1. You get to your car in the parking lot and discover a handbill under your windshield wiper blade. Obviously, we know who's in the wrong, since we have just witnessed at least a misdemeanor, based upon the notions of trespassing and littering (and maybe vandalism, too, like toilet paper in your tree on Halloween). But how do you attempt to deliver justice? Do you: a) throw it on the ground, making you a litterbug, too, or b) waste your own precious trash-hauling time and stick it in your pocket, in which case crime has paid, since the entrepreneur has gotten you to take it? I usually choose b), and the crime has taken its victim. I would think that the more people who choose a), the more likely the parking lot owner will get at least one copy and go after 'em. But most times, they would just blow down the street into someone else's lot.
2. It's 6:30 AM and you're on your way to work. You stop by the newspaper box to get the morning edition, but it's so dark outside and you're so tired that you accientally grab two copies for your one payment into the slot (it's a light news day, so it's a thin one). The door slams shut, of course, so you can't put the extra one back. Do you walk back and put more coins in the slot? In my situation, I figured some poor news distributor's change would come up short that day, so I put the money in and gave my boss the paper (raising another ethical question of an attempt at influence purchasing...luckily, he paid me for it, since he didn't have one yet).
3. Another true-life story: it's almost at the point where your license plate tabs are going to expire. You've sent the payment in to the DMV in advance of the date, figuring you'd get the new ones in time to avoid expired plates. But it's suddenly the 30th of July, you still don't have the tags, and you realize you're fair game for a traffic stop in two days, unless you get the mail renewal the next day. Do you make a trip, stand in line, and get tabs in person at the DMV? Since traffic stops are not good for my blood pressure, I decided to make the extra trip on the 30th. The DMV saw my payment on the system and didn't want me to be in violation, so I got a set of tabs. Would you have instead waited out the mail and attempted to give your excuse to the Officer if you were pulled over? Like he hasn't heard that one before...
4. Building on #3, if you then got the tabs on the 2nd of the next month in the mail, what would you do with them? Throw them out or return them? A distinct third option for the criminally-minded, would be to sell them on the black market, although they could be traced to me by their serial number. I spent my 32 cents and mailed a letter to the DMV just to surrender the tabs. I would bet Gov. Allen of Virginia has ironed out such difficulty by now.
5. You've booked another of those transcontinental economy/coach (read steerage) class flights. You've bought the cord to listen to the movie, which turns out to be a clinker. Instead, you'd much rather watch the scenery below from your window seat. Of course, the flight crew recommends you close your window covers so that those watching the movie on those little video screens can see it better. Do you close the covers out of consideration for those who'll probably have to leave their seats for you later when you need to use the lavatory? Or do you keep on looking out? When this happened to me recently, I decided against complete Golden Rule compliance and kept one window partially open. I figure, why does anyone book a window seat when the window is made useless for two hours?
6. This is actually a rather common quandary, I guess. What do you do when you know you should go home sick but the illness is still relatively mild, and you can be at your desk attending to things? It is a great moral dilemma, when I'm not feeling well, since so many of my colds (or allergy attacks, or whatever they are) don't have really recognizable symptoms when they begin. I have the kind of job where I always have residual value for talking about things to others needing my help, even when I'm about ready to collapse. But this is not real productivity, an "on call" existence during office hours, so I know I shouldn't be doing it. My usual tendency is to last it out until there's no denying I need to leave, rather than leaving at the first signs. I've heard of new management styles (e.g. patterned after Lincoln Electric) that don't even pay for sick leave...you only get compensated for busting your tail when you're there. And then, of course, there are the stories, true or not, about downsizers who pick their victims based on leave usage. I have found myself saying to myself: "Absenteeism is a moral defect".
7. This you know if you drive in as much heavy city traffic as I do in Metropolitan Washington, DC. You're driving in a lane of traffic that's moving along pretty well, right next to a lane that's crawling or dead stopped, typically because the poor souls therein need to get onto an off-ramp or have some other misfortune. I myself do not like driving fast past a slow lane. The reason is that people will realize they're wasting their time in that lane, and pull out...right in your face, often with no turn signals. Wham! Slam on the brakes and be glad if you have ABS! No thanks. So I move cautiously, with a constant eye on that lane next door, until I get past whatever is slowing it down. The question is: should I be doing this or should I be caving in to the "gotta get through" needs of the folks coming up on my rear? They, obviously, will drive whatever speed they can get away with, despite the impending doom should someone pull out and cut them off. Thus, we're talking the two horns of a dilemma, those being the jerk behind you and the potential jerk in front of you. Funny, how traffic conforms real, live, human beings just like ourselves into inhuman "jerks." I guess it's time to hate the behavior, not the person...
8. This one is a real problem I've been dealing with for more than 4 years. Our office building has security doors for which employees have keys, to keep unauthorized personnel from wandering around our many corridors at work. We've had things stolen. One of the doors, which I pass through many times a day, is set into a wall along with a door to the Ladies Room, only 10 feet away. Now since we are a busy place, I often find myself followed by female co-workers as I approach this door, key in hand, and out of a habit my mother taught me (she gets the blame every time I do something like this!), I hold the door open as they approach, so they don't have to use their keys if they're also coming through. But alas, many of these followers are really headed for the OTHER door and have to wave me off. This, of course, is terribly embarassing, probably far more for them than for me. Still, I always think it's a bit rude to let that door slam shut behind me, so I hold it until I know for sure. But should I really just walk through and pretend there's no one following me?
9. I don't seem to hear anyone in the popular media discussing this matter: what will the nostalgia hucksters in the 2020's call this next decade? "Eighties, Nineties, [?]" I always remember the phrase used by "The Music Man"'s Harold Hill, concerning his Alma Mater: "Gary, Indiana Conservatory, Gold Medal Class of Ought-Five" (the "oughties"? The "naughty oughties?"). Obviously, this nomenclature was not Y1.9K-compliant. I also think "Two Thousand" is a bit overpowering as a name for the year. How about "Nineteen Hundred", followed by "Twenty Hundred", "Twenty Hundred [O] One", ...? I saw this used on a West Point souvenir calendar--the Army way makes sense to me. Just another year.
10. This question has had me stymied since I was 13 years old: the only way it seems possible to date enough people to find a mate is by going through a long series of trial and error attempts. This means, inevitably, that the would-be married person needs to learn how to live with rejection and heartbreak as a fact of life. But wait a minute, here--if a person gets really good at that and can just walk away and live another day, that means he or she has become calloused, doesn't it? This person has learned to ignore another's emotional output on demand. The problem then, is what in the world does this expert at rejection do when the "right" one is finally located? After the long battles in vain, there shouldn't be any real compassion left. At this point, he or she is expected to lose the rhino hide and go head-over-heels bonkers, where before this was foolhardy in view of the later dumping. Dating therefore seems to be a negative sum game, no matter what the outcome. Having reached such a conclusion, I've long ago decided that if I can give up, it's worth doing.
11. I have a problem with those checkout counter boxes, bowls, etc. that read "have a penny-give a penny; need a penny-take a penny"--it looks like creeping socialism or some other strike against individual liberty and values. What really gets me, though, are the store clerks who assume I want to participate and do it for me. Imagine this scenario: you walk in and ring up a total, say, of $9.03, but all you have is a $10.00. Handing this to the store person and expecting 97 cents change, he instead grabs 3 cents from the dish and hands you a dollar. Do you hand back the dollar and insist that you will not take what amounts to charity? You already don't have the 3 cents, so you can't do it as he'd have you. Should a person really cave in to something like this, just to avoid a scene?
12. Here's another problem that is peculiar to the security-locked hallway doors at our office: You come along towards one of these outward-opening doors to head back to work. I understand that commercial doors must open outward, in view of such disasters as the Coconut Grove nightclub fire in WWII. Normally, I dig out my key, unlock the door, and walk through on my own. But business being what it is, there is typically someone coming the other way, and all they have to do is turn the handle and walk out. Do I wait for this person, in which case I must first let them get to the door, then make their way through before my own passage, or do I jump on the door and unlock it myself to slip through before them? I suppose Emily Post would say something about this, if there had been security doors in her day. I typically let the person approach the door and open it for me, at which point I grab it to hold for them and then say "thanks". But thanks for what? Holding me up?
13. This is another traffic difficulty I've not worked out the optimal answer to. It frequently happens that I have the right of way, to enter a lane, say, from a ramp where folks are trying to get in to that same road from another ramp. I never trust anyone as being incapable of just pulling out in my face, so I end up slowing down quite a bit, so that I'd have the ability to brake and maneuver if I got cut off. But the folks in the no-right of way lane then think that I'm either making a space just for them or have become slowed down enough that they could beat me into the lane. So it's all a matter of concentration and distraction, on the part of the other driver. I suppose I get jumpy at times.
This is a work in progress.
Tell me what you'd do (or tell me what a fool I am for my choices) at
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