The "My Eyes.. My Burning Eyes!" Dilemma

One of the many things that I do to help bring in some money while I continue my search for a new job is media conversion. What that means is this: a lot of people have many great family memories, filmed long ago, that are stored on old VHS tapes, 8mm camcorder tapes, or other media formats. In this day and age, it not only does them no good, but risks that footage as old tapes wear down. So, people bring their old tapes to me and I convert their media to a digital format, either putting their videos onto DVD or providing them with the digital format, that they can now edit in their own software.

For the most part, doing this for people has been pretty straight forward, and rarely are there issues... until today. A friend of mine contacted me and told me they needed some old 8mm tapes converted from a bunch of footage shot in the early nineties. They then handed me a pile of tapes, admitting that they had no clue what all was on them and asked me to convert them so it could be edited into something useful.

This afternoon I took the first of these tapes and began to convert it over, as it can be a lengthy process, while I was watching the afternoon session of general conference, no less. Now... keep in mind.. I don't sit there and watch other people's video footage as it converts. By default, I do have to look over every few minutes, long enough to make sure that the transfer is still taking place, the quality is ok, and that there have not been any funky computer or software crashes, but other than that, I pretty much tune it out... its none of my business.

But today.. again.. while watching General Conference, I happened to glance over at my monitor, only to see my friend... um.... well... how do I put this.. let's just say "doing something on videotape that I don't think they expected to have leave their bedroom...." Yes.. my eyes boinged out of my head for a brief moment as I franticly tried to turn my monitor off.. still seeing WAAAAAAYYYY more than I ever thought I would of this person...... Not too many people can claim to have watched general conference and..... that... simultaneously.

But that leaves me to the question I have been pondering the rest of the night... what do I do now? Do I just give my friend the tapes back and the digital version and pretend like nothing happened.. and wonder how long it will take them to realize the reality of what they gave me to convert, potentially leading to some seriously awkward future conversations? Do I hand the tapes back with a warning to preview the tapes for potentially embarrassing footage before handing them over? Do I delete the embarrassing footage, hoping they don't realize it was there and will never miss it, thus taking away the chances for the "awkward discussion"? Or is that part of what they were intending for me to convert, looking forward to using it and not ashamed of having people see it?

Right now I seem to be leaning towards just handing it all back to them, and then let them learn their own lesson about previewing tapes first. But I know that the next time we talk... there could be some awkward questions.. things I'd really like to avoid. That way I did my job, I didn't make judgements for another person based on my own morales. But still..

So I pose the dilema to you.. what would you do? I welcome any comments and you can even take the poll on the right... Ah my crazy life. I guess it's fun never knowing what you'll see next, even if it could be a bit, shocking.