My Reality Check Bounced! - Jason Ryan Dorsey [81]
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Consider how you would handle the following situations:
A. You find a wallet at a busy restaurant filled with money and credit cards.
B. You see a classmate cheating on a final exam that will be graded on a curve.
C. You are in charge of hiring and realize a hot prospect lied on his application.
D. You accidentally leave a grocery store without paying for a ninety-nine-cent item.
No two people will handle all four situations the same way. But how you respond to each situation says a lot about you. Would you try to contact the person who lost the wallet? Would you tell your professor about your cheating classmate? Would you confront the applicant who lied? Would you go back to the store and pay for the item?
You run across ethical dilemmas like these examples every day. Some are huge dilemmas with obvious consequences, Whereas others are small and might go unnoticed. Regardless of the size of your dilemmas, your ethics are the main compass you have to go by to consistently make the right decision. The more solid your ethics, the easier it will be for you to make the right decisions during your toughest times to reach the Future Picture you most desire.
Three years ago, a stranger made a seemingly small ethical decision that saved me a year’s worth of late nights. I had left my laptop computer in the parking lot of a local coffee shop—Mozart’s Coffee Roasters on Lake Austin. I was running late and talking on my cell phone and overlooked the fact I had put the computer down in the parking lot to unlock my car door. When I got home later that night I realized my computer was missing.
I mentally tried to retrace my steps. I remembered taking my computer out of the coffee shop, but I couldn’t remember when I last saw it. As the hours passed I assumed it was lost for good.
Later that evening I got a call from an employee at Mozart’s. He had found my computer in the parking lot and taken it inside the store in case someone came to claim it. When no one came for it by the end of his shift, he unzipped the front pocket of my laptop’s bag, found my business card and called me.
I was so happy to have my computer back that I offered the employee a cash reward for his honesty. He turned it down, saying the money wasn’t necessary, that returning the computer was simply the right thing to do. I’ll never forget this employee’s ethics. He didn’t return my computer for praise, money or recognition. He returned it because it was the right thing to do. I now have every meeting I can at this coffee shop and even mentioned them in my book!
KARMA’N GET IT
As many ethical people as I’ve been lucky to meet in my travels, I’ve also encountered many a con man and con woman. Some of them even conned me! What continues to amaze me is how many of these frauds believed that they would forever get away with their schemes. They had convinced themselves that they were going to end up differently from the legions of con artists before them—who ultimately got caught and punished. It may take a while, but karma always catches up. And when poor ethical choices catch up to you, the consequences exceed the short-lived gains. Life has a funny way of cheating the biggest cheats.
Once you’re labeled as unethical, it’s a difficult stigma to change. I see this with Blake. He and I have stayed friends through the years, and I see how it frustrates him to always have to explain his former business whenever someone Googles his name.
The cruelest part of making unethical decisions is the way they can hurt those who love you the most. There have been many times when I’ve listened to an upset parent or spouse talk about how she’s lost everything trying to keep a loved one out of jail. These compassionate people might as well have been the criminal, because they, too, were paying the price for the crime. Could you sleep at night if, as in one situation, your grandma was using her Social Security checks to pay for your criminal defense attorney?
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BOUNCED: Ethics