Can Your Employer MAKE You Do Something Immoral?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I deliver pizzas for a major national chain at my night job. My boss is an excellent guy. HIS boss (we’ll call her Ursula, however, is an unrepentant asshole.

Whenever a driver leaves the store, he/she tells the computer who he is and which order(s) he is taking. This way, the computer tracks how long between the time the order was taken and when it left the store; and how long it took the driver to get it out of the store and get back.

Ursula informed me today that she wants me and all the other drivers to start dispatching orders before they’re even out of the oven :eek:. IOW, she wants us to lie to the computer to make it look like she’s getting the pizzas out of the store faster.

Now, I don’t claim to be any paragon of morality or virtue. However, I don’t particularly like the idea of having to lie to make someone else look better, even if I’m only lying to a computer. Well, I suppose at some point somebody in a suit somewhere will go over all the data, so I suppose I’m lying to them, too. But I digress.

Long story short: is this legal, for my employer to require me to do something dishonest? If this isn’t, I’m going to have a heart-to-heart with Ursula, and if that doesn’t get results I’ll have to take the matter to an attorney.

Any attorneys in central Illinois want to type up a strongly worded letter, pro bono? :smiley:

TIA

2

Ursula sounds like a bitch. IANAL, but I would think no. You don’t have to do this. This is shitty, selfish, and not right. Don’t do it. It is not your obligation to make this selfish bitch “look good” through dishonest means.

At my current job, the bosses tried to get me to work with someone violent. I work with mentally retarded people. Most of them are sweet dears, but there was this one who had a terrible (and deserved) reputation. The parents had some sort of “pull”, so this violent person was not reigned in by the bosses in a way that was appropriate. It’s a LONG story. Anyway, when I was first hired, I was given some pressure to work with this violent person. I felt I was at personal risk, I thought the whole thing was absurd. I refused, but was still upset about the whole thing, since some pressure was being put on me. But the bottom line was, they couldn’t MAKE me - I didn’t HAVE to do it. As one of my friends told me, “The only thing you HAVE to do in this world is die.” That’s it!

So, when confronted by one of my bosses - I just refused. I said I’d rather be unemployed than work with this violent individual. They never have pressed me again about it. They have nothing to hold over me. They can’t say, “Well, we’ll fire you!” because I would have welcomed that as an alternative to getting the crap beaten out of me, or my hair ripped out by the roots. (I kid you not!) Anyway, sorry for the tangent. The thing I’m trying to tell you is - NO. YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO IT. THEY CAN’T MAKE YOU! They will just try to convince you that they can.

I am glad you are going to fight this. Let us know how it goes!

3

In my state, and I assume in most states, it is illegal to be disciplined for rufusing to do something that is against the law (dumping chemicals was the example I was given). But I think the main problem is that changing the times on a company dispatch might not be against anything but company policies.

Another problem is that unless you belong to a union, you would probably be ‘let go’ if you ‘cause trouble’ within the company. What I would do is talk to your boss (to cool one), then call her supervisor if you need to.

4

If it’s a national pizza chain, I’m sure head office would like to hear about this.

5

You need to send an anonymous letter to whoever Ursula’s supervisor is, and the one above him or her. Refusing to do it will just cause trouble for you, and possibly get you fired for some half-assed thing like “insubordination”, and since it is only a company policy and not a law/workrule, you will really have no real recourse.

6

I agree with reprise and Anthracite that you consider going over Ursula’s head. Something else to keep in mind, by doing what she wants, you would be making the yourself and other drivers look bad by increasing the delivery time recorded in the system. She’s basically asking you to make her look good by making yourself look bad.

7

Come on, rasta, you know the answer to this by now.

  1. Your employer can’t make you do anything. You can always quit.

  2. Your employer (in the person of the evil Ursula (gotta love that choice of name for the selfish nemesis of right-thinking pizza drivers!)) isn’t asking you to do anything illegal. It might be illegal if someone was being defrauded of something of value by lying (say Ursula has you lie about the cash in the drawer when you count out to cover shortages).

  3. You can make waves by cluing Ursula’s boss (hopefully it isn’t the even more unscrupulous Boris (ok, so my ability to come up with cool names for evil people goes no further than Rocky and Bullwinkle references…I never said I was creative!)) into her little scheme. Of course, that’s easier said than done, and it can result in Ursula taking out her frustration on a certain whistle-blowing driver of pizzas…

  4. You can refuse to do it (I recommend just not saying anything but still logging the pizza out when you are supposed to). This might lead to someone letting you go, but THAT gets a little dicey (firing people for refusing to violate company policy in some states leads to wrongful termination damages). As to THAT, you’d have to ask an attorney well versed in Illinois employment law. :slight_smile:

8

I forgot to ask whether you work directly for the chain or whether you’re in a franchised store. Head Office wouldn’t be happy either way, but it may make a difference to how you approach the situation.

9

Franchise.

Thanks for all the replies so far. What I really need is an Illinois lawyer. coughTiburoncoughTiburoncoughcough*

10

I wouldn’t look at it as immoral or dishonest it’s a game why not play along?
Why not start shorting the times even more?

See if you can get them down so low that big shot corporate types take notice. It will be fun when they come down to see what makes your store so efficient.

11

In this case, if the franchise owner is local (and not Ursula!), I recommend going directly to him or her. While I can’t give a blanket statement, most franchisees would likely be very interested to hear that someone they hired to take responsibility for part of their business is aviding it by cooking the books. More to the point, successful franchise owners tend to be fairly sensible businessmen; they are unlikely to fire you for being honest, even if it is “making waves”.

If Ursula is the franchise owner, you may well be SOL.

12

I’d like to second what some guy suggested but suggest that you cover your butt by still advising Head Office of what is happening. Franchises are general granted under pretty strict conditions, and I suspect that the reason you’re being asked to lie about the time the order leaves the store has something to do with the performance times required by the chain.

Major chains do check that their requirements are being complied with (I’ve bought goodness knows how many KFC meals and tested them with temperature probes at intervals specified by the company - and been payed for doing so).

If Ursula gets busted and the chain pulls the franchise and you have been part of the deception and said nothing, you’re out of a job. If you do what Ursula wants and the chain questions the apparently long delivery times, you’re out of a job.

Advising the franchise holder and Head Office of what’s happening doesn’t guarantee you won’t lose your job if there’s any fallback, but at least it puts your integrity on record, which is your best chance for being perceived as a valuable employee.

13

If none of the other suggestions work, just walk. Quitting a job is very rarely as bad as people think it will be and you’ll have a much easier time looking at yourself in the mirror the next morning if you do.

14

I worked for a subcontractor who had a delivery area for Airborne Express, as a delivery driver. Airborne was always pushing for faster deliveries, making various threats to the subcontractor. The guy used to be an executive for Airborne, retired, a born again Christian and a Preacher in his church, so you’d think he’d be cool to work for. Right?

WRONG!!

He was a cheap and nasty as could be. First, if we found a Federal Express package mixed in with our freight in our drop boxes, which happened because their drop boxes and ours were usually side by side, we were to no longer just droop them in the FedX box, but take them, write out our bill, stick it on the FedX package and ship it out. That hurt FedX, gained us a few bucks and, maybe, a customer. His orders. Normally, as professional courtesy, we’d give such packages to FedX because they’d do the same for us.

Being greedy, he told us to stop that. (We did not.)

We had to deliver X number of packages on our routes, with Y number of minutes averaging out in-between customers. We could not do it without endangering ourselves. We used scanners, recording the deliveries and he told us to lie. There were ways to fool the scanners. So we did but any real close examination of our delivery routes verses the scanner records would show up the discrepancy, but rarely were the records compared. So it looked like we were doing better than we were.

It made him look real good, but hurt us in the long run. In the end, if Airborne had a problem with a driver, a comparison of his route verses the scanner records would show the discrepancies and he would get into deep trouble and the boss would not come to his aide by informing anyone that the driver was ordered to lie.

A business cannot make you do anything illegal or improper but if you want your job, you might want to do it because if not, like we were informed, they’ll get someone who will. Home offices put tremendous pressure on area managers because all they’re interested in are figures that always go up. Like, we were told not to speed, but in order to get the route done in the desired time, it was necessary to do so. The boss knew that, and if we refused to speed, we were disciplined for not doing our jobs and eventually, fired.

Road and traffic conditions did not matter.

Your only option is to refuse, continue doing it the old way and get fired. You can go to court over it, but you’d best have witnesses and documented incidents or recordings to back you up because the company will send down it’s lawyers to defend the store and manager. You can get unemployment, and if the manager denies it, you stand a real good chance of winning in the arbitration which will follow but you’ll need good facts and evidence.

They might be violating labor laws, but you’ll need a labor lawyer to make sure because those laws get darn confusing. You drivers might actually be independent contractors, like newspaper carriers actually are, which puts you under a whole new set of laws.

Unless it is something grossly illegal, like somehow stealing or adding surcharges to your deliveries that are not allowed, you primary option is to refuse and then quit or wait to be fired.

Welcome to the world of Corporate business where you are an expendable resource.

15

There’s a practical, naked self-interest aspect to this as well. The total time taken to cook and deliver a pizza is remaining constant here. If the records reflect that it was cooked and despatched earlier than it was, that “stolen” time will just be added on to the drivers’ log. So when head office or whoever go over the figures, Ursula gets a pat on the back, and the drivers get a kick up the arse. I doubt either of these incomes are deserved

16

Ah, the joys of menial labor. I remember the good old days where I had to do stupid mindless work for some simple-minded loser at the height of their career.

Oh wait, my professional job is like that too.
Here’s the problem:

If you were a lawyer or consultant and your boss told you to bill more hours than you actually worked, that would be illegal (everyone saw The Firm, right?). You have a leagal recourse if they fire you for refusing to comply.

For a pizza guy, it’s a little different. The reason is that it’s probably not worth your time and money to sue over a $8 and hour job (or whatever the rate is these days).

You also have to remember that for you, this is just a night job. Your bosses boss has actually trained to be in her position and in the professional world, it’s not a very prestigeous one (That’s right, yosemitebabe, I’m dissin on the pizza manager’s job). People in those positions often battle for every petty little thing that can increase what meager power they have. It’s not worth getting into it with them unless this becomes your permenent career.
Just out of curiousity, what does your immediate boss (the cool one) think of this situation?

17

This was the best answer. Hey, your just following orders, right? I like it. STICK IT UP 'ER ARSE!!!:cool:

The answer to the question in the OP is yes. Maybe not directly, but trust me, your company can find another way to fuck with you if you don’t play ball.

I remember when I was a salesman for a previous company and my boss was always mentioning how I should take certain clients, most of whom were married middle-aged teenager assholes, to strip clubs as entertainment.

Now, I’m not getting on my moral high horse here, I’ve have done my share of questionable things in my lifetime, but being married, it was just something I personally was not comfortable doing.

The idea of sitting around playing with or watching naked women while my wife was sitting at home alone is not my idea of a fun night out. And frankly even when I was single I never really enjoyed those places either. That’s just me, and if that’s what my boss or any other guy who is married wants to do with their time, that’s fine. But I let my boss know in a VERY polite and subtle way that I really wasn’t interested in those kinds of places, I’d rather take my client out to dinner or a ballgame instead.

WELL lo and behold, after almost 2 years of no problems my boss tells me he has “grave concerns” about my ability to establish “rapport” with my customers. And while the strip club subject directly was never mentioned, and there were some things that were my fault and some things that were his fault, I feel this was a big part of why he rode my ass to the point that I eventually accepted an offer from another company.

The bottom line is that no matter what your performance is like, the moment you say “No”, the company can nitpick your every fault and use that as ammunition to run you out.

I guess I could have been a hardass, and offer to inform my boss’s wife and the many wives of my clients what was going on, and trust me strip clubs were the tip of the iceberg, and keep my job in good standing, but I decided it was time to move on. Why ruin people’s lives? Fuck him, fuck that company and fuck those customers.

I’m happy to say I’m working for an awesome company, and the worst they ask me to do is take my clients golfing!:slight_smile:

18

I worked at an independent grocery store some years ago and one of my duties was to process coupons. This job consisted merely of shoving the month’s coupons in a manilla envelope and sending to the clearance house and wait for the check. They would send the check along with a report on how many coupons were valid, expired, etc. The owner had been known to buy coupons from local residents and send them in. This is illegal. By the time I got the job, I told my immediate supervisor that I would not do this and for him to pass it on to the owner. He did and I was never asked to do this.

At my current job, I was asked by the owner to make up a false invoice billed to a local government agency we sold to in order for the owner to submit the invoice to the manufacturer of the item so that they would give US a discount which HE would pocket! I told him I didn’t know how to do this.

I think it worthy to note that both of these “men” were hardcore, ultra-right-wing Republicans.

19

My favorite tactic with questionable directives is “Could you put that in writing please? It’s not that I am refusing to do (X, Y, and Z), but I am uncomfortable with the whole idea and would like it clarified. I understand things much better when I can read them and ponder them over time.” Or alternatively “…refer to in case of misunderstanding.”

Works a surprising amount of the time. Most I’ve had to use this on have abruptly rethought the idea, but the rest just gave me the paper I needed to hang them. They uhmm, seem to have a problem believing I’d use said documents.

Yes, I am occasionally the employee from Hell. Perhaps he should’ve familiarized himself with the Union Executive before pulling that particular stunt in MY department.

Of course, I work in the corporate environment, where they give you thirty page safety manuals describing the safest way to walk, sit on an chair, and how to safely use a staple remover. :rolleyes:

20

This person is probably fiddling with other things in which you have no input, if they are not trustworthy in one area then it likely they will not so in others.

What I’m saying is that there will be dirt on them in some other way, now she will not know you know nothing about it, could be good for a bluff.

If you refuse to comply and your colleagues do go along with it you are left high and dry, you will probably be dismissed in a creative fashion.

The franchisee would be interested I would think, you need some evidence though and then approach them with it, but you might do this anonymously, after all they might have some interest in looking good too.