You're no worse than any other petty cheat. You used a
ticket-fiddle to avoid paying what the rules said you owed. I
understand your reluctance to pay $24 when, had you been billed
for your actual parking, you'd have owed only $12, but I'm an
understanding person. (I can even understand why someone might
finagle his taxes, what with money being so useful for buying
things -- attractive things, tasty things. I have a gift for
empathy.) One way to avoid what you see as the excessive charge
and still walk in the sun: Work your little found-ticket scheme
and hand $4 to the cashier, then, when you get home, mail the
garage the additional $8 you owe.
While your conduct was unfortunate, you could argue that the
garage unethically imposes too hefty a penalty on people who
innocently lose a ticket, no doubt to deter scammers who would
claim they parked for only 10 seconds but lost the ticket. The
garage should devise a system that does not treat the many honest
bunglers like the few parking charlatans (perhaps by
electronically recording license plates when cars enter and
exit). There's no reason to believe that the garage is
deliberately being unethical. But persistent incompetence can
have the effect of willful iniquity.
Randy Cohen
Randy Cohen writes "The Ethicist" a weekly column for the New York Times Magazine, syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate in newspapers throughout the U.S. and Canada.
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