November 2012

It's hard to know what to tell kids about ethics when their elders blatantly, casually lie every day of the world. A small case in point (forgive the Andy Rooney mode): Verizon, everyone's least favorite phone provider, sends you an email with this graphic:

They are telling you their website has been redesigned and want to waste some of your valuable time to explain more about it. But if you click through, you find out the redo hasn't happened yet!

So you "scroll down," which is Verizon parlance for clicking through more pages. You're thinking "maybe I'll find out when the new site goes live -- since I need to order some repair work on those copper lines they never seem to get around to upgrading." After viewing about eight more pages of preening and promises you come to a "pre-enroll" screen:

Probably that should read "punked you again, fool." But kids, don't jack with people's expectations like this yourselves, or people will never trust you.

Update: Why did Verizon do this?

from an email exchange last year that continues to haunt me:

Me: When you are on the receiving end of sustained personal attacks your choices are: (i) rise above them or (ii) respond and try to undo the damage. If [names omitted] questioned your basic honesty and intellectual integrity I would say (i) punch'em in the nose and (ii) how can I help?

Supposedly well-meaning friend: Geez, I should invite you a meeting with my thesis supervisor! Some days I could really use a posse. But unfortunately nose-punching and ganging up out of personal loyalty don't work as strategies in intellectual debate, even (maybe especially) when the stakes are high.