Submitted for Consideration and Conversation: What Do You Think?
Some situations are viewed in black and white; right and wrong. Yet, many people think situations also have a grey area where solutions are not so easily discerned.
One evening you stop downtown to eat in one of your favorite restaurants, a place where you eat several times each month.
You have a good meal, pay at the counter, and decide to stay downtown a little longer and walk around.
Stopping by your car to feed the parking meter, you reach into your pocket to get change. Pulling out the change, you see that you don’t have a quarter to pay for the meter. From the cost of your meal, you know you should have been given more change when you paid at the restaurant.
The following week, you decide to go back to eat. It is, after all, one of your favorite restaurants. Again you have a good meal and go to the register to pay. As you turn to leave the restaurant, you think of the previous visit and stop to count your change. It is a quarter and a few cents short. Though you shrug it off and leave, you begin to wonder whether the short-changing was on purpose or accidental.
At the end of the month, you return to the same restaurant to have dinner with a friend. Once again when you pay for your meal at the counter, you are given less change than you should be given.
Knowing it has happened several times now, do you feel that you should mention your concern to the restaurant manager? Do you think that since it is just a few cents that it is easier to let it go? Would you feel embarrassed confronting the manager over such a small amount? What if the change is several dollars short? Does the amount make a difference, or is it the principle?
Alternatively, what if your friend was paying the bill? Would you advise your friend to count the change received? If so, do you feel you would be more willing to stand up for your friend than for yourself?
Finally, would you stop coming to the restaurant after the third time you were short-changed?
07152011
