Both my parents work long hours at
their jobs, and they don't want to have to come home at the end of a long week
and clean. So, we have a woman who comes and cleans every fortnight.
She is rough and tumble sort -- it's hard to find good cleaning crews in
rural Illinois. Imagine Sally, from the 90's sitcom Third Rock from Sun. She
brings an assistant every week, and it's often a different one each time.
One of the assistants took a chance to
act opportunistically, and stole a gift card from our house. I can see
her mindset, though; a gift card just lying around someone's house, who's going
to miss that? Most don't even get used! ($41 billion dollars have
gone unclaimed in gift cards since 2005, according to NPR). I did miss
this gift card, however, because I was planning on purchasing something with it
the very day she took it! She later admitted to taking it.
It got me to thinking, though, the
main cleaning woman who owns the business has endless opportunities
to pilfer from the homes she cleans, but she seems like a really honest woman.
I think in her career line opportunism, very unethical opportunism, would
be a rampant problem. Little things from peoples' homes could go missing
with no one the wiser. I believe that she doesn't because her reputation
is at stake, and if she is thought to steal, her business would be ruined.
Word travels fast in a rural area. "good things come out to those who wait," and those who are honest.
On this campus, I feel that many people have a chance to act opportunistically
with their parents’ money. Many students
have credit cards that their parents blindly pay without scrutinizing. I know of some people that take advantage of
this, but one of my friends told me the other day that he never would do
that. He knows it would be easy, and
that his parents would never catch on.
However, he says that he feels that it isn't his money to spend on
frivolous things. When he makes
non-necessity purchases, he thinks to himself, “Would my parents buy this for
me if they were with me.” With something
like Grand Theft Auto 5, probably
not. With something like a colander,
yes.
A lot of students do take their parents’ livelihood into
consideration, which is definitely the most ethical way to deal with a carte
blanche credit card. I imagine this is
because, at this stage in our lives, we start thinking about our parents’ money
differently. When we start paying our
own bills, buying groceries, etc., we realize that our parents’ money isn't an
infinite supply. Ethics really starts to
take a hold of whether or not youngsters are opportunistic with their parents’
money or not.
I agree with your statement on students taking the ethical way when it comes to their parents' credit cards. I personally felt that when I made the decision to go to an out of state college, I became significantly aware of the value of a dollar and my parents' money. Even when it came to small purchases like food or clothing, I stopped myself from buying or instead found ways to cut other costs that my parents would usually fund me for. Ethics and money have played a significant part in my college experience that I think also impacts other students and their opportunistic or not so opportunistic actions.
ReplyDeleteYou wrote on next week's prompt. That's ok. Next week just go back write about your experiences in organizations.
ReplyDeleteStealing from your employer is an interesting issue. It definitely happens, but I believe it is not a serious problem for most businesses. At the U of I there is ethics training to educate staff against such practices. I'm not sure that education is effective. One can try to think it through from a pure cost-benefit perspective. The other way is to consider the ethics of it, as you have done in your post.
The latter can get murky at times. For example, work is done at home but home office may be used for none work things as well. When is getting remunerated appropriate compensation and when is it stealing from the employer? Many of the rules don't anticipate the work at home so you operate in a gray area.
Stealing from one's parents is a different matter. The relationship is governed by one of the ten commandments, so it is more clearly ethical. Further, even the prodigal son doesn't completely sever ties with the parents and may return a changed person. Then, too, stealing as an act may damage the relationship in a way that making a serious mistake where there was no intention to cause harm would not. Parents do occasionally get very angry with their children. Mostly, they get over it. They might not get over stealing.
I Like your example of a student using their parents' money. Of course the moral thing to do is to not use the money without approval from them first unless they don't mind your using it otherwise. Personally, I don't have a credit card under my parents names, nor do I have access to their bank accounts. What I do have is the ability to ask them to fund something if it is important. I can say that sometimes I have acted opportunistically with this as well. I may have my dad pay for my bus ticket home, not because I can't afford it, but because I want to keep a financial cushion. Which, might I add, is not a very large cushion. I do it because he makes more money than me. He argues that he also has more bills that me. It is true that he has more bills than I do, but even after his bills and my bus ticket he will still be in better financial standing than I will be. So, to occasion I use this excuse unless I have enough money to still be comfortable after a particular purchase.
ReplyDelete