The other day when I was driving home I was listening to some radio station or another and the female DJ told this story about her buying two tops. She knew her credit cards were nearly maxed out so wanted to split the purchases between two cards. The assistant rang through one and it was rejected although it showed up on his computer as a sale and then she bought the other one. She said to the guy that she thought that one sale had not gone through but the guy said no it was fine ... and so she left. 100 metres of so down the street she checked the docket and sure enough she had only paid for one top. Her reasoning was a) she had told the guy and so it was his fault not hers and therefore the top was hers to keep and b) she was wearing high heels and wasn't going to walk back.
What shocked me was that when I teach ethics (which I do a lot) we discuss the various levels of ethical development - one of which (and it is pretty low on the hierarchy) is the "if I am not caught then I am not guilty" level (or what I privately call the Bart Simpson level). This woman was barely even at that level ... because she knew that there was a mistake made but refused to take any responsibility and she knew that there would be consequences for the assistant (because it was discussed but she kept justifying her position). A severe case of "I'm all right Jack ... pity about the rest of you".
You see I have this somewhat naive view that I teach ethics in developing countries because the fabric of their social structure has been destroyed because of conflict etc. What is our excuse?
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