[lit-ideas] Re: You don't say.....
- From: Paul Stone <pas@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 11:49:37 -0400
>"...The strong sense of holding people responsible is
>getting more and more difficult," said Joan McGregor,
With sentences like this, we should hold Joan responsible for SOMETHING.
Did she really say those words in that order?
> a philosopher at Arizona State University. "We still hold people
> responsible all the time in a
>legal sense. But in a moral sense, it's as though no one is responsible
>any more."
I've been thinking about the changing 'morality' of people in the past 10
or 15 years. I think it goes hand-in-hand with the mentality of even small
businesses: i.e. get paid as much as you can for doing as little as
possible. EVERYONE is out to screw you before you screw them. It's getting
increasingly difficult to do honest business. By "honest", I mean, you give
someone [the expected] value for their money. It's becoming increasingly
'acceptable' to rip people off. I mean, for 'good folk' to do it.
Three examples:
1) A former employee of mine [and for all appearances, a very decent
person] told me that she bought some furniture from a large furniture
company and they delivered a very similar but much more expensive living
room set. She didn't tell them, but a couple of weeks later, they phoned
her to tell her that they were delivering the correct stuff and picking up
the wrong stuff. She actually thought that she was perfectly entitled to
keep the (twice as costly) furniture that she had NOT paid for.
2) at a recent church meeting in our town, there was a discussion about
rising natural gas costs and the fact that the church's gas contract was
due to run out in a few months. One _deacon_ suggested [seriously] 'maybe
we should just hope that they don't remember and keep charging us the
present price." Another deacon posed the question "well that wouldn't be
very honest would it?" to which he was fairly groaned at by the other 6.
AND THIS WAS AT A CHURCH!!!
3) I had a furnace problem last September and had to call an HVAC dude (are
you listening MIKE?) to come and do some work. After futzing around for 3
hours, he had the problem licked. Just as he was writing up the bill, his
cell-phone rang and he sat on the steps of MY house talking about someone
else's job for 12 minutes. After he hung up, he looked at his watch and
filled in his hours. At 80 dollars an hour, he over-charged me a full 15
minutes which is 20 dollars of MY money. Now, I complained and got him to
reduce his bill, but it's the principle of the thing. This is today's
contemporary business practice. I shouldn't HAVE to write 3 letters a week
to businesses complaining about their service, they should give me good
service in the first place. But they don't. And it's becoming increasingly
acceptable and even worse, expected.
My theory is that our actual culture is changing so that the vast majority
of people actually think that it's absolutely okay to rip people off if you
can get away with it. "Buyer Beware" has transformed into "human beware".
Perhaps it's just the revenge of the little people.
not holding out hope about the goodness of humanity,
Paul
##########
Paul Stone
pas@xxxxxxxx
Kingsville, ON, Canada
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