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 