Who's had the most ethically dubious job?

[bluestreak]

i worked for seeboard for a year. they're arseholes. but i was shit at my job, and so was everyone else there, so think of our systematic incompetance as a way of fucking with them. like LDR, i vowed after that to never work in the private sector again, and like LDR i haven't.

as a student i pulled pints in a wetherspoons, which are pretty steve politically, and the one i worked in were serial exploiters of the drinking classes.

 

[jbob]

A few years as an Estate Agent some time ago. I hated myself more than the general public hated me, if that's any consolation.

 

[Yossarian]

I've worked for Sky News....and on the building site of the American consulate in Hong Kong....

 

[snoogles]

What I'm trying to say is that this stuff is relative, and it's blinkered to believe that there are many jobs which unquestionably hold some moral highground.

That's a fair point. Even jobs like being a teacher, for example, aren't necessarily as clear-cut as they could be...I mean, it's all very well to say working in the public sector is noble (it often is), but I know several London teachers who are absolutely raking taxpayers money in while doing a very short working day with little pressure to get good results out of their kids. When I started in the private sector, I worked twice the hours they did for the same salary...

(Nothing against teachers at all, just think that public sector workers should be held to similar productivity standards as private sector ones, particularly as they are paid out of the public purse. The number of layabouts at my local council office, for example, is ridiculous...how ethical is it to bum around doing nothing while taking your countrymen's hard-earned cash?)

 

[pinkmonkey]

So how good/bad were they as places to work (for Chinese people that is), in your opinion?

Better paid and better conditions than in the fancy goods industry - a client's friend was importing candles and took him to a candle factory which he says was 'horrific.'

I've heard conditions are not as good as electronics factories.

As far as conditions go, the only difference I've really seen compared to Italy, Spain and Portugal, is scale. They tend to be huge, they have more workers and deal with bigger volumes.

I think the biggest issue is the hours they work and the pay, the pay is improving, due to worker shortages, but the hours worked is not also due to worker shortages. This can be made worse by power shortages, can be up to four days a week, so there's a mad rush to get the work done while the power is on.

 

[BEARBOT]

when i was a skint student in boston,mass ages ago now..i worked counting money for a con man tele evangelist called rev.ike!

yeah,it was a WIERD job..im not proud i did it but the pay and the actual work were a lot easier than my previous jobs,plus you could go in and work for a few hours BETWEEN classes..very handy for me cos i didnt want any more hard slog w/e or night work..

the job literally envolved being seated at a table opening envelopes which contained donations from gulliable members of the public and placing the money on trays...(under the watchful eyes of security guards and CCTV)

everything this minister did was carefully within the letter of the law but in my opinion it was UNETHICAL,cos the people who donated were often in bad straits financially/having a health crisis etc so they turned to this "minister"
at their lowest point..
rev. ike sent them form letters stating things like"jesus will heal all your illnesses
if you pray and send me $100"of course there were disclaimers printed at the bottom of the letters but well his followers didnt see/comprehend disclaimers.

everyone in the job was a student or from a temp agency..occasionally a temp would turn up who was a religious christian..respect to those folks cos they would invariably leave by lunchtime saying the job wasnt for them.they tended to be horrified when they found out just what kind of church organisation they had been sent to..i worked there about 6months and justified it to myself that not working there i wouldnt have brought rev.ikes business to its knees..wonder if he is still around?

 

[subversplat]

That's a fair point. Even jobs like being a teacher, for example, aren't necessarily as clear-cut as they could be...I mean, it's all very well to say working in the public sector is noble (it often is), but I know several London teachers who are absolutely raking taxpayers money in while doing a very short working day with little pressure to get good results out of their kids. When I started in the private sector, I worked twice the hours they did for the same salary...

(Nothing against teachers at all, just think that public sector workers should be held to similar productivity standards as private sector ones, particularly as they are paid out of the public purse. The number of layabouts at my local council office, for example, is ridiculous...how ethical is it to bum around doing nothing while taking your countrymen's hard-earned cash?)

Boo hoo, those poor, struggling, marginalised, private sector workers!

I haven't got a clue how you intend to impose productivity standards on teachers, councillors or nurses though Especially the lawakers - half the trouble we're in as a country at the moment is overzealous legislators thinking they've got to be showing themselves to be useful so trot out more and more increasingly stupid laws.

 

[Brainaddict]

when i was a skint student in boston,mass ages ago now..i worked counting money for a con man tele evangelist called rev.ike!

yeah,it was a WIERD job..im not proud i did it but the pay and the actual work were a lot easier than my previous jobs,plus you could go in and work for a few hours BETWEEN classes..very handy for me cos i didnt want any more hard slog w/e or night work..

the job literally envolved being seated at a table opening envelopes which contained donations from gulliable members of the public and placing the money on trays...(under the watchful eyes of security guards and CCTV)

everything this minister did was carefully within the letter of the law but in my opinion it was UNETHICAL,cos the people who donated were often in bad straits financially/having a health crisis etc so they turned to this "minister"
at their lowest point..
rev. ike sent them form letters stating things like"jesus will heal all your illnesses
if you pray and send me $100"of course there were disclaimers printed at the bottom of the letters but well his followers didnt see/comprehend disclaimers.

everyone in the job was a student or from a temp agency..occasionally a temp would turn up who was a religious christian..respect to those folks cos they would invariably leave by lunchtime saying the job wasnt for them.they tended to be horrified when they found out just what kind of church organisation they had been sent to..i worked there about 6months and justified it to myself that not working there i wouldnt have brought rev.ikes business to its knees..wonder if he is still around?

A little googling goes a long way:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverend_Ike
"Reverend Ike's ministry...is still active as of 2005.

He allegedly owns a fleet of Rolls-Royces (a different color for every day of the week, appointed in mink), diamond rings, expensive suits, and multiple mansions."

http://www.revike.org/

 

[Idaho]

Boo hoo, those poor, struggling, marginalised, private sector workers!

I haven't got a clue how you intend to impose productivity standards on teachers, councillors or nurses though Especially the lawakers - half the trouble we're in as a country at the moment is overzealous legislators thinking they've got to be showing themselves to be useful so trot out more and more increasingly stupid laws.

I think you are overreacting there.

The poster was only trying to say that there is often a belief that it is more ethical to be employed in the public sector, and that such a belief is bollocks.

 

[BEARBOT]

hey brainaddict i googled rev ikes name as soon as i wrote that post,funnily enough i do know about google ya know

i just dont have time today to research fully into what that creepy supposed man of god is up to, have him bookmarked tho.

 

[stereotypical]

Three years ago I worked for a charity "Sponsorship" raiser. I bascially sat in office with a phone and business phone book and rang up asking them to donate money to *insert fradulant charity here*. Anyway we had a script which went something along the lines of:

"We only need another £200 donation and we can afford to send some terminally ill children to Disneyland".

Me being the fool that I am believed this for a few days, it was only once I started asking questions about the suppossed charity that I figured out what was going on and left the place.

My bosses where blatently shady types and I got the job through the fucking jobcentre of all places

 

[snoogles]

Boo hoo, those poor, struggling, marginalised, private sector workers! .

I never said we were poor, struggling or marginalised, just that we often have to do more work to get the same kind of wage.

I haven't got a clue how you intend to impose productivity standards on teachers, councillors or nurses though Especially the lawakers - half the trouble we're in as a country at the moment is overzealous legislators thinking they've got to be showing themselves to be useful so trot out more and more increasingly stupid laws.

There aren't necessarily overt productivity standards in private companies either, it's just that if you're slacking off and you're caught, you tend to get fired, disciplined or demoted. In parts of the public sector, slacking off seems to be the order of the day because there aren't a whole lot of consequences if you don't work hard. I do accept that there are sectors in which people work hard (medicine, emergency workers, etc.). There just seem to be sectors in which they don't, too.

Some examples:

Public: IT support technician in a school/sixth form college who turns up an hour or two late most days and sits around smoking weed, when he's not selling off some of the school's computers/parts on Ebay because nobody bothers keeping track of the school's resources (I know 3 of these).

Private: IT technician in our company who works his arse off. No turning up late, no spliffs because there isn't time for it, no selling stuff on the side because everything is accounted for properly.

Pay = roughly the same for both.

Public: Teacher who teaches timetabled classes from 9 - 3.20 pm, but who refuses to organise any after-class activities for the kids (even though they would finish before 5pm). Refuses to take on any work relating to the gifted and talented kids (with the result that nothing is done for them at all). Poor management skills. Poor grades obtained relative to what is expected of his pupils from their SAT results. Extra salary for being a 'whiteboard coordinator', though it doesn't involve any extra work. Permanent job...

Private: Teacher who works 8.30 - 7pm, organises loads of extra stuff (both sporting and academic), has targets for the grades expected from his kids (based on their aptitude tests). Job stability subject to review of kids' grades.

Pay = a few grand lower for the teacher in the private school.

I'm not saying every public worker is a slacker by any means; just that some are, and that little seems to be done about it when they're in the public sector. I do think that the particular public sector people mentioned here are less ethical than their private sector counterparts, as they're wasting public funds.

Trying to change the culture might be better than imposing productivity standards (I mean, who is allowing those IT technicians to get away with it?), though I think that things like paying more to teachers who get better grades out of their kids than they have been predicted to get might be a start...bit of a minefield, mind! It's a difficult one...

 

[snoogles]

I think you are overreacting there.

The poster was only trying to say that there is often a belief that it is more ethical to be employed in the public sector, and that such a belief is bollocks.

oops...that said it a bit more succinctly! that's what you get for wittering on for ages and not reading stuff that has been posted in the meantime...

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

I make telly for ITV.


Oh dear.

 

[Orang Utan]

I make telly for ITV.


Oh dear.

Hahahaha, you're fucked!

 

[Idaho]

I make telly for ITV.


Oh dear.

That's distasteful rather than unethical

 

[subversplat]

I think you are overreacting there.

The poster was only trying to say that there is often a belief that it is more ethical to be employed in the public sector, and that such a belief is bollocks.

Sometimes I like to come in all guns blazing and get the niggly details sorted out afterwards

...post...

I don't know. I used to slack off all over the place in private enterprise, I was just good at pretending I wasn't not doing anything. In the case of councillors, the more we pay them not to do anything the better And as for the teachers, are you serious that public school teachers are paid less than state school teachers? That sounds quite wrong to me! Or surely they'd all be in the state school

Anyway, as a general rule, I'd say that people working for schools aren't being ethically dubious in any cases, no matter what sorts of pay they're taking home, because it's probably not enough or something.

 

[Idaho]

I have worked in both Private and Public and inbetweeny and by far the most dossing was the public. You also get the feeling in some public sector offices that some people would probably starve if it wasn't for these 'charitable' institutions.

A temp I know who was hired by some government job was told to slow down and stop working so much by others in the office. He said he thought he was dossing.

The inbetweeny places (places like the Design Council, General Medical Council) are also dossy, although in a different way. They are more likely to have you doing something pointless for a few weeks, before discarding all you had done.

 

[Structaural]

I make telly for ITV.


Oh dear.

s'alright - no one watches ITV

 

[treefrog]

Public: Teacher who teaches timetabled classes from 9 - 3.20 pm, but who refuses to organise any after-class activities for the kids (even though they would finish before 5pm). Refuses to take on any work relating to the gifted and talented kids (with the result that nothing is done for them at all). Poor management skills. Poor grades obtained relative to what is expected of his pupils from their SAT results. Extra salary for being a 'whiteboard coordinator', though it doesn't involve any extra work. Permanent job...

Private: Teacher who works 8.30 - 7pm, organises loads of extra stuff (both sporting and academic), has targets for the grades expected from his kids (based on their aptitude tests). Job stability subject to review of kids' grades.

Pay = a few grand lower for the teacher in the private school.

What country did you say you lived in again? Certainly isn't this one...

 

[samk]

If teachers pensions were paid from a percentage of their pupil's earnings, they would be more effective, and not only in cramming for exams, but in teaching useful skills, the downside being they would be doing their best to steer their pupils into banking and the like.

 

[subversplat]

I think that if they tried to make everybody become bankers being a teacher might just hedge its way into "ethically dubious"

 

[treefrog]

I think that if they tried to make everybody become bankers being a teacher might just hedge its way into "ethically dubious"

If I ever develop that mindset you're allowed to shoot me.

 

[LDR]

I worked for Burger King back when I was young and foolish.

I worked for Pizza Hut.

 

[Mapped]

Pretty ethically dubious:

I did a summer internship when I was a student for an investment bank that has been accused of holding gold that the Nazi's took from the Jews during the holocaust. When I was there the department I was working in was raising funds for arms manufacturers and tobacco companies . I was very broke at the time and they paid top dollar.

I now work for the taxpayer

 

[Kanda]

I worked for McDonalds at 16

Now I just work for a Hedge Fund (Wanker Bankers)

Done all my do good stuff in my 20's

 

[muser]

You've got to stroke you chin at some of these jobs and their former owners, was that the OP's aim??!?

 

[subversplat]

I'm filing this all away for future ad hom attacks on people based on their tarnished pasts

I have been quite at the gusto with which some people've gotten this stuff off their chests though! Maybe it's cathartic not to have it all bottled up anymore

 

[nick1181]

I've :
- worked in a meat-packing factory.
- Made an ecommerce site for someone selling viagra
- Made a wap site for aggregating escort-agencies
- driven a van that delivered poll-tax bills (though given that the entire infrastructure was staffed by people vehemently against poll-tax, very few of them were actually delivered to the right addresses)

errmm....

- did support on a data-collection system for the NHS which was ruthlessly overpriced and which they weren't aware that they were going to have to buy when they bought another part of the system.

errmm...

That's it on the dodgy-front. I worked in a Nike Factory once, but I was more of a victim on that one I think.

To temper this, I have done quite a lot of work for charities (in fact I almost always have a charity project on the go) so I have managed to keep a semblence of karmic balance I think.

 

[Badger Kitten]

I wasn't on their payroll, but I got contracted to design/develop an IT system for... Procter & Gamble*

Beat that!

* In my defence it was before I realised that they aren't such a jolly nice company

I helped to launch Sunny Delight.