Just how far would you go to get a pay check? Would you work somewhere that went against your beliefs?
We can’t discuss politics, but we can grab a hold of morals.
I was recently sent information on a job opening that would be perfect for me. It involves working for something I don’t believe in and stand against. The pay would be great, the benefits would be ideal and the location is just right.
I am torn between money/employment and my morals. There is always the chance I could begin to change my views after working at this job…but do I want to change them?
Examples: Working for a medical company that tests drugs on animals when you are a strong supporter of stopping medical testing on animals, working for an abortion clinic if you don’t believe abortion should be legal, working for a democrat when you are a republican, etc.
What would you do in such a situation? Should money and secure employment even matter?
Popularity: 35% [?]
Tagged as: Employment, money, Morals
Money and job security are both excellent, but if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, you will never be happy. However, being that closely associated with the other side of a moral issue could help you understand why the other side believes what they believe. It could open your eyes to a myriad of situations you had never considered before.
To answer the original question, the very fact that the devil was offering to buy my soul would confirm that there is in fact a God and an afterlife, so I would never actually sell my soul. Although, I’m probably already going to hell, so it’s a moot point.
This is a good question. I have a totally insecure employment situation (i.e. I am an entrepreneur with a startup company that has taken no funding), but I absolutely love what I do. At the same time I don’t have to change my views or do any work I don’t want to do.
I think everyone’s different, but I’ve found the right balance between freedom and risk and I’m much happier than when I was working at Microsoft.
I say it depends how involved you will be with the aspects of the operation that goes against your beliefs. In the example of medical testing on animals, are you going to be someone behind the scenes helping the business go? Or are you going to be interacting with said animals every day?
If it’s the former, then I say put your beliefs aside and take care of yourself. With the questionable economy, it would be foolish not to take a position that you will excel at and that will likely advance your career.
That said, if your daily activities include actions that are against your beliefs, then it’s going to be awful difficult to perform that job well.
during a war, anybody who is involved in any part of the production, distribution, or delivery (obvs) of munitions is considered an enemy combatant. that means the young daughters and aging mothers who work in bomb factories can be bombed just as indiscriminately as their husbands, fathers, and sons on the front lines.
so… how involved are you with an operation? if you’re involved, you’re involved. it’s just a more detailed way of saying “if you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem.”
but i hate bumper sticker platitudes.
A friend of mine suggests that people add in “psychic income” to their overall benefits + pay determination. No, nothing to do with Tarot Card Ed, but rather he is suggesting that we should outright try to put a dollar figure on all the intangibles that come with our jobs in order to have a truer picture of compensation. Yes, yes, paying bills and rent is great, and of course if you have kids this often becomes more difficult, but I had to make the choice recently between a six-figure starting salary and one that will probably never reach that high in all my life, and it was a no-brainer for me.
As for the political question, I often hear people use the “it’s good to see the other side of things” argument as a rationalization rather than a strategy.
I’ve had the luxury of not yet being put in this position, but I’m led to wonder how much of that is due to unnoticed self-guidance. Which is to say that I myself most likely have a very low tolerance for the direct contribution to anything to which I’m morally opposed. And in my mind the contribution of labor is exponentially more valuable than the contribution of capital, which makes it senseless to work for any cause/enterprise to which you wouldn’t donate.
Of course there are mild exceptions; working the overnight shift at Target as a vegetarian and stocking the sausage samplers at Christmas, etc. But echo makes a damn salient point about getting a better look at “the other side.” Y’know, if that’s your thing.
btw this thread is way too damn serious, why hasn’t anyone shown up to talk about drinking yet?
I used to work for a carnivore Christian veterinarian non-drinker with 6 kids who declawed cats. I’m an atheist lush vegetarian non-breeder animal activist. There was a lot of tongue-biting on my part.
@7 did he have you bit any other areas
I meant bite
Ewww, he’s a married man. I meant my tongue.Point is, could you work for someone who believed in the exact opposite of everything you bleieve in?
For me, there are definitely jobs I wouldn’t take or companies I wouldn’t work for, but the list is pretty narrow. I’m corporate, and the companies I’ve worked with have largely been benign (no child labor, but no feeding AIDS patients in Africa either). I do have some guilt that I’m not actively working for something I believe in, but I’m not such a good and diligent soul that I can say “at least I volunteer” because I don’t. So the one thing I try to be really good about is where I spend the money I make from selling out, as it were. It’s not much in the grand scheme of things, but my salary is what allows me to buy local food, support local farmers, and avoid chain restaurants - and until I can support a family by convincing the Buy Local folks that they need a CEO and that I’d be perfect for the job, or the day I retire, that’s probably as good as I’m going to be.
That, and I always make sure to pick up the tab when I go out to eat with my do-gooder friends.
@10 - I think there’s a difference between working for someone you disagree with and working on something you disagree with. For example, I could totally work for someone who was prolife (assuming they weren’t also an asshole) but I could never work for an organization that tried to get abortion banned. I don’t think I always felt this way, but being married to someone of opposing political views has taught me a lot of tolerance.
oh! what about liquor sales & marketing? is a walker blue label alcoholic any different than a wild irish rose alcoholic? how much of their product decision is based on choice, and how much of it on formulas, test groups, market research, and product/lifestyle targeting?
how much respsonsibility to marketing execs have for those choices? they certainly get paid when people drink more.
i’ll have a bud light.
I don’t think I could work for a cigarette company.
i met someone yesterday who said she took a 6-figure paycut to work at a plaintiffs’ labor & employment law firm so she wouldn’t be working for “the bad guys.” i think this is funny because from what i’ve come across, plaintiffs are full of crap. (not saying they always are, just saying the ones i’ve seen the last two years are, so you can’t generalize that plaintiffs are “the good guys,” especially in california.) it’s like saying you want to be a public defender to help all those poor people.
/didn’t have any soul to start with.
@14 i feel the same way about pharmies. “hey everybody, just take an ambien!”
oh no.
Sleep is overrated. There is no way I would take a pill to help me waste a third of my day.
ambien is lovely.
So I guess echo likes his stimulants.
I like a good balance of caffeine in the morning and alcohol in the evening.
@20, thats the only way I make it through the work week
sleeping is not waste. sleeping is lovely.
@20 - don’t forget about the mid-day hummer from the intern.
/if only
I could not work for perma4.
I work at a non-profit organization making (obviously) not a lot of money, but the work I do and the cause it’s for really means a lot to me. However, it is tough not getting paid what you think you deserve or have earned. Yet, I don’t regret it…not yet anyways.
@ 23, this isn’t the white house and I doubt your Bill Clinton-ing it…I wonder how much of that actually goes on in offices. I bet slim to none.
@15 sigh….
/now I’m the one biting my tongue.
@27: Don’t! Spit it out!
the money aspect is always alluring, but you will never know the joy of really loving a job until you make the plunge. Risky moves aren’t for everyone though which is why most people usually dislike their careers.
I worked for a state government agency that was run by Republican elected officials (3 different ones) that I generally did not agree with politically. That being said, they generally left my section alone and I agreed (mostly) with what we were trying to do in the area where I worked. How much did I sell out? I’m not so sure. OTOH, could I work for the NRA or something like that? Probably not, but I don’t have kids to feed.
I think if I had kids to feed, not selling out might be even more important, so that I could show them it’s important to do what you believe in and that money isn’t everything (as long as you have enough).
I left a six figure career managing a 70 million dollar a year arm of a fortune 50 company to come to CVille for crap pay to do what I love. It’s been the best time of my life.
Of course, I might be homeless in a month, but, c’est la vie
i work for a man who thinks 3% is a sufficient “cost of living” raise. ’nuff said.
I’ve been a teacher for 9 years, and I love knowing when I lay my head down on the pillow every night that I am making a difference in the lives of young people and following what I believe in my heart is the best for humanity. I know I’ll never be rich, but I have had former students come up to me and thank me for the difference I have made, and that’s worth more than any dollar amount.
I understand the pressures of modern corporate life, and I also know that there are a lot of unfair things happening in modern American education, but I also know that I can live my life with confidence, security, and the knowledge that I am helping others and doing what I think is best.
It’s also very nice to not have to compromise your political and social beliefs. There have been many opportunities for me to make more money in corporate jobs, but I can be satisfied and proud of my job without compromise. Not many people can say that.
I’m also a father, and I can lead by example for my son. Not everyone else has that luxury.
lots of free market/invisible hand topics today!
@33 did you quit yet? are you going to? your boss may be a stone-hearted slavedriver, but he’s also a pragmatist: he’s not overspending to hold on to his employees, it seems.
i put in a strong vote for not selling out. in my brief professional life, ive never taken a job that felt like work. a paycheck was an added bonus when i felt like i would happily do the work for free. ive been extraordinarily lucky, but i wouldnt trade a high salary for anything in the world. then again, i dont have or want kids, so that kind of freedom is a lot easier.
on a related note: am i the only person in the world that doesnt WANT a huge salary? i think there is so much responsibility that goes along with that. can someone please explain to me how to make a lot of money without exploiting other people or the environment?
/socialist reply
@35: let’s just say i’m working on my exit strategy if it becomes necessary.
but how do you tell a clueless boss that 3% is kind of an insult, even though his heart might be in the right place [not a slave-driver, just clueless].
@37 clue him in. tell him he’s letting talented employees trickle away by treating them as though they were expendable.
Children shifted way down my standard of living (divorce). They’re old enough to recently ask, “are we poor”? I explained that poor people are any people who spend more than they make. Drove the 20 year old car. Health insurance: what’s that? Created a (low-paying) job with huge time flexibility while children were small. Fell from being a ‘reduced lunch’ family to a ‘free lunch’ family only one year. Slowly climbing back to mildly normal salary range now that children are old enough to safely fend for themselves more. Still insist that job provide complete flex time for any family needs that present themselves. Behave like a grown-up to my employer by being responsible for my responsibilities even while flexing. Time has had greater value than cash in my personal economy for some time now. Buying time has placed me in a position of briefly selling myself to the less than savory for the sake of the roof and the food. Was in a better position to be picky before becoming responsible for several other souls. Had an interesting single-hood-ness, but not a profitable one. Kept insisting on doing things that were interesting rather than coherent in a corporate-america kind of a way. Don’t understand monopoly money. Don’t understand why people would compromise themselves to get it.
Dr. Faustus, dissatisfied with the limits of traditional forms of knowledge—logic, medicine, law, and religion, sold his soul to the devil in exchange for 24 years of practing magic and dark arts and travelling the world, with the use of the devil, Mephastophilis. On the final night before the expiration of the twenty-four years, Faustus is overcome by fear and remorse. He begs for mercy, but it is too late. At midnight, a host of devils appears and carries his soul off to hell.
Just thought I’d add a literary example of literally selling your sold to the devil…either way, never ends well.