balance, giving others their due means allocating the right amount of time to your job and the right amount of time to the other things that make life worth living.
Even when you’re willing and able to put aside work in favor of the other things that life has to offer, another ethical question presents itself: Since you’re not able to give all your time to everyone who may want or need it, on what basis should you allocate your time and energy? Generally speaking, the closer someone is to you, the greater claim that person has on your time. All things being equal, it’s more important to spend time with your spouse or children than with a distant relative or even a good friend.
But this isn’t always the case. Suppose a dear friend from your past with whom you have lost contact finds you on Facebook and says he’s going to be in town in a few days. It wouldn’t be unfair to set aside time for him, even if this means not being able to spend as much time alone with your family as you had been planning to. (By the same token, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that you’ve already made plans; you can always catch up on the phone or the next time he’s in the area.) All bets are off, however, when a former flame appears out of the blue. You may have been extremely close to this person way back when, but times have changed, and with it, your responsibilities.
It’s not possible to be all things to all people at all times, and you have no reason to feel guilty for allocating your time with ethical intelligence.
Of course, there are times when it is ethically intelligent to let the work-life balance tilt in favor of work. As you approach an important deadline for your job, you may have to temporarily give a substantial amount of your time and energy to getting the job done at the expense of a healthy personal life. If, for example, one is writing a book on ethical intelligence that includes a section on work-life balance, one might have to sacrifice one’s sanity for a limited period to meet one’s professional standards and a tight production schedule. Cathexis — obsessive focus on a goal — is ethically justified in these limited circumstances. But that work-life seesaw shouldn’t slope steeply to one side for too long.
Bottom line: You have a career; it shouldn’t have you.
It’s especially tough to make a living these days, so more than ever, spending our money carefully makes good sense. But cost-cutting measures that compromise other important values, such as honoring important relationships, are not ethically intelligent. Let’s consider two different approaches to frugality; one of them is consistent with the principles of ethical intelligence, and one is not.
Polly works hard for her money and guards it very closely. She is vice president of communications of a small bank, and other than the mortgage on her modest home, she is proud that she has no outstanding debts of any kind. Most of Polly’s friends have the same financial profile, but Polly is known to go to extreme lengths to save a buck. She’ll drive ten miles out of her way to avoid a fifty-cent toll. She wraps presents in cheap aluminum foil to save on wrapping paper. Those presents — scented toiletries, dried fruit, overstock books — are bought in bulk once a year so she doesn’t have to take the time to shop when birthdays and holidays roll around. Almost every conversation with her inevitably includes a reference to her latest cost-saving measures, each of which she considers a personal victory.
Some of Polly’s friends and family members call her “Parsimonious Polly” because her reluctance to spend money has caused problems in their relationships with her. For example, Polly’s Christmas gift to her cousin Bert was the book Deep-Sea Diving in the Caribbean. “Uh, thanks,” Bert muttered when he peeled away the thin metallic wrapping from the book. Not only does Bert have no interest in oceanography, but Polly gave the same gift last Christmas (a book that Bert sees from time to time in the dusty remainder bins at his local bookstore). Polly’s other present is a bag of dried apples and banana chips, neither of which Bert likes. Bert feels that Polly doesn’t care about him and is merely satisfying an obligation to get him something, anything, during the holidays that will involve the least effort and expense possible. Yet Bert goes to some lengths to get Polly things he knows she’ll like (based on the wish list Polly emails to her family and friends each November). Bert knows that Polly has positive qualities, but as far as he is concerned, her cheapness overrides those qualities; and he has developed a strong resentment toward his cousin.
Like Polly, Frieda is careful with her money, but for different reasons and to different ends. Earlier this year, Frieda lost her job as an accountant for a local auto supply company, and she has not been able to find any work since then. She was even turned down for waitressing and entry-level salesclerk positions. Her unemployment benefits have run out, and she doesn’t know how she’ll pay for the health insurance she needs. With such a bleak financial future, Frieda isn’t able to buy Christmas presents for her family and friends. Instead, she makes plates of her much-loved zesty lemon bars and oatmeal-walnut-chocolate-chip cookies; volunteers to babysit for her best friend, a single mom; and writes (by hand) heartfelt letters to everyone she knows, in which she expresses how grateful she is for the love she feels from them. She also feels compelled to apologize for not being able to buy any presents this year and explains why.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” her friend Betty tells her after she receives Frieda’s letter. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I know, Betty, but I still feel ashamed. I love buying presents for the people I care about, and I thought about using my credit cards, but _____.”
“There’s no reason to run up debt you can’t pay for,” Betty interrupts. She can hear the sorrow in Frieda’s voice, and it makes her sad. “Why make matters worse?”
Frieda appreciates what Betty says but still feels bad.
“Besides,” Betty adds, “do you know how many handwritten letters I got all year? One. It was yours, and it was beautiful.”
Frieda’s eyes well with tears, partly because of her dire financial situation and partly because she is grateful for having a friend like Betty.
At first blush, Polly’s and Frieda’s relationship to money appears to have nothing to do with ethics. Each woman’s story raises psychological questions: What in Polly’s background might have led her to become such a tightwad? What is her motivation — to unconsciously push people away or simply to save money for an early retirement? How will Frieda cope with the stress of her situation? But each woman’s choices concern how a valuable resource is allocated, and the result of that decision affects their relationships, for better or worse. Once we start thinking about whether a person’s actions are beneficial or harmful, and whether that person is allocating a valuable resource appropriately, we are smack-dab in the middle of ethical inquiry. I’ll explain why Frieda’s approach to personal finance is ethically intelligent but Polly’s is not.
Polly could spend money on birthday and holiday presents, but she chooses not to. Even if we discovered the root causes of her parsimony, this would explain her behavior but not justify it. Suppose, for example, that Polly’s parents didn’t give her enough love and attention when she was young, and clinging to money is her way of coping with her fear of abandonment. Suppose also that Polly is indeed planning to retire within ten years and is saving as much as she can so that she’ll be able to enjoy the rest of her life in style. Polly still has free will, and she makes decisions based on her own goals, preferences, and values. Her choices are hurtful to the people she presumably cares about and compromise the responsibility we all have to not damage relationships (per the first principle of ethical intelligence). Polly is so focused on saving money that when it comes time to give a family member or friend a gift, her only concern is how little money she can spend to get the job done. It matters very little to her, if at all, that her gifts are unwelcome or off-putting. Her way of celebrating holidays isn’t caring or kind and thus fails to honor the fifth principle of ethical intelligence. Polly isn’t an evil person, and she has positive qualities about her. But her relationship to money isn’t ethically intelligent.
Frieda, on the other hand, can’t spend money on presents without making her precarious financial situation worse. Ethics concerns not only how we treat others but also how we treat ourselves, and, as Frieda’s friend Betty notes, running up credit card debt just to do some holiday shopping would be harmful to her. It would also compromise Frieda’s ability to keep her promises since she might not be able to pay her creditors back anytime soon. Besides, Frieda has found inexpensive ways to honor her relationships, which allows her to meet her responsibilities to others as well as herself. Compared to Polly’s offerings, Frieda’s gifts reveal how much she values her friends, because Frieda spends considerable time and energy on providing something heartfelt, personal, and above all, of value to the recipient. She cares about what would please the important people in her life. Polly instead is focused only on saving money and cares little, if at all, about whether the recipients of her presents would want or need them.
Spending money you don’t have, or being unwilling to spend money you do have, implicates all five principles of ethical intelligence. Keeping them in mind during the holidays — and throughout the year — will help you honor your financial obligations to yourself and your family, as well as maintain good, healthy relationships with the people you care about.
In the seven years I’ve known her, I can’t recall ever seeing my friend Maria take a vacation. Maria is blessed with doing a job she loves, so much so that she does it all the time, day in and day out. She works for herself and in her own home, so she is literally always on the job. But surely she’s had some time off, right? Perhaps before we became friends almost a decade ago? So the other day I asked her how long it has been since she has had a vacation.
“Twenty years,” she replied, without an ounce of sadness about this stunning fact. “I’m fortunate in being able to do what I love, and as the saying goes, if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.”
“Besides,” she added, “if I don’t work, I don’t bring in any money, and that can’t happen. And I’m single, so the idea of going on a trip by myself doesn’t appeal to me at all. But the bottom line is that my work gives me a sense of purpose in life.”
Maria wore her twenty vacationless years almost as a badge of honor. You probably know someone like Maria. Maybe you are someone like Maria. I’ll explain why going so long without a vacation isn’t something to be proud of but is instead a practice at odds with ethical intelligence.
We have a lot of things to be proud of in the United States — freedom of the press, spectacular national parks, the films of John Ford — but mandatory paid vacation isn’t one of them. Yet even small countries with struggling economies make sure that working people spend some time away from their jobs. Australians, Italians, Latvians, and the Japanese get twenty days off each year; Swedes and Greeks get twenty-five; Lithuanians get twenty-eight; and the Finns and French get thirty.6 Imagine taking up to six weeks of paid vacation each year and not feeling the slightest bit of guilt in doing so. It’s not a fantasy; for many, it is a happy way of life.
Why doesn’t the United States have vacation policies like Finland or Greece? Isn’t time off really a perk or benefit akin to a year-end bonus? Employers aren’t required to give employees extra money at Christmas; those that do are going above and beyond the call of duty. But why are we even discussing windsurfing in Hawaii or skiing in Aspen in the context of ethics?
Taking a vacation is an ethical issue for several reasons: you have an ethical responsibility to do your job to the best of your ability, and taking time off occasionally is a necessary condition for this; and the fifth principle of ethical intelligence, Be Loving, applies to how you treat yourself, not just others, and going for months or years without a vacation isn’t a very kind way to treat yourself.
Employers may not have a legal responsibility to give employees time off from work, but the ethically intelligent ones do so anyway because they realize that a well-rested workforce is a productive one. Ethically intelligent people give themselves a break from time to time because they know that not only does this enable them to do their jobs well, but it’s a marvelous thing in and of itself. “If it feels good, do it!” doesn’t apply to everything, but it’s the perfect salve for work-related burnout.
Let’s now consider some of the most common reasons for not taking time off and how you can overcome them.
1. I work for myself. / My employer doesn’t provide paid vacations. / I’ve been laid off, and I need to work. The reluctance to give up some future revenue is understandable, particularly in our current economy. But how often is this an excuse rather than an accurate reflection of one’s financial or work situation? Taking a vacation doesn’t have to mean gambling big in Vegas or flying first-class to Sydney, as fun as these trips may be. With “staycations” becoming more popular, time away from work can mean nothing more than sleeping late, watching DVDs, and eating lots of comfort food at home. We budget for meals, clothing, and transportation. Shouldn’t we also budget for a vacation? Yes, there ought to be a law mandating paid vacations, but until that comes to pass, we’ll have to find creative ways on our own to take time off.
2. I love my work, and I’m miserable when I’m away from it. “I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while.” This remark, attributed to Groucho Marx (perhaps falsely),7 says it all: it’s wonderful to be jazzed about one’s job — I feel the same way — but a rich, meaningful life involves things beyond work.
3. Most of the people I work with aren’t taking vacations, so I don’t want to burden them with the extra work they’d have if I left for a while. It’s praiseworthy to want to avoid causing undue stress on your colleagues, but you — and they — are entitled (ethically, if not legally) to some time off. Ultimately, the fair distribution of labor is a management issue, and employees shouldn’t have to worry that a justifiable absence will result in an undue burden on the team.
4. I’m the only one at work who can do my job — the company and my clients can’t afford for me to be away. It’s nice to feel wanted or needed, but few of us are truly indispensable, as much as we may hate to admit it. I submit that in most cases, the idea that you, and only you, can do your job is a delusion of grandeur rather than a reflection of reality.
5. 1 feel guilty when I take vacations. If you’re not yet convinced that it’s ethically intelligent to take time off, perhaps it’s time to talk with a trusted adviser about why you feel you aren’t worthy of a trip to the mountains or the shore, or even just some time to yourself. You have every reason to feel good about treating yourself right, and vacations, however you choose to spend them, are self-indulgent in the best possible way.
6. I’m single and don’t like the idea of going somewhere by myself. As a survivor of the dating wars, I understand this feeling all too well. But a lot of people find someone to love while they’re on vacation, and the relationship sometimes lasts far beyond the length of the trip itself. There are hiking trips, walking tours, and lots of other vacations one can take as a single person; finding out about these possibilities is just a Google search away.
7. I can’t leave work behind, so the best I can do is a working vacation. The batteries you recharge on vacation shouldn’t be the ones in your BlackBerry or iPhone. Checking email, taking work-related phone calls, and reading material related to one’s job simply doesn’t allow you to unwind completely, which is the whole point of your vacation in the first place. Doing your job while you sit in a chair on the beach is the worst of both worlds because you’re not fully present in either one. Thus the concept of the working vacation makes about as much sense as showing up for a corporate job in shorts and a tank top with a margarita in your hand.
To the list of things for which there is a time — a time to be born, a time to die, a time to weep, a time to laugh — one might add a time to work and a time to take a long break.
What do the mall’s megabookstore, a small, expensive dress shop, and your local multiplex cinema have in common? All create opportunities for customers to choose to treat the business in question with ethical intelligence or to take advantage of that business. After presenting stories in these three settings, I’ll explain how the main character in each story has made, or has been tempted to make, an ethically unintelligent choice and what a better approach would be.
Harry loves to read, and he uses his library card regularly. The problem is that it takes his local library a long time to get the latest books, and their selection of magazines is spotty. Harry makes up for it by going to Bunch o’ Books, the megabookstore at a nearby mall, which not only has a wide-ranging stock of books and magazines but also comfortable chairs, a quiet atmosphere, and a staff that doesn’t seem to mind customers reading in the store for hours. Harry rarely buys anything since he can finish magazines and sometimes even books in a single visit. Sometimes he’ll even bring lunch with him, and no one who works there ever tells him to stop.
One day, Martha, a neighbor of Harry’s, spies Harry leafing through a copy of Popular Science while he munches on a cheese-and-tomato sandwich slathered with mayonnaise and brown mustard.
MARTHA. Hey there, Harry! Not a bad arrangement you got there, eh?
HARRY, looking up with annoyance. What’s that supposed to mean? The store doesn’t mind what I’m doing. What do you think these chairs are for, anyway?
MARTHA, noticing that Harry’s hands and the pages of the magazine are stained with grease. So you’re going to buy that magazine, now that you’ve messed it all up?
HARRY, wondering why Martha is getting on his case. It’s not a big deal. You know, the store can return it to the publisher without losing a dime. Same with books.
MARTHA, shaking her head disapprovingly. Yeah, right.
HARRY, feeling his blood pressure starting to rise. Who are you, Paul Blart, mall cop?8 Get lost!
MARTHA, muttering under her breath as she walks away. What a jerk!
Harry returns to his sandwich and magazine and picks up where he left off before Martha interrupted his pleasant afternoon.
Esmeralda is beside herself: George, the guy she has been seeing for a short while, has invited her to go to La Louisianne, one of the fanciest restaurants in town. The problem is that Esmeralda can’t afford to buy a new dress, and she doesn’t want to wear any of the ones she has. So she calls her friend Joyce to ask for advice.
JOYCE. I’d lend you one of my outfits, but ______.
ESMERALDA. I know. We’re not the same size.
JOYCE. I could have one altered for you.
ESMERALDA. Oh, you’re so nice, Joyce, but I couldn’t let you do that. I don’t know what to do. I want to look good for George, but I don’t have the money right now.
JOYCE. Just be honest with George. Tell him the truth: you’re a single mom, and you’re between jobs. If he’s the right guy for you, he’ll understand.
ESMERALDA. I don’t want him to think I’m pressuring him to get me a dress. I’d just feel embarrassed wearing what I have to La Louisianne.
JOYCE. Well, there is one thing you could do.
ESMERALDA. What’s that?
JOYCE. You’re supposed to go out Friday night, right?
ESMERALDA. Yep.
JOYCE. Do you have some room on your credit card?
ESMERALDA. Uh, a little bit, yeah.
JOYCE. So get the dress you want at Rizzo’s on Friday afternoon, wear it that night, and return it on Saturday. Rizzo’s gives you fourteen days to return something, no questions asked.
ESMERALDA. For store credit?
JOYCE. Nope. A refund. Do it, Es! It’s not a big deal.
Esmeralda hangs up the phone and feels troubled. She wants to look nice for George on Friday night, but something doesn’t feel right about Joyce’s plan. She decides to sleep on it and worry about it later.
Alex and his friend Stu drive over to the Rialto, a twenty-five-screen cinema, to see the new Roger Rebar movie, Heavy Duty MetalMan. Two and a half hours later, they emerge from auditorium 12 and head for the exit.
STU, as they walk by auditorium 10. Hey, Alex, check it out! Earth Invaders, the new Joey Mandelbaum movie, starts in ten minutes!
ALEX. Nah. At these prices, one movie is all I can afford.
STU. Whaddaya mean? We can just walk right in. (Stu is right. The only usher in the place is way down the hall, and he’s busy vacuuming the carpet.)
ALEX. What if we get caught?
STU. We won’t. No one’s around.
ALEX, worried that something bad will happen. I dunno.
STU. We’re not hurting anyone. We already gave money to the theater. And the movie has been out for weeks. I’m sure there are plenty of seats available, and if we don’t take them, they’ll just be empty. (Alex considers what Stu is saying.) Besides, Alex, it’s not cheating if you don’t get caught! C’mon, man, the movie’s gonna start soon!
Alex is torn: Stu is persuasive, but something still doesn’t feel right.
Harry has made an ethically unintelligent choice, and Esmeralda and Alex are tempted to do so. What could each do differently, and why is it important? It’s time for answers.
Bunch o’ Books either allows the public to make use of its products and furniture without making a purchase, or it has no policy expressly forbidding the public from doing this, or its policy against loitering isn’t being enforced. But whatever its policy happens to be, Harry is exploiting it for his own gain. The essence of the fourth principle of ethical intelligence, Be Fair, is that we ought to give others their due. A commercial bookstore isn’t a charitable organization or a public library; its very existence depends upon people purchasing at least some of the items they peruse. This doesn’t mean that everyone who enters its premises must buy a book, magazine, calendar, or birthday card. No one can rightly fault someone for taking a look at a few books and then walking out empty handed. But Harry is treating the merchandise as if he already owns it.
Another way that the principle of fairness is implicated in this scenario is that the books and magazines Harry is reading for free at Bunch o’ Books didn’t materialize from thin air; publishers, authors, distributors, and bookstore employees have invested their time and energy in bringing this material to the public. They’re entitled to be compensated for their labor.
The fact that Harry brings his own food into the establishment may very well violate health department regulations, but even if it doesn’t, this practice makes it easy for him to muck up the merchandise. Who would want to buy the Popular Science issue after Harry has gotten his greasy fingerprints all over it? Pawing a magazine one doesn’t intend to buy while shoveling food in one’s gullet isn’t respectful of someone else’s property and thus violates the third principle of ethical intelligence, Respect Others.
Harry is right about one thing: the store may indeed return its stock without penalty, but this arrangement among publishers, distributors, and booksellers exists in spite of, not because of, freeloaders like Harry. Harry’s behavior doesn’t trouble him, but it should because it violates the compact between businesses and customers that calls for each to give the other their due. Customers rightfully expect businesses to allow them to examine the merchandise before buying it. They also expect businesses not to sell them defective or damaged goods. By the same token, businesses have a right to expect customers not to take advantage of the right-to-examine policy and to avoid damaging their merchandise. Harry has treated Bunch o’ Books unfairly, and his behavior is inconsistent with ethical intelligence.
Ethically intelligent bookstore patrons treat the merchandise — and by extension, the people who have produced it, distributed it, and may want to buy it — with respect. They also avoid treating bookstores, those quickly vanishing treasures of the community, like public libraries.
POSTSCRIPT. Harry doesn’t live in my town, but there are enough people like him to have forced my local bookstore to close. The store was always filled with people, but it didn’t make enough money to stay afloat. Not only did would-be patrons spend hour after hour reading books and magazines without buying them, but they also made notes about the books they did want to buy — then went home and ordered them online for less money. In the short run, these folks got some bargains, but their save-money-at-all-costs philosophy eventually cost them the very thing that made their cost-cutting measure possible in the first place: a well-stocked bookstore, which was no longer able to meet the needs of legitimate customers.9
A discount clothing store took its place, which provides a nice segue for considering whether Joyce’s plan for Esmeralda to get a dress at no cost is an ethically intelligent thing to do.
The Clothing Store as Charity?
Rizzo’s policy that allows patrons to return merchandise within fourteen days is based on good faith: Rizzo’s trusts its customers to have a good reason for bringing a dress back (for example, it turned out to be uncomfortable after wearing it for a while). The policy obviously can’t mean that a customer who buys a dress with the intention of wearing it only once is entitled to a full refund. How long could a business survive if it did that? A clothing store isn’t a charity, and its very existence depends upon customers buying products — and keeping them. In other words, it is in a customer’s own interest not to take unfair advantage of a store’s return policy. If enough people like Esmeralda exploit the policy, the store might decide not to allow any returns — or it could even go out of business.
Imagine how Esmeralda would react if the store manager refused to let her have the dress because she is Latina, or she is a few pounds overweight, or he doesn’t find her attractive. Esmeralda would justifiably be outraged because race, weight, or looks aren’t legitimate bases for denying someone an opportunity to purchase something. A business that treats customers this way is not giving them their due and thus violates the fourth principle of ethical intelligence, Be Fair. (As an assault on a person’s dignity, it also violates the Do No Harm principle, and it hardly upholds the Respect Others principle, either.) We expect businesses to be fair to customers, and by the same token, it’s right to expect customers to be fair to businesses. Why should ethical responsibilities flow in only one direction in a relationship?
It’s worth taking a step back and asking why Esmeralda feels it necessary to be someone she isn’t (someone with a lot of money) in the first place. Treating her fancy date as a masquerade will only buy Esmeralda some time. Eventually, the truth will come out, and how impressed will George be after he learns that he has been duped? Joyce may not have the keenest ethical intelligence when it comes to treating businesses fairly, but she’s right about one thing: Esmeralda should not feel ashamed about the sacrifices she has had to make as a single mom; these sacrifices show her to be a person of good character. I know how difficult it is when you want people to like you and are afraid that they won’t if they know the truth about you. But Esmeralda is more likely to get what she wants — a good man to love her — if she honors the third principle of ethical intelligence, Respect Others, by not deceiving George and being up-front about her situation. Then she won’t have to compromise the fourth principle of ethical intelligence, Be Fair, by taking unfair advantage of the clothing store’s liberal return policy.
POSTSCRIPT. Esmeralda ignored the voice in her that said, “Don’t do this; it’s not right.” She bought a beautiful dress for $750 with her credit card on Friday afternoon, wore it to La Louisianne Friday night, and returned it on Saturday. Joyce was right; Rizzo’s did take the dress back, no questions asked. But what Joyce didn’t know was that Rizzo’s charges a 15 percent restocking fee for all returned items that aren’t defective. Since there was nothing wrong with the dress, Esmeralda had to pay $112.50 for what can only be called a scam. The principle of fairness was ultimately upheld — in spite of Esmeralda’s approach to business ethics, not because of it.
Everyone, including Esmeralda, will be better off next time if she makes choices consistent with the principles of ethical intelligence.
The Two-for-One Movie Deal
Stu believes there’s nothing wrong with auditorium hopping at the multiplex, on the grounds that nobody is hurt by this practice. It’s true that if he and Alex decide not to sneak into Earth Invaders, a screening that isn’t sold out, the two seats they would have taken would go unused. But filling those seats without paying for the privilege does cause harm. It harms not just Joey Mandelbaum, the star of the movie, but everyone who worked on it. They toiled long and hard to make something that entertains people. As was the case with Harry, Alex and Stu would be enjoying the fruits of someone else’s labor without paying for it, so everyone whose sweat equity went into producing, distributing, and exhibiting the film would be deprived of compensation they rightfully deserve. We see here how the principles Do No Harm and Be Fair can sometimes overlap; depriving someone of something he or she deserves harms that person.
It’s also not fair to the people who paid good money to be there, and they too worked hard to be able to afford an afternoon at the movies (not an inexpensive proposition these days). Why should Alex and Stu be exempt from shelling out cash, too? By getting something for nothing, they’d essentially be stealing from the filmmakers and suggesting that they’re somehow better than the folks who bought tickets to that show.
Alex and Stu presumably wouldn’t think of walking into a drugstore and sticking a couple of candy bars into their pockets without paying for them, but the practice of auditorium hopping is, in effect, no different.
If Alex and Stu want to see the movie, the fair thing — the ethically intelligent thing — to do would be to go back to the box office, buy their tickets just like everybody else, and settle into two seats that they can now legitimately claim they have every right to sit in.
POSTSCRIPT. Alex and Stu decided to sneak into the theater after all. They watched the movie for free and left without being noticed.
Yes, it’s possible to do something that’s ethically unintelligent and get away with it. But it’s still wrong.
Making ethically intelligent choices with family, friends, and in your community includes the following.
• Maintaining an ethically intelligent work-life balance by spending meaningful time at home and with friends. There are periods when the balance has to tip in favor of work, but when the scale is permanently skewed toward your career, your valued relationships and your own well-being will be compromised.
• Being frugal, but not in ways that compromise your connections with family and friends. An ethically intelligent approach to money means not spending it when you don’t have it and being appropriately generous when you do.
• Taking periodic vacations. Recharging your batteries enables you to better serve your clients when you return to work, and vacations with family or friends give you meaningful time alone with them.
• Treating local businesses respectfully and fairly. This means recognizing that bookstores aren’t libraries, clothing stores aren’t charities, and a ticket to one movie at the multiplex isn’t a free pass to all the other films showing there.