B48-DES22
On Corruption
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 5/13/02
I’m
not talking about the law enforcement officer who takes a kickback from a
drug dealer, nor the politician who casts a vote influenced by who his
contributors are, I’m talking about the many ‘invisible’ threads
that systematically ruin lives in thousands of small ways thousands of
times a day. It’s easy to point fingers at the Ted Bundys or Adolf
Hitlers of the world & see how they have ruined dozens, hundreds, or
millions of lives. But how about the people who’s own personal
corruption assisted the Bundys or Hitlers? Surely someone close suspected
Bundy of misdeeds- but they were too charmed to snitch? Or, perhaps, the
person who witnessed the 1st or 2nd or 3rd
murder victim but did not step forward, did not want to get involved,
etc.? These are micro-forms of corruption. & we are all guilty of
varying degrees of it. Hitler’s an even more obvious case. How many
weak-kneed politicos took the easy way out by not opposing Hitler when he
could have been politically ruined? To what degree of culpability is their
corruption in the ensuing Nazi genocide?
But,
even those are extremes. How about the teacher who gives a poor student a
passing grade because the system discourages leaving students back a
grade? Or the co-worker who fabricates ‘evidence’ of misdeeds in order
to get another fired or demoted? Or the boss who spouts the need to
maintain a ‘corporate ethic’ (an oxymoron, I know) all the while doing
highly questionable acts on the Q.T.? Back in the mid-1980s I recall going
on a day off from work to the Queens Mall. Parking was like a
quarter per 40 minutes & I put in 3 or 4. A little over 2 hours later
I get back to my car, with 15-20 minutes to spare & I
see a ticket on my windshield. I’m confused as the meter clearly shows
me having time left. A ways down the lot I see a PVB (Parking Violations
Bureau) officer on her little vehicle. Then I notice that every car, from
mine down to her, has a ticket on it- & most of them STILL have time
left on their meters. It was obvious what was happening. The PVB officer
was writing tickets in hope that a good percentage of people WOULD come
back late & not squawk about paying a fine. The New York City PVB was
(& probably still is) infamous for their ticket quotas. I was furious
& wrote several angry letters to the PVB swearing I would not pay the
fine- about $40. After 6 months of battling I get a notice telling me to
pay or my driver’s license would be suspended. I wrote 1 final nasty
letter, wrote a similar missive to the Daily News, bit my lip, & paid
the damned fine. I was really disgusted. Then, the topper: about 2-3
months later I get a letter & check in the mail from the PVB.
Apparently a check of computer records showed I, indeed, had had time on
my meter. So, all my aggravation was for naught! To what end was the
PVB’s interests served by raking me over the coals & threatening me
for months?
I knew
someone, once, who told me this tale of getting fired from a job. There
had been a series of thefts & their company demanded their employees
take a polygraph [lay term- lie detector] test to prove their innocence.
This person refused such a test because it’s a well-known fact that
polygraph companies make their profit not from administering the tests,
BUT from selling the results of tests to employers. They also encouraged
other employees to refuse the test. This was rampant in the 1970s &
1980s before most states outlawed the practice of forcing employees to
submit or lose their job. Unfortunately, this incident occurred in the
1980s. True to form, this person, a few days after refusing the polygraph
test, was fired. The ostensible reason was that they had been discourteous
to a customer; also that they had been spreading dissent, & were not a
'team player':
codeword for being independent & not a kissass. The accusation came from a supervisor who had been
harassing this person at work. Unfortunately, this person never reported
the harassment lest seem like they were a complainer. Other employees were
similarly maltreated & fired for similarly bogus reasons. The kicker
to the whole incident was that this supervisor was fired several months
later after being proven as the thief that started the whole series of
events to begin with. To what end were the instances of corruption? OK,
the thieving supervisor was covering their own ass, but why did the
company show such little concern for this loyal & productive worker,
& the others?
Here’s
another scenario that often takes place in corporate life. How many times
has someone left a job for the promise of a better job, then quit the old
job, found out that the promised job either was not what was promised, or
was no longer available? The person is then screwed- they are unemployed
& cannot even collect unemployment insurance because they quit, &
were not fired from their previous job. Or an especially galling problem
online, where wealthy corporations & individuals financially bully
small entrepreneurs & websites into giving up URLs, removing true
information under threat of lengthy & expensive ‘libel’
litigation. The motive is usually greed or the covering up of prior
corruption. Or, back to the corporate world, how about this scenario? The
classic whistleblower: an employee endures months or years of management
shenanigans & abuse, they file a complaint or grievance, the employee
is then subtly & not-so-subtly threatened with job loss, someone in a
position of authority ‘coincidentally’ resigns after the charges are
leveled, the employee (often after a vacation) comes back to find out that
they have been accused of some of the very misdeeds they complained about-
after years of being a ‘model employee’ with a spotless record. Either
another employee ‘corroborates’ the charge (while accepting management
favors) or some ‘record’ (often the easily tampered-with computer
kind) is produced as unassailable evidence- despite the very high
probability of tampering (often while the employee was away on vacation
& could not detect the intrusion into their records), & the
circumstantial evidence of such fraudulence. The employee is either fired,
or disciplined so that they can later be fired for another similarly bogus
offense. Does the employee fight back? Pop culture would like us to
believe that truth will out in the end, but any lawyer or human/civil
rights advocate will tell you that 99 times out of 100 the whistleblower
loses. They either quietly move on & look for better employment, or
they fight- where they usually will lose as the company produces more
& more ‘evidence’ of the whistleblower’s misdeeds- mysteriously
‘found’ only after they exposed the management’s skullduggery. But
even if the employee battles on & wins after all legal appeals have
been drained- still the whistleblower loses as their life has been
shriveled & consumed by nothing but the need to vindicate themselves.
To what reward, then, is the whistleblower entitled to for making the
workplace or environment better? Over & again this scenario plays out.
But these episodes are invisible.
But the
visible evidence of corruption is manifest. We talk & discuss
endlessly & futilely the causes for dissension in the Middle East,
& scratch our heads as to why ‘those’ people cannot resolve their
longstanding issues, even as we in the West have centuries of looking the
other way & repeating the same scenarios I described above. Yes, there
may not be literal blood shed over the person who stands up to a corrupt
bureaucracy, or the little company that takes on a bigger company that
uses its power to unfairly do in the smaller company, or for the
steel-hearted employee who gets fired on principle, or the whistleblower
who suffers retribution & must decide whether to stay quiet as more
& more abuse piles up, or scrap it all & start again somewhere
else. But, there is a toll taken on society. It’s easy (& correct)
to lob blame against the worker who ‘goes postal’ & injures or
kills current or former co-workers. But, never- not once- have I heard
ANYONE question the system that pushes these people over the edge. Yes,
I’m sure that a small percentage of these folk would have had problems
anyway, but I’m equally convinced that were they not in a corrupt
system, & under the thumbs of corrupt superiors who use & abuse
people like they breathe, that most of these people would not end up
exploding- or more often imploding with physical problems brought on by
stress, or having a nervous breakdown. &- bottom-line- it is a very
unproductive thing to mistreat workers: a GOOD worker is a HAPPY worker!
Yet, the exploitation of individuals
& situations by the little gray folk in the corner who are the drones
that enable corruption to thrive is a problem I have rarely seen
addressed.
Perhaps
this is all easily explained by a lack of self-esteem in these people- I
doubt it’s that simple, though, because it’s not just the obvious
things. Growing up I knew a lot of people who committed all sorts of
terrible deeds- BUT, there was an explanation for why these people did the
things they did- these were people who had nothing- therefore had nothing
to lose in committing misdeeds. But what of the supervisor who was
stealing & whose actions brought about the circumstances which led to
the loss of employment for many? None of whom got their jobs back after
the supervisor’s exposure. Did they feel they had nothing to lose? Or
were they just a troubled person? Or, more likely, a power-hungry
narcissist who needed to control things? & of the people who doctor
records to make whistleblowers seem to be ‘malcontents’ or
‘troubled’ individuals. Well, in a few years all of them will probably
no longer be with that particular company- their efforts at brown-nosing
rewarded with dismissal, layoff, or harassment of their own. Or they will
have moved on after getting disgusted when the company turns their own
slime tactics against them. The net result being that the
whistleblower’s efforts & the efforts of the company to frame them
will have absolutely no lasting meaning- it will all have been for some
short-term ‘comfort’ for insecure individuals.
&,
if you think that the things I am describing don’t happen, or that
people have recourse- consider that most lawyers will only touch a case if
the publicity can benefit them, or if the evidence is so strongly against
the company that a legal victory is a certainty. The remaining 95% of
ethical individuals are screwed. Also, I have seen these tactics used over
& again to defeat & demean people. I am no
hyperbolic bleeding heart but the only word that does such actions justice
is ‘dehumanizing’. But, that’s par for the course in American
society- where we smugly proclaim ourselves the pinnacle of human
civilization- all the while countless millions still consider it a major
accomplishment of their lives to actually ‘own’ their own home- even
as they still pay annual taxes on it.
Personally,
I’m really tired of this endless rat race- your average American works
for years on end just to save money so they can go in debt to have the
basic comfort of shelter, all the while not being able to have any real
say in their existence. The replies come: be an entrepreneur! Yet most of
them fail because some corrupt individual(s) circumvent the market &
force the little guy (who often has a better product or idea) into
bankruptcy. I don’t have a solution myself- save that people should
consistently seek to undermine hegemonies wherever they are evident. I
know of no successful business or person whose success did not have some
stench of corruption oozing out from somewhere. After decades in this game
I have decided to try to alleviate my own fears for my, & my wife’s,
futures by seeking a career in civil service. Yes, I know- corruption
undoubtedly exists there, too. But the difference is that there are
immediate positives 1 can make on society by civil service. In all my
years, & in all my jobs, in private industry, I can honestly state
that there is not a single thing I ever did in any job that positively
affected society or any individual for more than a day or 2 after doing
it. &, at least there are more protections from corrupt individuals
for the little guy in civil service. To those who disbelieve that all I
can say is that the only thing worse & more corrupt than Big
Government is BIG BUSINESS! Isn’t THAT obvious?
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