The Ethics of Rules

Early on in this blog I wrote a post talking about how much I hate the expression “rules are rules!” when it is used to prevent the user from actually having to make a decision, take a stand, or (especially) do any actual work. All too often you will encounter a situation that doesn’t fit neatly into one of the templates in the rule book – or in which some factor the people who wrote the book never considered is happening – and find that some short-sighted, spineless and/or bone-idle idiot has decided that since saying yes will cause extra work or trouble they’re just going to say no. This sort of thing offends me in a professional sense, because I believe in the importance of good management practice and any such case involves either a front-line manager abdicating his or her responsibility or a front-line manager who can’t be bothered to train and/or support his or her personnel when they have to deviate from the rule book…

Unfortunately, sometimes there’s more to these discussions than just under-paid twits declining to stick their necks out; sometimes there really are two sides to the question. Consider, for example, the case that turned up this past week involving US Air and a customer who had purchased four non-refundable tickets for the trip of a lifetime. Tragically, in this case “trip of a lifetime” is not a figure of speech; between purchasing the tickets and the date of departure the customer was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and was unable to travel. The customer explained this to the airline, which expressed their sympathy and offered to allow the customer to rebook the flights without the usual $100 per ticket rebooking fee, or transfer the credits for those tickets to any other member of the family (which is usually not permitted at all). When the customer complained that she wouldn’t live long enough to use the tickets or credits, and no one else in her family wanted them, the airline said they were sorry, but rules are rules, and non-refundable tickets can’t be refunded even if the customer who bought them is dying…

Now, as you’d probably expect, US Air is getting flamed all over the Internet for being cruel, heartless bastards who were more interested in making money then in doing “the right thing” and refunding this customer’s money. All of this may be true, in fact, but it rather ignores the larger issues. First, non-refundable tickets are offered at a lower price exactly because you don’t have to worry about people randomly changing flights, thus making it possible to run fuller flights, operate more efficiently, and keep your prices down. The airline isn’t just being difficult; they have a real interest in not refunding non-refundable tickets. Second, the airline is correct in thinking that if they start allowing exceptions they will eventually be asked to make one for every customer who oversleeps and misses their flight – and that every one of these people will claim to be gravely ill or to have some other heart-rending reason they can’t fly that day. And third, as we’ve discussed with other legal matters, if you ever make an exception to your rules, you will have no defense if you’re ever sued for refusing to make an additional one…

One could argue that the airline’s responsibility to humanity is greater than their responsibility to their stockholders (or any of the people who make money working for or selling things to the company), but when we consider that the customer had already received a discounted rate for selecting the non-refundable tickets, and could have prevented the whole issue with a trip insurance policy that costs about as much as two large pizzas, we could also argue that the customer and her partisans are effectively demanding that the airline make up for someone else being cheap. So I have to ask: does the company have an ethical responsibility to save its customers from their own lack of foresight, even at the cost of its own survival? Do they have a responsibility to their owners and employees to do whatever will result in higher profits and wages, no matter what the consequences? Or should they just offer a service under a set of unequivocal rules, stick to those rules, and require their customers to take responsibility for their own lives and their own fortunes, good or bad?

It’s worth thinking about…