Returning my cable box at the Time Warner store, I arrived to find 30 people ahead of me in line. Begrudgingly, I took a number (as you do at the deli counter) and waited. A woman turned around and told me she could no longer stay. She offered me her ticket, five numbers away from being called. At first I said no — it wouldn’t be fair to everyone else who was waiting — but she insisted. I took her ticket, returned my cable box and walked out of the store while everyone else kept waiting. Was it right to take the ticket?
The ethicist says he shouldn't have taken the ticket, but I disagree. What LW should have done is accept the number from the lady, then passed his number on to someone with a higher number. That person would then, in turn, pass their number on to someone with a higher number, and there would be a ripple effect throughout the entire line.
No one person would be any worse off than they were going in (if you have #47 and no one offers you a lower number, there are still 46 people in line ahead of you), and a bunch of people would come away from the situation with their day brightened, feeling like they've gotten a stroke of good luck AND feeling like they've been charitable to someone else.
1 comment:
I wonder if everyone would go along with it. It would be an interesting social experiment.
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