"The Ethicist" is Randy Cohen's long-running advice column in the New York Times. Each week, Worker #3116's "The Unethicist" will answer the same questions as "The Ethicist," with obvious differences.

My boss accidentally left a document on my desk listing the salaries of all the company's employees. I read only the header, not the contents, then returned it. I felt I did the right thing, but now I'm not so sure. Reading it would have harmed no one, and the information would have helped me negotiate a long overdue raise. But would it have been ethical? J.H., San Francisco

A wise man once said there are no accidents, and another wise man once said that blackmail is awesome. I feel like you're really not seeing the big picture here, so it probably is for the best that you returned this gold mine. Clearly it hurt your pudgy middle-managing ass to sit on it. Negotiate a long overdue raise? How about negotiate a long overdue extortionary payback for years of mind-numbing drudgery. On behalf of everyone who has ever worked in a cubicle, three slaps to your slack-jawed, "aw shucks" face, sir.

Reading the document wouldn't have harmed anyone, AND YOU DIDN'T EVEN DO THAT! Jesus, to think how you could have held the revealed salaries of underlings over their heads, taunting them with their debased financial status! Maybe one of them would have finally committed suicide! Zing! You could have found some chick in the secretarial pool with a salary lower than her self-esteem and used your new knowledge to seduce her, and then go all Neil Labute on her ass and scream in her deaf face and shit. Seriously, you were the kid at the party who tried to bargain Seven Minutes in Heaven down to Five, weren't you? When mom said be home by 11, you made it 10:15. I bet she's so proud of you, and just knows that you'll move out of the basement soon.

The best part, of course, is that your boss doesn't know that you didn't read the document before returning it. He probably assumes that you did. Then again, I'm sure you've made every effort around the office to let everyone know that you're a brown-nosed brownie mcbrown-noser, so when he found the document back on his desk he probably thought, "Phew, thank God I left it on that tool's desk, and not, you know, in the hands of someone who's not a total fucking tool."

A friend, forced by federal law to retire at age 60, is receiving unemployment compensation. This person retired with $4 million in the bank and will have an income of more than $200,000 this year. Legal issues aside, I contend that this is unethical, a violation of the social contract we share with one another. Agreed? Name withheld

"When I see a homeless person on the street, I don't give them a dollar because they might spend it on alcohol. Alcohol is a depressant, so even though the homeless lead the most abject lives of daily horror and misery, many of them suffering from mental illness, all of them completely ignored by a capitalist consumer society too busy with reality television and designer cocktails to notice the shit-stained legs they have to step over on their way to the vegan bakery, alcohol is doing them more bad than good, despite the momentary psychological balm it provides in a day of never-ending silent weeping! If I wasn't so busy making lists of all my friends' and family's faults, I would walk the homeless to a McDonald's and buy them some food, but also they really do just smell bad. Seriously. And I don't support a lot of McDonald's business practices, either. But no way am I going to give the homeless money to get drunk. That's not helping!"

"Oh, I can't staaaaand cigarettes. I've been really vindicated by the spread of anti-smoking legislation across the country. Not just because it's more comfortable for me to get an organic micro-brew with some of my colleagues, but because — at least this is my hope — the inconvenience of having to go outside to smoke will hopefully lead some smokers to the obvious conclusion that it's not worth the trouble, which might save their lives! I'm also a huge supporter of increased taxation on tobacco products. People should have to pay more for things they do that I think are wrong! I know that it unfairly affects the poor, who cannot afford the increased taxes, while the change in prices has little to no affect on people in the middle and upper classes, and okay, I sort of understand how cigarette smoking is an addiction and that people who live in poverty cannot afford most of the reliable treatments to get themselves off cigarettes, but with a little determination and good old American elbow grease ... well, they should just quit! Don't they know it's a filthy habit!"

"Eracism!"

Do any of those sound familiar? I was trying to imitate you, but I got so sick of myself that I kind of threw up blood and had to stop.

Earlier: The Unethicist: Ahoy, Dumb-Ass