Topic Tuesday... right, wrong, and thinking on the difference

How far would you go to do the right thing? And have you ever done the wrong thing, only to reflect on it later and realize you really should have done it differently?

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When Kage gave this subject, I explained that my first thought was of corporations. Now years ago, my Master worked at Walmart and as a significant other, I got to see many of the corporate practices that now have people boycotting and protesting at their local stores. Especially at the store He worked, you could see the managers making decisions that were for the bottom line, that lacked forethought, long term planning. One of the most irritating was around the number of cashiers. I'd join Him at the end of His shift for some grocery shopping. He'd tell me "there were all sorts of cashiers when I was up there last," but we'd find long lines because they'd sent a bunch of cashiers home (because there wasn't enough work). Of course the cashiers were unhappy because they were overworked and they had little job security.

Then there's the corporation He just got laid off from. When He initially got into that job, it was like we'd won the lottery. After awhile in one plant, He was able to move to another plant- it was difficult to get into this one because job openings mainly happened when people retired after happily having worked in this plant for decades. I forget how long He was at that plant before things started to change. The term "corporate culture" belongs here. A new human resources person was hired and then a new schedule was talked about at meetings. Master came home telling me about it and how all the other guys in His area of the plant (the only ones to be so punished and yes, punished is the only appropriate term for the hellish work schedule). 3-2-2 schedule. So Him and His co-workers would be working 3 days on, 2 days off, 2 days on, 3 days off, 2 days on, 2 days off. Can you imagine not having the same day off more than twice a month? That was the reality we lived with for about two years. Then what had been 8 hour work shifts were lengthened to 12 hours. 12 hours of heavy manual labor- well including lunch and 2 breaks, but still. And then there was one month of day shift, followed by one month on midnights, with only 3 days to make the shift. When accidents started happening, when the men started getting angry, HR tried to act like they cared. So what had been a great job stopped being such because they started to look at the employees only as resources to be used and abused, not human beings with needs.

Of course it's easy to think of bad/wrong with corporations. They usually employee hundreds, thousands of people; the choices they make easily affect millions of people. Personalizing this to oneself is trickier. I've lived in some horrific poverty (as far as what we ever see in the US) as an adult. When I read Kage's thing, I tried to think of this time. I remember making different choices that equaled food for my family and other necessities that we couldn't easily afford. I know there were times that I found things like a $5 bill and no way to tell immediately who dropped it- just a trip to the customer services to turn a bill that might end up in an employee's pocket. So those times, instead, that bill bought some milk, some ramen for my family. I knew that it was wrong, however the need for food in my family's belly made me suspend the care of right/wrong in that moment. Heck, I probably didn't always wait until later to think of the wrong, but when you have the huge wrong of a corporation, it can be difficult to worry.