OK...NOW it's selfish to squat at tables for hours.
I owe thanks to a blogger named JJ (and to Ken at Popehat, whose post brought him to my attention) for giving me one of the best illustrations of what I call “The Compliance Mindset” I have ever seen.
I’m sure it would horrify JJ to learn this, but he is ethically aligned with all the financial wheeler-dealers and unscrupulous mortgage lenders who crashed the U.S. economy. They also thrived in the Compliance Mindset, as do corrupt politicians, deceptive advertisers, dishonest journalists, sleazy lawyers, and millions of others in our culture who make life miserable for the rest of us for their own benefit. All of these people adopt the convenient belief that something must have a formal rule or law prohibiting it before it becomes wrong. This is, in fact, the opposite of the truth: if people were completely ethical, we would need very few rules. The Compliance Mindset is really an unethical rationalization that allows people to be rude, selfish, irresponsible, unfair, or worse because their conduct is technically legal and there isn’t a rule against it yet. Usually the rule or law arrives after a lot of needless harm has been done.
In JJ’s case, his transgression was relatively trivial: he took up a seat and a table at a Starbucks working away at his laptop although he had finished his coffee two and a half hours earlier. [ Flashback: I wrote about the ethics of this conduct in an earlier post: “The ethics-free logic of these selfish slugs is this: “They let me do this, so it’s OK to do it—even though it is inconsiderate, even though it harms the business supplying me free office space, even though, eventually, the second Starbucks Principle guarantees that the conduct of people like me will ruin this benefit for everyone.” Thus they join the people who hog public tennis courts, those who become gluttons at All You Can Eat buffets, and the boors who feel that if something is free, you are a fool not to take more of it than you need so that the establishment is forced to limit it or charge for it. These are people who are immune to behaving like they live in a community, and who feel no duty to compromise their convenience and welfare for strangers. There are too many of them, and too few of us.”] JJ was outraged, however, that the establishment had the effrontery to ask him to buy something or move on to make room for paying customers, because there was no rule stating that he had to. He wrote an indignant blog post (claiming discrimination and “emotional distress”), then removed it once he learned that Starbucks had begun posting signs reminding patrons that they needed to have a Starbucks product at a table in order to camp out there.
The full force of JJ’s ethical denseness can be seen in his reply to a commenter who suggested that it was unreasonable for someone to take up space in an establishment without purchasing anything:
“If I know, going into any establishment, that they have certain policies, I’ll respect those policies. My issue is with the way in which this process is being enforced. I don’t feel entitled at all. Going into a Starbucks and not having a place to sit is not abnormal in this city, but why should the person with the LAPTOP be asked to purchase more product, yet the person with their Kindle who has been there just as long does not? Because laptop guy drinks his coffee fast and Kindle guy nurses it over the course of 3 hours?”
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
1. Why do you need policies for this, JJ? Isn’t it obvious that when someone who has just purchased food and a beverage has no place to sit down, it is time for you to vacate? Do you understand the concepts of fairness, consideration for others, and the Golden Rule? The lack of a policy doesn’t make your selfish conduct ethical.
2. “Going into a Starbucks and not having a place to sit is not abnormal in this city,” and your conclusion from this is that it makes hogging the limited seating acceptable? Classic “everybody does it” reasoning.
3. Both the guy with Kindle nursing his coffee and you with your laptop and sense of entitlement are unethical, and neither affects the other. Yes, he should be asked to leave too—that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be if he isn’t. You should leave without being asked, and show him how a responsible, ethical, considerate member of society behaves.
The amazing, and frightening, aspect of JJ’s writings on the topic is the degree to which he believes that unequivocally selfish and anti-social conduct is right until and unless a rule is announced to prohibit it. This is the same logic we hear from politicians like Washington D.C.’s City Council Member Marion Barry, who argued that there was nothing unethical about his placing his girlfriend in a taxpayer-funded job for which she had no qualifications. After all, he said, there was no law against it. “I broke no laws” has also been the mantra of corrupt politicians like Tom DeLay, John Ensign, Rod Blagojevich, and Charlie Rangel, just to name a tiny number of a huge and destructive group.
My all-time favorite example of the Compliance Mindset was a young woman who admitted to a journalist that she often sent and read text-messages while driving, and said she would support a law outlawing the practice because she “would feel pretty horrible if something happened because of me breaking a law.”
Well, JJ has his rule now, and if he is like his fellow members of the Compliance Mindset Club, he will soon find other selfish and unethical conduct to self-righteously indulge in, and neutralize his conscience with the delusion that it is acceptable because “no laws were broken” and “there’s no rule against it.”
The Compliance Mindset, you see, isn’t just a rationalization.
It’s a lifestyle.
Ethics Alarms 
I remember when I used to go to a restaurant with a friend at 1 AM or so to sit,talk,drink coffee,and smoke cigarettes back in the day. I still drink coffee but gave up smoking 12 years ago. The restaurant didn’t seem to mind since we were 2 of maybe 6 customers. It’s different,of course,if the place was busy. Our space hogging would mean the restaurant was losing money and hungry folks were waiting for a table to eat. I was raised to be considerate of others and maybe that’s key. Even when I smoked I would ask if it was okay with those I was with and made sure it wasn’t a no smoking area. Whether I’d be considerate if I wasn’t taught to be,I don’t know. I’d like to think so.
Not literally a table to eat…lol!
i agree 100%. i have watched folks who feel entitled ruin things for all due to their limited mindset. i have seen small cafes and coffee shops close over the few selfish people who become freeloaders. i don’t want a law to tell me what is right or wrong, i feel that i should know the difference, and act accordingly.
It seems almost superfluous to add yet another broken link in the Compliance Mindset chain of “logic”. This isn’t a park bench they’re sitting on. It’s a commercial establishment that has paid good money to make the space Internet-accessible, presumably attract the customers that will make that payment a profitable investment. If it weren’t for Starbuck’s, JJ would have to go to the public library and wait his turn for public access stations like the rest of the peons. I’m sure he’s far too busy, and his work is far too exalted, to make that compromise.
And, by sheerest chance, this post raises a SECOND Henry Ward Beecher line: “It usually takes a hundred years to make a law and then, after it has done its work, it usually takes a hundred years to get rid of it.” One more reason why we don’t, and can’t, have laws for everything.
Please sir save your false umbrage for a more appropriate context.
There is no “ethical” issue here, at all.
Starbuck’s is not an “ethical” establishment in the sense that its corporate behavior is primarily governed by “ethical” rather than “business” concerns.
Starbuck’s is a commercial enterprise whose goal is to maximize its profits.
Starbuck’s is at liberty to permit squatting, or not, to the extent that it deems is in Starbuck’s best financial interest.
It is more than obvious that Starbuck’s actually encourages people to linger at their establishment, playing with their kindles, computers and so on–that’s a big part of their business model.
Your friend simply has attempted to take advantage of this to its absolute utmost.
Starbuck’s has made a calculated business decision to set certain limitations on the availability of its real estate in the absence of purchasing its product.
Again this is not an “ethical” issue at all–Starbuck’s could have decided as a business proposition that it made more sense to allow folks like your buddy to remain without purchasing product. That it did not was not due to any perceived “ethical” violation by your friend (and others like him)–Starbuck’s simply decided that it was less profitable to allow people like your friend to hang around without buying something, so put a stop to that.
As far as your friend’s attitude? Absolutely correct AND consistent. There was no “rule” against what he was doing, so it was perfectly ethical for him to do it. That is, remain in a public eating establishment as long as his presence was tolerated by the ownership. Nothing at all unethical about that.
When Starbuck’s actually made a “rule” against it, he dropped his protest.
You’re implicitly stating the belief that your friend had an obligation to do otherwise and further that through some form of clairvoyance he should have known about this unspoken “ethical rule” (as you would have it) without anyone telling him of its existence.
FAIL.
Next time you might want to actually take Ethics 101 before blogging about it.
Heh, you forgot the part where “JJ” was complaining precisely because Starbucks management had told him to buy something or get out.
What a marvelous example of arrogance without a whiff of actual expertise or reasoning! Gee, where to begin, in a post so rife with ethics misconceptions? I can’t possibly list them all! How about this: if you are going to be so gratuitously obnoxious, I have a right to a name. You can hide behind a fake name on the Comments page, but I require something honest, other than honest invective. Unless, of course, “repairminded” is really your name.
Ethics is about determining what is right and what is wrong—most people grasp that rather easily. Your concept that because a company is not founded for the purpose of ethics it is immune from ethical considerations is bizarre, and flat out wrong. Nobody is immune. Companies can be ethical or unethical like any one else. Yes, behaving fair and ethically has commercial implications, and ethics may or may not be the prime motivating factor. That changes nothing, as far as the analysis goes. Of course its an ethical issue.
You can read the post again if you don’t comprehend the difference between compliance and ethics. I’m not going to spell it out for you. A patron who “takes advantage’ to the unfair inconvenience of other patrons, whether the “rules” permit it or not is still being selfish, rude and disrespectful of others. I’m not going to restate the post—it is clear, to most, and correct.
You wouldn’t know an ethic if it fell on you, and the tone of your comment is further proof. And if you want to respond, I’ll need a name and a valid e-mail attached to it. I’ll tolerate insults (up to a point) and I’ll even tolerate snotty, wrong-headed comments like this one, but I won’t tolerate them from anonymous cowards.
>>>> Next time you might want to actually take Ethics 101 before blogging about it.
So, got an “A” in Asshole 101, did ya? Thanks for sharing.
I believe the economics term for what you are talking about here is “The Tragedy of the Commons”.
Yes—as pointed out earlier by “Ethics Bob.” And it IS an ethics issue.
Harold, using a couple of names, now, has posted several well-written/ provocative posts to this and other articles, but refuses to supply a genuine name, as required in the Comments Guideline. I have had no choice but to kill the comments, which was hard, because they were good ones, and because I would have liked to respond to them in some detail.
His explanation was this:
“In terms of providing my actual identity rather than using a screen name, since you have no ability to guarantee my personal privacy–nor would I expect you to–not disclosing my actual identity is a simple matter of prudence. In any case my identity has no bearing on the merit, or lack of merit, as to anything I might post here. The words stand and fall on their own”
That may be so, but I require some degree of trust and mutual exposure here, and I believe anonymous comments are generally more irresponsible. I know who all the regulars are here, or have used their e-mail to find out. This site is an experiment in prompting enlightened discussion rather than a series of monologues—that is how all of us improve our ethical analysis ability. I expect the discussion.to be occasionally heated but to proceed with basic ethical and civility principles intact, one of which is that my tolerance for a guest who barges in calling me a fraud and a fool is especially limited if I don’t know who or what he is. So no name, no comment. That’s the rule, Hal, and I know you like rules.
On that topic, Harold’s comment on the Starbucks situation is remarkable in that he doesn’t grasp what’ wrong with JJ’s conduct at all.. He wrote…
“That is–even if it’s “unwritten” and should be understood by all concerned, if you are going to accuse someone like JJ of a violation of the ethical rule, at some point you actually be able to concretely articulate it…The simple fact is that while spending a ponderously enormous amount of words expressing a very subjective opinion of criticism of JJ’s conduct at Starbuck’s, and castigating him for it, you did not actually articulate what specific principle of ethics JJ supposedly violated.”
Really? I did that pretty clearly in the linked Starbucks post—I don’t link these things for my health, but to save repetition…and besides, what is objectively unethical is obvious. There is a limited resource, and the owner allows it to be used freely by customers, based on the fact that they are customers. One customer who, based on technically fulfilling the minimum customer requirement , takes up a wildly disproportionate amount of the resource, leaving none for other customers and foiling the establishment’s motive for providing the resource—attracting business—is being selfish, unfair to others, disrespectful of his host, ungrateful and exploitive, as well as greedy. If a community supplies tennis courts open to all but has no rule limiting time, Harold apparently maintains that there would be nothing wrong with two players monopolizing the court for hours while mobs of tennis players waited.
His next argument is a fundamental misunderstanding of ethics, at least as defined in this space. I defined my terms, and they are commonly, though not universally used. What I call ethics, some call morals, and vice-versa.
Thus:
“What you seem to miss is the idea that if actual “rules” of ethics don’t really matter–if “compliance” doesn’t really matter–then we can all make our own set of subjective ethical rules, and no one is ever going to be “wrong” for applying their own completely subjective analysis to a given situation.”
Ethics, the study of what is right and what isn’t, does not involve rigid rules, but behavioral principles. The principles are what we argue over, and the complex way they are applied. Harold needs to read “The Bad Man,” which is the classic of the compliance mindset, Oliver Wendell Holmes’s parable of a law abiding sociopath. Obeying rules is not an ethical act, but an act based on compliance, the fear of outside consequences. Ethics is driven by internal motivations—the desire to do the right thing.
Finally Harold ended his comment by expanding on a theme he began in a comment in my policies section—which doesn’t accept comments, accusing me of saying there that my credentials as an ethicist preclude criticism….
“If I were on the other hand asking that my arguments were to be accepted based on my track record as a philosopher or ethicist, then asking me to provide particulars as to my background and identity might be more pertinent…”
That’s nonsense, and it is not my position. In the guidelines, I said that I would not be friendly to commenters who attacked by opinion by expressing doubts about my qualifications to offer them. First of all, everybody is qualified to have opinions about ethics, because ethics are about life, and everybody is living one. I was addressing the common “so-called ethicist” smear that I sometimes get by someone who wants to hit me with their PhD…I was saying the opposite of what Harold attributed to me. I never have maintained that I am right because of “credentials”—for one thing, I’m not that impressed with credentials. The three Presidents most qualified by experience were probably James Buchanan, Richard Nixon, and George H.W. Bush, duds all. For another, I often take definite positions to provoke thought and argument. I can usually see another side or six, and often I do discuss them, but one of the ways ethics has worked its way out of the public square is by being so equivocal.
Anyway, Harold is gone, and he’s not getting another comment answered or posted, until I have a name. I hate to be a stickler, but hey—he’s the one who thinks rules are the same as ethics.
There is no one blanket solution for this problem. Some “squatters” might spend $20 over the course of the few hours that they sit and “hog” up free WiFi and electricity. They spend more money than someone that comes in, buys one item, and can’t find a seat.
A lot of these “squatters” are more loyal and over the course of time spend more money than the occasional customer.
At the same time it is totally wrong to sit at one of these establishments for hours and make one minor purchase. However, this is just one form of people taking advantage of resources. I’m pretty sure the same people complaining about squatters are taking advantage of something in their lives. No one is immune to this.
If Starbucks doesn’t want squatters they shouldn’t have made WiFi free. This encourages people to come and squat. Before the free WiFi a lot of these squatters would just go to a place that welcomed them. The real answer to this problem will come in the future. If Starbucks survives, then they were right.
The 3rd paragraph is irrelevant. It’s bad conduct, period. The fact that some people complaining about it do or have done similar things is not an excuse, nor does it make the conduct better, less unethical or more excusable. This is just an “everybody does it” rationalization used to mitigate what it cannot mitigate. A bad habit and worth breaking.