There are a few coffee/tea/vending machines - CVM in short, in the Academy-Mussorie. These CVMs have slots for certain tokens that one could to get for five rupees. These 5-rupee tokens would make one eligible for a cup of coffee etc. But the speciality of these CVMs is that these can be operated even without these specific tokens.(Unfortunately, I relised this only during the fag end of our Course there) This is by inserting any one Rupee, 50 paise or even 25 paise coin in the slot, instead of the 5-rupee CVM token. These CVMs are so intelligently designed!
I would have hardly taken four or five cups of Re.1 coffee when a friend disturbed me with some ethical lessons. He (not she) said that i was doing something immoral, cheating the CVM owner grossly. (i was paying at max only one fourth of the actual) As i was anticipating this issue to crop up some time or the other i did not have any difficulty in quickly countering this with my ready-made defence.
My primary line of defence is that it is purely the owner/designer/operator's job to ensure such glaring design flaws are rectified - after all the whole business runs around these tokens. It is also very obvious that these guys are well aware of this loophole, as the CVMs are opened on a daily basis to recycle the tokens and for accounting purposes. So if someone can be so very careless about his/her interests - probably due to sheer laziness - why should someone else be branded unethical?
In turn, I was posed with hard questions like - Is it ethical to takeaway items from an unmanned, open shop? Will you consider it ethical if someone picks your mobile phone while you are looking the other side? etc.
Need your help. Can I advise my friends in Mussourie not to waste Rs.5 for a cup of coffee or should I send a DD for Rs.16 (Rupees sixteen only) to the CVM operator?
