How Ethical Can I Afford to Be?
Appendix 1
“How Ethical Can I Afford to Be?”
(Adapted from Catherine Stover in the The Small Business Forum, 1990 by David Rapaport)
ANNOUNCER: It was a disappointingly damp spring afternoon in 2017. Instead of lifting, the fog was getting heavier. It was beginning to look like the kind of fog that Hollywood uses in scenes when bad news is at hand.
And bad news was at hand—but this was the outskirts of Boston, Massachusetts, not Hollywood—and it was happening to Milton Bradley, CEO of Gaming Generations, Inc. Here he was, on a Sunday afternoon, at his CFO’s house, sitting in the kitchen with Chris Kross, his COO, VP of Marketing and Sales, Donald Ducker and VP of Manufacturing and Development Gary Carver celebrating Gary’s birthday. Milton was looking out the window and the cake and melting ice cream, wondering how he should break the news.
After Ed, a sales manager had his last slice of cake and Donald finished his latest doodle…or piece of art???—Milton knew that if he were a character in a CGI movie, he would be able to hear the drum roll in the background. He said,
MILTON: “This is a bad time to talk shop, but there probably isn’t going to be a better time to
tell you about what happened last week.”
ANNOUNCER: Chris, his COO, stiffened and sat up perfectly straight.
CHRIS: “I’m glad you’re going to tell us. You’ve been pretty grouchy lately, and I knew there
was something wrong.”
ANNOUNCER: Milton looked down at his can of Mountain Dew.
MILTON: “Last Wednesday, one of the packages of skins that we made in in 2012 came back for repairs. One of the guys told me that the ink was running and the brightness looked faded. He was right. It was faded.”
ANNOUNCER: The word faded settled into the quiet of the kitchen for several moments. Then Donald, asked,
DONALD: “But didn’t we start using better and brighter ink a few years ago?”
MILTON: “In 2014, we started using Jeremiah Burke Ink instead of Pauline Agassiz Shaw Ink. We should have used JB ink from the start. It was stupid not to. I can’t even remember why we didn’t. They cost almost nothing more.”
ANNOUNCER: Milton responded sadly.
CHRIS: “But that ink met all the specs, didn’t it?”
MILTON: “Of course they did. Don’t you remember the week I spent reading six volumes of National Ink standards?” I read until I was dizzy. Before I bought anything I made sure everything met every standard!”
GARY: “Let me see if I understand what you guys are talking about. The color is wearing out on some of the earlier designs we manufactured and we could have prevented it by using better quality ink, but we didn’t? But everything wears out. What’s the big deal? Milton,
You’ve always been such a worrier”
MILTON: “What if it wears out during a party or huge event? It would be seen by everyone!!!
That’s a big deal!! It could ruin us”
GARY: “But don’t we have replacements?“
DONALD: “The replacements aren’t customized the same. They are the same basic colors, but the designs are very different.”
ANNOUNCER: Milton stood up, walked over to the kitchen window and looked toward the Gaming Generations factory. It was a big grey building that always shimmered in Milton’s dreams.
MILTON: “How could I live with that?!!”
ANNOUNCER: He turned back toward the table.
MILTON: “One law suit could shut this place down.”
GARY: “Would it be our fault?”
CHRIS: “We say in three different places that the skins are subject to normal wear. I’m sure it would be okay if everyone read that. The reason we started using different ink was that we saw how people were using their game consoles and controllers. You wouldn’t believe how people handle their stuff!!! And they play reckless like they’re in a video game themselves.”
ED: “The skin that you saw last week—had it been mistreated or something?”
MILTON: “I told the owner that I thought his skin looked heavily used. He said that he uses his controller every day after school. He looks like the kind of guy who wouldn’t treat it with respect. This skin wasn’t designed to be overused every day.”
ED: “So is it really fading?”
ANNOUNCER: Ed always spoke quickly, and today it annoyed Milton.
MILTON: “This customer has a good maintenance record. But when anyone uses it as often as he does, we always check the components.”
CHRIS: “Components?”
DONALD: “The color shading and the adhesive between the controller and the skin. All high stress points.”
GARY: “Is the adhesive okay?”
MILTON: “It’s fine. The adhesive is tested to separate at three times its rating. The ink is at two times its rating. Now its at two, but it wasn’t before.”
GARY: “So the ink wasn’t as sturdy as the rest. It was the weakest part.”
MILTON: “Right. And it didn’t have to be stronger to meet the standards. It just made sense to upgrade it after I saw that some people didn’t take care of their equipment as well as others. It never said anywhere in the standards that all the components have to be equally upgraded. It just made sense to me to improve the weakest one.”
CHRIS: “We have insurance, don’t we?”
B9
MILTON: “Of course we do!! But I never told the insurance company that in 2014 I decided to improve the ink. What if they say, ‘You used to make inferior skins so we won’t cover them.
What if they say, ‘Your old skins are worthless and it’s your own fault’?”
ANNOUNCER: Ed cleared his throat.
ED: “Everyone makes mistakes. In the 10 years that we’ve been doing this we learned a lot along the way by making our fair share of mistakes. We’ll lay all our cards on the table and we’ll look at our options. First of all, has anyone ever filed a complaint?”
MILTON: “No.”
CHRIS: “Anyone ever bring a skin in for replacement?”
MILTON: “No. We spotted this one by ourselves.”
DONALD: “You don’t think this will happen to the skins we made since we started using the Jeremiah Burke Ink in 2014?”
MILTON: “I’m confident it won’t.”
GARY: “we opened in 2012, right? How many skins did we make before you improved the ink?
ED: “I looked it up. We made the change on November 13th, and we had manufactured 900 skins before that.”
MILTON: “Do we have all the addresses of the people we sold them to?”
DONALD: “Yeah. But probably 1/3 or a 1/4 of the skins were given as gifts by the people who bought them. Also, some of the people have moved. It won’t be easy to track them down.”
CHRIS: “Tracking them down probably won’t be the worse part or the most expensive part. The worst part will be disrupting our business so we can fix the recalled skins. And we have to decide if we will cover the owner’s cost of bringing the skin in.”
ED: “We can’t afford to do that. Remember, we have twelve people on our payroll. Cash is tight. And if the recession hits Massachusetts the way they say it’s hitting California, our cash flow is going to only get tighter.”
GARY: “Let me tell you exactly what my position on this is. “We have worked 12 hours a day, six days a week for five years so that we could have a profitable business. We can’t put all that in jeopardy just because some idiot might wear out his skin using his controller every day and then might sue us because the ink comes off! It would be his own fault! Besides, it would be just as likely to fade from normal wear and tear in his own house as it would during a huge event.”
MILTON: You might be absolutely right. It may be that nothing would ever go wrong. It also may be that, if we sent out letters that say ‘Guess what? Your skin may fade,’ that we might be increasing our chances of getting sued. But we have to do the right thing.”
CHRIS: “The right thing? You want to do the right thing?”
ANNOUNCER: Chris lowered his voice to a whisper.
CHRIS: “Then make sure you can stay in business and pay your employees.
ANNOUNCER: Milton put his head in his hands
MILTON: “Guys, what should I do?”