TIFU- Today my boss asked me if I was doing anything special for New Years Eve,

Which one? Business ethics or social ethics? Because they may sound similar but they are not the same things. Social ethics perscribes to what's right and what's wrong, but business ethics only perscribes to whats best for the company even if it stomps all over social ethics. Let me give you a dilemma my buddy had with one of his employees.

Shes the best employee in the bank branch he works at. She gets all her stuff done, she knows how to do it right, and make the clients happy. One day her brother calls in wondering why his account hasnt been fully setup, she says she'll check on it for him. So she doesnt have access to it when shes looking, apparently its tied up with another department. So she goes to the banks website and clicks on the chat system, she signs in with her brother's credentials that he supplies to her over the phone, and shes connected to a chat agent. She identifies herself as her brother, just to skip a formality, and asks why the account is on hold, the rep says its because of a missing piece of identity on file. She says ok thanks.

The chat rep notices though the IP address of the chat is part of the banks IP block. So because of that, they launch an investigation into fraud. It comes down the chain to my buddy, which basically says "Because she lied about being her brother in the chat system, she must be fired. Zero tolerance in lying"

So, i ask, whats ethically wrong here? She is a great worker, very nice, never had a single complaint or disciplenary issue against her. But because of this one incident, business ethics is forcing her to be fired because she was trying to help find out one little thing for her brother. There was no way to appeal the issue.

On an ethics level, no wrong was made and its understandable then actions that were taken of you know the story. But business ethics says shes a dirty damn liar and cannot be trusted.

This issue really pissed off my buddy, because he knows shes a great worker, his best employee, and has a very high customer satisfaction rate. But because its a zero tolerancw policy for even a small issue like this, it forced him to fire her. He tried to fight it himself, but HR said no.

It comes down to you as the person when ethics are involved. Do you feel ethically obliged to report someone because its a moral duty, or because you're scared to lose your job due to business ethics? In many cases, it comes down to you as a manager to make that call.

Just remember, HR is not there to help the employee in anyway. HR exists to protect the business. What you might consider to be a simple write up for a minor offense can look like to HR a way to fire someone to save money in a department. Keep that in mind, as a manager, what you report can have drastic implications. You will never know what way it will go, because you dont have access to that internal portion of the business employmeny finances.

/r/tifu Thread Parent