About a year ago, I posed an ethical dilemma for everyone to ponder. Now I have another.

This time, you’re at Target. You’re buying a cartload of groceries: a bag of baby spinach, Ken’s Raspberry Walnut Vinagrette, crumbled feta cheese (yes, you were having a salad for dinner), five apples, four naval oranges, blueberry honey (impulse buy), Ritz whole wheat crackers, two boxes of Kashi Heart to Heart cereal, two boxes of Kashi GoLean cereal, two boxes of Kashi GoLean Crunch cereal, three boxes of Total (with strawberries) cereal, an eight pack of Target brand paper towels, Lea & Perrin’s Worcestershire Sauce (the kind for chicken), two boxes of Boca vegan-style veggie burgers, two boxes of Boca breaded “chicken” patties, and a container of Texmati brown rice.

Oh, and you have three coupons for $1.00 off the boxes of Total.

The cashier looks at you and says, “That’ll be $17.82.”

Do you:
A) Quickly swipe your debit card before she realizes something is wrong;
B) Look at her funny and say, “For all that?” because you don’t want to cheat; or
C) Look at her funny and say, “For all that?” and then swipe your card, hoping still to get away with it.

[Listening to: Trespassers William - Safe Sound]

I have a question for you.

Let’s say you’re at Wal-mart. It’s about 8:15 a.m. on Friday, and you would like to buy some butter and some cheese, please. No, not really. You’re buying four apples and five pairs of shorts.

You take your items to the register and are greeted by the cashier. You watch her as she scans the first two pairs of shorts at $4.87 each. The third pair, the green ones, don’t have a tag, but she’s looking for one anyway. As mentioned, there isn’t one, so, naturally, all her searching is fruitless. What will she do? Scan one of the other pairs an extra time? Call for backup and hunt down the SKU?

Without taking her eyes off the shorts, she simply folds them up with the first two pairs and puts them in the bag. She scans the remaining two pairs of shorts - no extra scans - and places them in the bag, then follows suit with the apples.

What is the proper response?

“Excuse me, I don’t think it’s right that you’re just too lazy to look up that green pair of shorts and I won’t accept handouts?”

Discuss.

While you’re discussing ethics, let me take this opportunity to mention Chris Bell, my former representative in the U.S. Congress. He’s the one who filed the original ethics complaint against Tom Delay and now he’s thinking about running for governor of Texas. Good, I say.