I knew an accountant who worked for a large corporation, the same one that I did.  I was in engineering not accounting.  Engineering management actually so I was responsible for more than just circuits, modules, assemblies, and tech pubs.

Somewhere along the line it had become common practice to obscure some of the real costs associated with the manufacturing of a product in manners such as offering rebates for larger purchase commitments or the shifting of actual purchase orders from one quarter to another.  You would need to understand the nature of the learning curve of a new product or line of products to understand how this might be construed as an attempt to make the finances of a new product launch, and by association, the financial viability and longevity of an organization within a corporation if not the corporation itself, appear better than they actually were, and more worthy of future investment.

I called out a specific practice that I saw as somewhat questionable and, in fact, I flatly refused to execute my particular part of this practice.  I alerted the accountant who noted my concerns and thanked me for my inputs.  Subsequently and in rather short order the responsibility for my particular part of this process was given to another manager and I was re-assigned to a lesser, more mature product line pretty much without any supporting reason.  The practice was completed and the accountant seemed to disappear from existence.  The new manager was promoted within a year while I watched from a distance, one foot already out the door.

Such is life.  Such is the way we all make a living sometimes.

When you went to the manager of your son’s travel soccer team not to talk about how your son was doing or how you might lend a hand to help out the team but rather to complain about why a seemingly sub-standard player was added to the roster for this year (“our league standing might be compromised!”) who or what made you do this?  Did you ever have any regrets later on when additional parents joined in your behind-the-back protest and the coach relented by cutting back on the questioned player’s field time?  Did the coach have any reservations or regrets in doing what he did?  And, just for the sake of my own interest, do you know how the benched player felt after having giving his all to wind up receiving so little in return for his hard and honest efforts?  Did it matter that he was just 10 years old and loved to play soccer more than just about anything in his troubled life?  Didn’t think so.

When you won that state congressional seat and then was put to task in regard to that right-to-work bill and ignored the majority opinion of your constituents, the majority opinion of the union workers, and your own best judgment to align your vote with the position of the union leadership just so you could best guarantee your own re-election bid did it challenge your moral basis in the least?  When three companies later left the state and threw off well over 1300 jobs in the process did you think about the unemployed or were those votes fairly insignificant at that time?

When you turned your head as the Nazis marched those ghetto Jews into the work camps did you wonder how you could simply pretend to not know their inevitable fates?  Is that when you stopped believing in a higher power that would one day sit in judgment of you?  Did a pall of shame ever descent upon you later on in life or did you just continue to close your eyes and your memory and just hope for the best?

Did you ever keep money or something else of value that you knew belonged to someone else instead of trying to find the true owner?  Did you try to explain this to your kids?

Was it okay that your daughter’s softball team won the league championship by cheating?  Was it made okay by the fact that everyone on your side, parents and players and coaches alike, all knew and all kept quiet- and then celebrated the big victory at a local pizza parlor and pub?  Not the means, just the end.  Clean that trophy off nicely and place it high in a prominent shelf along with all the others.

Did you ever change into someone you swore that you never would and then just pass it off as part of growing up and getting what is yours?  Was it okay because everyone does it?

When was the last time you did something that was of a high moral or ethical caliber?  Something that you didn’t have to broadcast to the world, just something that was thoroughly and silently the absolute right thing to do.  How did that make you feel?  Did your kids know or see it or even understand it?  How did they feel?

Over time it seems okay to drop the price of things as they become easier to obtain.  Could be a new toy, could be a commodity, could be a larger flat panel TV.  Could also be me, could also be you.  We’ve become pretty easy to obtain.

Don’t make yourself a sale item.  Life is too short and integrity too rare and precious.

If two cities existed with one populated by people just like what you wanted to be and the other by people just like what you have become which one would you rather live in today?

It’s just not easy to repair a bridge with broken pilings driven into loose bedrock.