It’s Only Fair

Astonishingly, organizations can violate their own mission statement without any manager or non-supervisory employee being aware of the violation. This can happen even when the people in an organization really do take their mission seriously. At Goodwill, the mission is to end poverty, a laudable goal. It follows explicitly (i.e., according to a sign in the stores) that “every customer has an equal opportunity to purchase any item for sale.” Although the sign bases this point on the fact that the goods “come from public donation,” I submit that ending poverty by giving the poor access to relatively low-priced merchandise is hampered if some customers are permitted to fill their carts with on-sale (i.e., color of week) items when the doors open. Certainly allowing those resale-minded customers to deprive other customers of a selection of items on sale (especially clothing, which even homeless people need) is not fair.

According to the sign, possible violations include any employee or volunteer of a store being able to purchase items in the store whether for themselves or others. “Nor may merchandise be reserved or set aside for anyone.” To be sure, recognition is also given to the possibility that a customer might think that the organization is not being fair. When I interviewed a store manager about whether allowing customers who resell items on sale in “garage sales” conveniently misconstrued as businesses to buy in such bulk that effectively deprives other customers, whose use for the clothing is for personal use, she dodged the question itself but took my point implicitly by admitted that she knew of no way in which the practice could be thwarted. I told her I had a few ideas, but she was not interested in them. I topld her I am a business ethicist and would be writing on this case. Patronizingly, she quipped, “Have fun writing your paper!” In retrospect, I wish I had replied, “Have fun managing!” How interested would the organization’s management be? I wondered at the time.

Goodwill could indeed have stepped in to prevent the obviously unfair practice of certain customers, who actually compete with each other in going around—as part of their re-selling businesses—to different Goodwill stores to swoop up as many shirts or pants on sale. 

A "garage sale" of a reseller open for business at her personal residence. Beyond the cars is the Goodwill store at which I had observed the opening of a major, half-off, sale on shoes and clothing (and misc) just a week earlier. Some of the athletic shoes, which sold for $7 without any negotiation (a sign that a reseller is hosting the "garage sale"), I had seen in a cart full of such shoes at the beginning of the sale at the Goodwill store. 

The personal-use customers can have little chance, or practical opportunity, to get an item on sale because Goodwill allows customers even at the opening of a sale to fill their carts entire of one kind of item (e.g., athletic shoes). Even if a wife/mother is buying athletic shoes for her husband and teenage kids, a whole cartful is suspicious. I witnessed a woman head immediately to the shoe section when the doors open and quickly throw as many athletic shoes in her card as she could before other customers had a chance to take advantage of the sale. Clearly, the monopolistic character of the woman’s behavior and that her commercial interests could eclipse the personal-use interest of other customers who would do without as a result not only reek of unfairness, but also violate the “equal opportunity to purchase any item in the store.”

A reseller had her cart full just seven minutes after the Goodwill store opened with a sale that would practically guarantee that the reselling would be lucrative. The number of men's shorts alone in this cart points to something beyond personal use. The resellers do not pay taxes on their profits because the sales, primped as "garage sales," are easy not to report. Legally, the income from genuine garage sales is taxable.

Meanwhile, Goodwill looks the other way undoubtedly because more revenue and less risk of having items unable to be sold are obtained when the re-sellers buy in bulk. In other words, the lack of recognition of the tilted status quo and of ideas on how to restore balance may not be accidents. A false premise that the status quo must be balanced, or that the status quo does not justify effort to achieve balance may also be in the mix. A policy could be put into effect that limits the number of same-classification items on sale that can be purchased by each customer.

Already I can think of ways in which the commercial customers could get around this limitation, for profit-seekers hate limits, whether internal or external. They could bring along family and friends to divide up the quickly stashed merchandise. They could fill their respective carts when the doors open and carefully stash their carts so to be able to make multiple trips to different cashiers.

At some point, however, store employees and even managers can be relied on to help enforce the policy by being on the lookout for such tricks. A customer’s claim that she needs a cartful of sneakers in order to try them on to find one that fits can be easily rebuffed. Only six items are allowed in the fitting rooms anyway. Such games and how to deconstruct them could be incorporated into training. It is not difficult, for example, to see people quickly filling their respective carts with one or two item-classifications shortly after the doors open. The store manager with whom I spoke had no problem in identifying the re-sellers who buy in bulk. Her hands’ off, laissez faire attitude was problematic as it did not fit with the organization’s mission to reduce poverty in a fair way, which in turn requires equal access to the merchandise. Hiding behind the relatively effortless status quo, as if it were intractable or even as fair as possible, evinces a willingness to live with an unfairness that could otherwise be reduced even if it cannot be eliminated. Not having any ideas when imperfect measures could make a dent evinces an unwillingness to think too far from the status quo (i.e., outside the box).

See "A Lack of Good Will at Goodwill."

See also Cases of Unethical Business: A Malignant Mentality of Mendacity, available at Amazon. 

Holding the U.S. Debt-Ceiling Hostage: A Case of Political Expediency over Statesmanship

In April of 2011, S & P lowered expectations on U.S. Government debt from “stable” to “negative.”  Astonishing, the $14.2 trillion U.S. debt was still rated as AAA. The shift in expectations did not trigger higher borrowing costs because the market presumed that a political deal lowering the deficit would be facilitated by the warning-call. At the same time, Congress and the U.S. president were grappling with the need to extend the federal debt ceiling. The federal government was projected at the time to reach its borrowing limit by May 16, 2011, though the Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, said he could use accounting options to push the date back to July 8. He assured the public that Republicans in Congress had told President Obama that they would go along with a higher limit. “I want to make it perfectly clear that Congress will raise the debt ceiling,” the Geithner said.  He also said the Republican leaders had assured the president that they “couldn’t play around with the government’s credit rating. They recognize it, and they told the president that.”[1] Such a recognition and statement by the Republican leadership, if true, would evince statesmanship over political expediency, for Republican lawmakers could have leveraged their votes on raising the ceiling to get more in negotiations on the budget. This would be particularly notable considering that appropriations to keep the U.S. Government's non-essential operations going were pawns in a Congressional-presidential power-struggle during the Trump administration. 

However, Rep. Paul Ryan, chair of the U.S. House Budget Committee and later to become Speaking of the House, said that while it was true that nobody wanted the U.S. Treasury to default, “(w)e want cuts in spending accompanying a raising of the debt ceiling. And that is what we have been telling the White House.” A spokesperson for Obama said a debt ceiling vote could not be contingent on upcoming negotiations over the budget.  So, in effect, the matter of default on the U.S. debt was being used for leverage in negotiations rather than held as untouchable.  It is no wonder S & P lowered its expectations concerning the ability of U.S. Government officials to avoid default by failing to raise the federal debt limit. Had the lower expectations been assumed to be a wake-up call for federal lawmakers and the executive, S & P would have been naive.

To say that no one wants default but then to hold it ransom is disingenuous and duplicitous. It is as if to say, “I don’t want to do it but I have to,” when in fact the deed does not have to do it. We see such statements from corporate managers and customer service employees. “Unfortunately, that can’t be done”—weakness that seeks to dominate typically takes assumes the passive voice as if to hide—when in fact the person or especially his boss could. Company policies are in actuality guidelines. Sadly, customers typically enable the false rigidity by taking it at face value rather than questioning it by going above the employee or even manager. 

Rep. Ryan could have resisted the temptation to gain greater advantage on the budget by holding the debt ceiling hostage. Even if he made the statement to cover himself with his political base in Janesville, Wisconsin, he bore responsibility for giving the appearance of putting partisan advantage over statesmanship.  

Given the encroaching nature of expediency whether for power or profit (or both), even verbal statements can get the ball rolling even for other political parties. Soon the government's duty to act in the public interest becomes a mere byproduct, as if by accident rather than primary intention. Given human nature, political expediency and the desire to make even more money are inherently antithetical to any self-enforced limitation. Hence in government, we can say that statesmanship involves voluntarily giving force to a self-imposed constraint or limitation. 

1, “Geithner Confident Congress Will Raise Borrowing Limit,” USA Today, April 18, 2011, p. 6A.