My recent post ‘The billy goat and the ethical conundrum’ [1] snagged the interest of Farmdoc’s Blog readers, several of whom have asked me what’s happened since then. So here’s Part 2:
On 24 March, over dinner (fish and chips, FYI), Sharon and I decided to speak further with Mr Smith (still not his real name) by phone. As a day after her phone call with him, Sharon was still very upset by his verbal attack, we agreed I’d phone him. I did, in Sharon’s presence. Calmly and courteously but firmly, I reiterated to him our clear recall of the agreement, i.e. payment via one nanny kid of the Smiths’ choosing. After a long silence, Mr Smith said: ‘I’m speechless’. Then he hung up on me. The next day (25 March) Sharon received this email [2]. (She forwarded it to me on 27 March.) We decided the appropriate response would be for her to email him back, acknowledging his email and reiterating our eagerness to abide by our side of the deal as we recalled it, i.e. the Smiths to choose the best nanny kid in the mob. Sharon sent a short email along these lines over a week ago. There’s been no response from the Smiths. I intuit they won’t communicate further. Time will tell. But if anything further does happen, I’ll post it on Farmdoc’s Blog.
P.S. I’m considering sending this conundrum to the NYT Ethicist Randy Cohen [3, 4], seeking his response. Stay tuned.
1 comment:
The kids are beautiful, that whole situation seems ugly tho. He just seems to be in denial about the verbal agreement and unlikely to be happy at this point.
Will you be able to exchange one of your billy kids for another billy kid from different stock so this does not happen again?
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