Ethic Problems

From: Marina Daghouz
To: Mark Crane
English 4310
Sept. 12, 2005

With each passing day every individual is faced with ethical problems
which one must employ his/her personal beliefs and values to answer
and overcome. All too often, in a society driven by the allure of
money, the decisions that are made are not necessarily the best
decisions. Case in point is a former employment situation I was not
particularly fond of; in so much I consider it to be my greatest
ethical dilemma.
Several years ago I was given an opportunity to work for a certain
individual who had been running her own business ventures for a brief
period of time. She needed some additional assistance to enable more
free time on her part as well as overall management of a handful of
these ventures. Unfortunately, I was to learn the hard way concerning
money and business ethics. The specific industry I was to be involved
in was that of network marketing or, less glamorously, pyramid
schemes. Included in these schemes were health food products,
internet-based learning "educational" opportunities and so forth. How
they were to be handled and managed was, both then and now, beyond my
personal code of ethics.
For the internet-based scheme, I was assigned to contact people
personally and convince them to purchase a package of investment and
business oriented material at the fine fee of roughly $2500.00. To
contact these individuals I had to purchase lists of names from
clandestine sources, not accredited or filtered by the Federal Do Not
Call List or any other regulatory firm, and continuously call them via
telephone and persuade them into believing this was a "once in a
lifetime event." Coupled with the calling approach, a man who was
deeply seeped in the industry taught me, at the behest of my boss, how
to "spam" people with multiple emails to thousands of individuals.
Spamming on such a grand scale had been deemed illegal, making it
necessary to go through a middle internet server.
Besides the spamming and illegal phone solicitations, the majority of
people I interviewed and presented my spiel to were generally
under-educated and financially challenged, seeking any get-rich-quick
schemes or impressionable enough to be contacted and convinced of this
necessity. I became Robin Hood in reverse, preying off the
ill-informed poor to the benefit of the wealthy. I was able to
accumulate 3-4 sales on this particular account on any given week.
The techniques and methods I used to accomplish my task were
extremely immoral and unethical. First and foremost, I lied in
multiple ways: pricing, false advertrsing, false product information,
unwilling to inform and filed questions, etc… The elements of
avaricious and greed continues to bring a disheartening feeling, even
presently. Deriving personal information on people and knowing how
this information would be used was also a great dilemma in dealing
with my position.
I had originally been hired and informed my job function would be
that of office manager, simply organizing the office, placing
legitimate phone calls, and keeping accounting records up-to-date.
Had I known the larger extent to which my skills would be used I would
have never dealt with such individuals. Like most ethical cases you
allow yourself to manipulated and gradually eased in with each new
situation. Seldom is it the case that you thrust yourself into a
situation and rob the entire bank, for instance. One must learn to
steal small things, meaningless things to aspire and justify the next
progressive step in the degradation of morals. In retrospect, I
should have recognized these patterns and terminated my employment
immediately; however, no such action was taken on my part, to great
remorse.
The purposeful intention my boss and other close associates of hers
had, in regards to their business practices, been well too much for my
moral and ethical disposition. To resolve matters, I made a sincere
personal pledge to never allow myself to be manipulated in any similar
way to this and to ensure all relations I engage into, whether
business or other, are honest and truthful. I was able to obtain
enough information and paper evidence to turn her, and a group closely
associated to her, into the IRS. There were many other dealings that
I was not directly or even indirectly involved with but, with how I
was used for deceitful purposes, I thought it imperative the business
dealings of these individuals should be brought to the appropriate
light.
If given the chance to repeat my actions I have deep, mixed feelings.
I definitely would would not perform the job and its actions ever
again, ensuring my ethics are upheld. The fact that I was able to put
an end to some very malicious business dealings seemed to have
justified my role, in the grand scope of things. However, I believe
overall that I would not repeat my actions, even if a descent amount
of good was the result. To compromise one's ethics is one of the
greatest ways of wronging one's self.