The Robb Report

Exactly what’s the purpose of the condiment bar in a coffee shop?  What’s the intended use?  What should be a customer’s expectation?

Here’s a story about a cafe owner going berserk over a customer ordering a “double espresso poured over ice.”  It turns out this is a way for people to save money / rip-off a cafe on the purchase of a latte.  For example, by ordering espresso+ice and then filling up with “free” milk at the condiment bar, one can save a buck or two on the cost of the drink.

I’m so clueless … err, I mean ethical … I had no idea.

There’s a whole slew of interesting ethical questions here.  But then I was shocked to realize that I might be one of them: I like a lot of milk/creamer in my coffee.  Up to and including making it a full-on cafe au lait.  I frequently pour out a half-inch or more of my coffee (even after I ask for “room”) to be able to put more milk in.

I had never thought twice about it.  But sometimes I’d wonder why they never really give me “room” when I ask for “room”!  Hmm.  Am I violating some kind of implicit contract between the establishment and myself? If so, then what should I be ordering?  “Cafe au lait” usually is not what I’m going for.  What’s half-way betwen that and black coffee?  Is a “latte” what I’m describing?

I’ve always intentionally avoided learning all of the froo-froo names of the various coffee drinks.  “A man’s drink has a name which is a list of its ingredients”, you know.  Maybe it’s time I start — for all I know, I’ve been drinking back-alley lattes for years.

Does a buyer have an ethical duty to inform a seller of a mistake which causes the product to be vastly underpriced?

The backstory

So here I am in law school, and I’m thinking that my tired-out backpack is not cutting it any more. I’d really like to have something a little more respectable. And so I quickly find myself submerged in the world of super-expensive (to me, at least) briefcases and laptop bags. I.e., $250 and up.

I tried as hard as I could to find one made locally, but could not.  So I check Ebay, and see that a lot of the bags can be had for 30% or so off, via the auctions. But wait! There’s one seller who’s offering a new $300 briefcase for $75 as a “Buy it Now” purchase.

Digging into the facts

How is this possible? Why would she sell a bag for such a low price when she could get much more for it? This seller has a nearly perfect rating, and many sales. I rule out fraud on her part.

I look into her selling history and see that she has posted this particular briefcase repeatedly in the recent past without success. Over the period of a month, she had been re-listing the item and gradually lowering the price down to the $75 at which I found it.

And then I see her problem: She had been listing this Coach briefcase as a Coach’s briefcase. I quickly tested Ebay’s search feature and saw that her ad does not appear if a potential buyer simply searches for Coach. I surmised that by mis-listing the item, she had greatly reduced the number of potential buyers, forcing her to lower the price.

I bought the briefcase.

Wondering about the ethics

I had some concerns even before I bought the item. If this low was price due was due to a mistake on her part—would it be right of me to “take advantage” of that?

And now that I’ve purchased the item; wouldn’t the right thing to do be to let her know about the problem with her listings?

Or, maybe not? This is a “market”, after all. Isn’t it exactly these kinds of inefficiencies and differing skills of participants that, in fact, makes the market function, and is how people make a profit? I’m convinced I could buy these briefcases from from her and simply re-list them on Ebay for twice the price and sell them instantly.

I thought of one thing that mitigates my sense of wrongdoing. This is all theory on my part; I think I know why her prices are low. I think I could re-sell them at twice what I paid. But I could be very wrong.

Today I see that she’s put up another briefcase for sale. Same type as the one I bought, mis-listed in the same way, but this time black instead of brown, and at a very low price. I think to myself, “now that would be nice to have!”

Out in the real world, where sometimes things do go wrong, is it ethical for practitioners to require patients to waive their legal rights, when nearly all practitioners in the area do so?

Randy Cohen, in The Ethicist, says “It is not.” A related issue is, what criteria can doctors use to choose their patients? He sums up by writing, “The right to our day in court should be among the inviolable.” The article is good food for thought:

New York Times Magazine / The Ethicist: Doctor, Bully