Public Virtue from Private Vice
There was a couple of occasions when I was younger on which I had to decide whether to do a reprehensible job, and opted not to. I wish that I could attribute this to virtue on my part. I can't.

The first time this happened was when I, as a 16-year-old, answered an advert for call-centre workers. I was invited in for a chat. On a wet summer afternoon, I caught the bus to the address I was given, knocked on the door, and was led up to a dingy office in a converted attic above a shop. The office was lit with one bulb, and the only furniture was a couple of scratty desks and chairs, a couple of telephones, and some phone books. My job would be to cold-call people selling timeshare. The hook was that they'd won a prize in a draw (and if they denied entering the draw, I was expected to say that someone must have entered them on their behalf), and were invited to come to collect it from the company in question. If they turned up, they'd be given the hard sell.

It took me about 35 seconds to decide I wanted nothing to do with the outfit.

The second time was when I was a student, I was offered a gig doing door-to-door sales. The idea was to knock on people's doors, and flog them some kind of sheet of money-off vouchers for a local curry house. At other times, it might have been selling things on behalf of other businesses on the same sort of model. I don't know: you could tell from a mile away that it was dodgy, and I didn't last a full day.

Did I walk because I had a deep moral objection to the scams being perpetrated? Well, I did have an objection to both, since both demanded a fair degree of mendacity. But that isn't why I declined either. I declined the first because the office - which had no natural light and stank of decade-old ashtrays, mildew and misery - was just too scummy; I declined the second because it was obvious that the pay would be not worth the effort.

Or, to put it another way: I did what I believe to be the virtuous thing for what I believe to be vicious reasons. It turns out that I'm only prepared to violate the demands of decency when the working conditions are good.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 7 Jul 2011, 15:07, 1 reply)

I worked for 1 hour in a cold call centre for sattelite tv.
The first person I called was an old man that had just lost his wife. I chatted to him for about 20 minutes about how sad it all must be and he told me a few stories. I put the phone down and walked out.
( Brandy_Bumwinkle, Thu 7 Jul 2011, 15:17, closed)