This weekend was Grace’s memorial event, and yes, it came off very well despite my long-standing dread. I have wonderful, talented and loving friends, as did Grace. My long-time musical collaborator on my pop music parodies ethics programs, Mike Messer, brought down the house and made Grace smile, I hope, with a rousing performance of her favorite John Lennon solo, “Twist and Shout,” backed up by the unusually musical crowd.
But I digress. The next day, when a friend who helped organize and mange the event (since I was useless), brought me the receipts. I expected the bill for the platters of food I had ordered from Safeway, for he had picked them up. “No,” he said,”they told me you had paid for them when you made the order.”
But I had not. I tried to pay, but the dead-eyed, barely conversant clerk refused to process my credit card, and insisted that payment would be due when the platters were ready. The price is almost $400.
Well, I’m an ethicist, so I have to pay it, though I may take my sweet time about it and wait until my cash flow is a bit more robust. I know what my mother’s reaction would have been—“What luck! The food was free!”—just as surely that I know that my father would have headed over to Safeway by now and paid the bill.
Now, my sister had a dandy rationalization, though she didn’t commit to it. “These stores are incompetent,” she said. “I’ve had similar experiences, though not $400 worth. The only way they’re ever going to get better as if sloppy work like this costs them money.”
“I’d be tempted not to pay,” she said.
Oh, I’m tempted all right. And I’m drowning in debt dating back to when the pandemic crashed my business and ruined my credit. Nevertheless, I got the food, I owe Safeway the money, and I’m an ethicist, dammit.
Phooey.
Ethics Alarms 
Are you sure you’re friend who picked them up didn’t pay?
Absolutely. He contributed more than his share already, and he is, shall we say, careful with his money.
Well, you could always ask for the payment information used to pay for it. If its under your name, I bet they can get it to you.
No, I’ve got the bill! I can go to the register and tell them to run it. But they handed it to him as a paid receipt, because they are morons.
“Now, my sister had a dandy rationalization, though she didn’t commit to it. ‘These stores are incompetent,’ she said. ‘I’ve had similar experiences, though not $400 worth. The only way they’re ever going to get better as if sloppy work like this costs them money.'”
This reminds me of a quote by bizarre but hilarious, at least in my book, comedian Emo Philips:
“I was walking down fifth avenue today and I found a wallet, and I was gonna keep it, rather than return it, but I thought: well, if I lost a hundred and fifty dollars, how would I feel? And I realized I would want to be taught a lesson.”
That IS hilarious! Wrong, but hilarious.
I think we have all been sorely tempted to take advantage of an opportunity to enrich ourselves at another’s expense when we are hard pressed for resources. We have to fight that temptation irrespective of whether or not the other needs to be taught a lesson or can afford to absorb the mistake.
The one who needs to learn the lesson is the clerk and not the management. If you want to teach a lesson take the bill to Safeway, see a manager and explain that you were told that it had already been paid by the cashier when you know that it had not. That puts management on notice to do a better job training or enlighten them to the poor performance of that employee. Let them teach the lesson to the employee.
You cannot teach a lesson if you do not expose the event. Doing nothing will not be instructive to those needing instructing and the loss will be blamed on some other group.
My position has been: if I complain when they charge me for something I did not get, I should act the same when they don’t charge me for something I do.
-Jut
Yes, exactly. I go over my grocery receipts before I leave the store and bring them back to the service desk if I find something wrong. Well, I might not if it’s a dollar.
But often enough there is a problem with sales not being input into their computer that it pays to check. And yes, I’ve also gone back if I realize I didn’t get charged for something as well.
“I might not if it’s a dollar.“
I’m one of those people Jack deems “careful” with his money; the only reason I let go of a dollar…is to get a better grip….
PWS
Don’t be surprised if you have to fight them to get the payment made.