STAYING AFLOAT (November/December 2002 Issue)

With the daily revelations of fraud and various shenanigans in corporate suites, it is difficult for the average worker to know how to keep his employable head above water. The fraudsters rake off the big money and, one way or the other, it comes out of the workers’ pockets. Often the workers don’t even have jobs left at the end of the year. Where shady dealings seem commonplace, moral bearings are hard to come by. Bobbing and treading water in treacherous seas, how does one stay morally afloat?

Here are some guidelines:
(1) Report the evil wrongdoers, when you see evidence of their dastardly work. Scream and holler "thief!" in the elevators and the hallways. Carry handcuffs and use them. Do it promptly, before they bankrupt the company. Save the bottom line and make yourself a hero by intercepting the tricksters before they cart away their electronic duffel bags filled with cash. Early detection is the key. You know that somebody inside the company is doing it.

It’s just a question of who and how.

(2) If the previous action finds you out on the streets, you’ll probably see many fellow workers there with you. Neighborhood Crime Watch didn’t work. Now band with them and start your own company, applying the underhanded techniques you learned from your "betters" and start your own Fraud Machine. Act friendly and steal like a bandit. Siphon quickly and get thee to Pango Pango before they catch on.

(3) Make a movie about the company’s corruption and subsequent efforts by the "forces of good" to oust the rapscallions. Name names of brilliant hotshots who "were called ‘the best and the brightest,’ and thought they could outsmart everyone" and take lurid photos of hands writing sneaky checks and buying homes with company money. Give yourself a key acting role in the movie. No matter how many bigwigs you expose, you will be forgiven, even worshipped, because as Producer and Actor, you will now be a certified Celebrity.

(4) Stay in the organization, do your job, and decimate the company by "appropriating" giant stocks of resources, enough that you will become quietly and invisibly wealthy. Start with items they won’t notice, like paper clips, staple guns and dollies from the warehouse. Work your way up to surplus desks and company cars. Then, uncover your own wrongdoing, attribute it to others and go on TV to denounce "the scoundrels". Once again, your Celebrity status from television will enable you to ride safely above the storm.

(5) Go back to school to become an Accountant. Get yourself hired to "audit" (wink-wink) the company_s financial books in exchange for a fat lifetime annuity. "Certify" that everything in the statements has been triple-checked and is A-OK. Have dinner with the top executives every night and take a several-day deep-sea fishing trip, to make sure they fully understand the meaning of the detailed accounting statements.

(6) Use your networking skills to do "power lunches" with all the Chief Executive Perpetrators. Don’t start eating until they do. Gain their confidence. Carry their bags (don’t ask what they contain). Change the oil in their cars. Tug on their power ties. When the company fails, as it eventually will, you will be sufficiently "well placed" to turn in your cronies to the federal authorities in exchange for immunity from prosecution, or whatever is the legal term for creative ratting.

Maybe the above looks like the stories you’ve been reading in the newspapers. Is this the reality? Have we lost this much integrity in the workplace? Are you pessimistic by this time about whether anything can be done to restore a sense of integrity in business dealings?

For clients, there are questions which career counselors must help them answer:

• Am I going to be associated with an employer doing something dishonest or illegal and if so, what might I say or do about it, if anything? What can an individual do?

• How do I maintain my own sense of integrity in a business climate rife with dishonest dealings?

• Is some degree of lying, cheating, and stealing necessary to get ahead?

I do not like being so alarmist in raising these questions. However, many of your clients are thinking them over right now. Or hatching plots. Integrity is far too important to be left in the hands of the schemers. People who have integrity must stand up for it, lest the skullduggers implement their money-grubbing plots without any resistance. Integrity takes hard work. In many ways, thievery is the easy way out. When you’re stealing, you’re doing it in secret. It’s always easier to pull something off when no one is looking. It’s time for the forces of Honesty to speak up more loudly and express outrage at what the Executive Perpetrators have done. And it is time for career counselors to help clients maintain their sense of integrity and keep from being swept along in the tide of corporate corruption.

Howard Figler, Ph.D., is the author of The Complete Job Search Handbook and The Career Counsleor's Handbook [1999, with Richard N. Bolles]. He can be reached at: hefigler@pacbell.net