A Moral Dilemma

I have a friend named Rob. He’s a teacher at the school I used to teach at and every day that I go to “work”, Rob takes the time to visit and talk with me. (If blogging, managing my fantasy football teams, playing Spite and Malice with teachers on their preps, practicing Chi Gong, and having lunch is your definition of “work”, then consider me gainfully employed). Circumstances being what they are with me and my ability to speak, Rob does most of the talking while I spend almost the entirety of our visits laughing at his hilarious jokes and soaking up his ebullient, larger than life personality.

That being said, I wasn’t really laughing last Tuesday when Rob recounted an experience he had earlier that morning at his local bagel shop. I will do my best to accurately retell his tale of woe and invite you, the reader, to weigh in as to how you believe you would have reacted had this morality play happened to you. In order to model appropriate behavior, I will post the first comment at the end of the story so you can see what I like to think I would have done had this incident happened to me. Enjoy, I know Rob did… Not. (He was actually quite conflicted about the whole sequence of events (on many different levels)).

Rob was one of two customers in the bagel shop that morning at the time of the event. Having already placed his order for a bagel sandwich, Rob stood patiently near the counter waiting for his breakfast to be prepared by a female employee. As she diligently labored to make the two sandwiches (apparently, the other customer had ordered one, as well), the woman accidentally dropped half a bagel, sliced side down, onto the rubber matted floor below her feet. The woman then called a male employee over to where she was standing and whispered something to him and just as quickly as he arrived, he departed back to the opposite end of the counter. In full view of my suddenly much more interested friend, the male employee dropped down to his hands and knees and began to crawl on the floor towards his coworker and the fallen half bagel. When he had finally reached the doughy object of his quest, he quickly scooped the bagel up and stealthily handed to the female employee.

Rob watched incredulously as the woman carried on preparing the two sandwiches, all the while making mental note of which sandwich contained the additional serving of germ-laden grimy goodness. When she finished, Rob was relieved to receive the non-tainted bagel sandwich. Whew. He exited the establishment and stood on the curb, fishing his car keys out of his pocket. Before he could make a move towards his car, the shop door opened and out came a man with a small bagel-sized bag perched atop a large, pink donut box; it was the other customer. Taking notice of Rob, the man nodded in his direction and said, “Have a nice Thanksgiving.”

That small, seemingly insignificant, throwaway courtesy was all it took for my friend to crack like an egg colliding with the edge of a frying pan. Without a seconds worth of hesitation, Rob spewed forth the following line faster than a student reading a passage aloud at an Evelyn Wood’s Speed Reading class: “They dropped your bagel on the ground!” The man stopped dead in his tracks, turned around, and re-entered the bagel shop. Before he could witness whatever it was that came next, my friend hopped in his car and sped off to school.

The question I have for you all now is what would you have done? Would you have told the man that his bagel was on the ground? Would you have confronted the employee at the time of the party foul? Would you have said nothing? Here’s your chance to weigh in on this moral dilemma by posting a comment below. Thanks for participating.