Fairness vs. Winning
Beatrice wonders!
When we last left Beatrice after winning in the Whac-A-Mole blog, posted on July 17, 2022, on Medium.com, Beatrice was questioning the honesty behind her victorious game techniques, one in particular. When participating in an open competition, she learned she could gain an advantage by identifying the mistakes others made. So when it was her turn, being the last person up, she had already eliminated losing moves and developed her winning strategy. She kept this strategy to herself.
The question was, "Is it honest to secretly use another's innocent errors to become a winner in a competition?"
I've questioned some friends and family members about this winning technique; they feel it's perfectly fine. They overwhelmingly said taking any step one needs to win is OK. Winning is worth it, regardless of what one must do, was the answer from everyone I asked. As long as it doesn't hurt anyone, it's acceptable. Except by using her technique, Beatrice has an unfair advantage and makes anyone else a loser.
Then, by keeping this technique a secret, she destroys the purity of her success even though she accepts the position as "the winner." We could also ask if victory over others engenders questionable behavior or just plain thievery. What are we talking about here?
Does her action relate to a person's finding a forgotten umbrella in a theater and taking it home as his? There is undoubtedly an honesty issue present, and it does cause harm as it causes the loss of an umbrella to an unknown someone.
One Christmas, I found a $100.00 bill on the floor of my liquor store. I called the manager over and told him someone had accidentally lost it. Maybe they will return looking for it. He said thank you, placing the bill in his shirt pocket and turned to walk away. I said, "Wait a minute, don't you want my name and contact information?" "Oh," he said, if you want to give it to me," I told him if no one claimed it, after three days, it was mine. I called the police when I got home to make sure and learned that I was correct. If no one claimed the money or anything else, its ownership was transferred to the finder after three days. At that point, it's Finders Keepers and Losers Weepers.
There was only a slight chance the bill would be at the store waiting for me, and it seemed likely that this was the fairest way for me to proceed.
Of course, the manager planned to keep it for himself and not give it to his superior. Here's what happened: I returned after the waiting period and asked for the $100.00 bill. The same manager was on duty and told me he had sent it to Corporate in Maryland. I was furious and felt he was lying!
So what did I do? I found the names and email addresses of each Board of Directors member from their secretaries from the parent corporation. I sent each of them an identical letter describing what had happened. The result? No letter back, but I received a check for $100.00.
In his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey, an international best seller, addresses this question. He claims that "effectiveness can be expressed in terms of the P/PC ratio, where P refers to getting desired results, and PC is caring for that which produces the results." How one wins matters. At least it matters to those who notice it. It matters not one bit, however, to those who are the perpetrators.
You can be saying, "So what!" Beatrice's tiny action doesn't matter. However, it is a tip-off to her native lack of integrity, the same as the potential thievery of the liquor store manager and the umbrella finder.
In the final analysis, the concept of Fairness puts all these situations together. Fairness in these situations means allowing everyone involved to start on equal grounds. In Beatrice's Last-Up Technique case, she gains an unfair advantage by being last.
The umbrella finder could have turned the umbrella to theater management with the proviso that if no one claimed it after a few days, it would be his. The same could be said about the $100.00 bill, which was what I did.
Knute Rockne said, "Win or lose, do it fairly," a motto to remember.