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Every Day Ethics - What Would You Do?

by Maureen Killoran

An encounter in a grocery store raises questions we'd just as soon not face about our own responsibility.

Ethical question: You are in a local store. (This really happened.) An elderly, poorly-dressed lady is pushing a card, moving with obvious difficulty as she adds to her hoard first one item and then another. She finishes, and proceeds slowly - not to the checkout, but to the exit, where two security guards are chatting. At the door, the woman pauses, waits for perhaps 30 seconds directly under the guards' noses. It is as though she is invisible to everyone but you, for no one even blinks as she moves through the door, pushing the card and its stash of un-paid-for goods to her waiting car.

The question: What would you do? How would you balance respect for the elderly (Honor thy father an mother?) with issues of theft (Thou shalt not steal?). How about individual need versus corporate greed? Assigned responsibility (the security guards) vs your own "right to privacy" (mind your own business?) What about your potential embarrassment (what is she is the manager's crazy aunt and they reclaim the goods each night), or her potential shame (an "old lady" hauled off to jail)?

On the other hand - are some animals more equal than others? What would you have done if the thief had been a body-pierced teen? A person of color? A white man in dirty overalls?

What would you do? What would you not do? Why? What difference does it make?

(c) M. Killoran, Hendersonville NC 2003

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