"E"thical Quandries

I love Egypt. My family spent two wonderful years there and I consider myself part-Egyptian. Truly. But Egypt was a funny place - not laugh out loud funny, just a little odd. Like, here's an example: I had only been in Egypt for about a month and went out with some friends to celebrate a birthday. One friend ordered a wrap sandwich but got a fajita instead. The waiter said, "But madam, it is basically the same thing, so why don't you eat it?" Or the time we went to the US government owned pool/tennis court/restaurant retreat for Embassy families and ordered lunch, only to be asked by the waiter, "And you would like this food today?" Or the time a friend and I went jewelry shopping and she found something she liked, so she inquired about the price. "Oh, madam, it is 100 LE, but for you, special price, 150 LE." You know, usually special prices are less than the regular price, and it's just assumed that if you sit down to order something to eat you'd like it today, not tomorrow. There's a name for this and we call it "The E Factor".

So, being as I'm part-Egyptian, naturally the E Factor follows me around. It's a funny way to dismiss the weirdness that's a part of everyday life. But in the 4 races I've run up here, I've been affected twice by the E Factor. A 50% E Factor rate seems high, even by Egyptian standards. Allow me to explain.

I ran a local 5K at the end of August. I was a work in progress at the time (still am), but finished in 27:55, which made me happy because it was the fastest of the 3 5Ks I'd run up to that point. I finished 4th in my age group which also made me happy, although I was disappointed to finish out of medal contention by 7 seconds, something I vowed wouldn't happen again. Fast forward one week. I received an envelope from the school that sponsored the race in the mail. Couldn't imagine what it would be. I opened it up and it was 3rd place certificate for my age group. It turns out that the 1st place finisher in the 40-44 group actually finished nearly 3 minutes behind me, putting me into 3rd place and her into 6th place. I laughed it off as the E Factor and hung up my certificate by the treadmill as a motivation and vowed to get that medal next year!

I ran my 4th upstate NY 5K yesterday on a beautiful, but windy, fall day up by Lake Ontario. My times were great (still need to work on pacing) and I was super psyched to finish in the 25s. I checked the results as they were posted and was thrilled to finish 3rd in my age group and brought home a shiny new medal! So imagine my surprise when I checked the official results last night. Turns out that the 2nd place finisher in my age group was for some reason tagged as the 4th overall female (top 3 are given awards), so she wasn't included in the top 3 in the 40-49 age group. She was 2nd in our age group, meaning the 2nd place medalist was 3rd and I was 4th, not 3rd. Is it really possible that I was affected by the E Factor again? Looks that way.

What would you do if you found yourself in this situation? There isn't much question in my book: honesty is the best policy. I emailed the bank this morning to find out how they would like to resolve this issue. I'm sure they're going to love going in on a Monday morning to find out the medals from yesterday's race got screwed up, but I don't feel right keeping an award I didn't earn. I'll keep you posted on developments....

Meanwhile, enjoy the E Factor, in all it's chocolatey deliciousness as created by our very own Cake Boss Queen...


Update: I contacted the bank that sponsored this 5K, and they thanked me for bringing this to their attention, and told me to keep the medal. I'll keep it, but it'll always have an "*" next to it.