Sunday June 7th 2009 For the Love Of Money

How much does what you do for a living reflect your character? Are you doing something that you don’t morally agree with just to make money? If you are faced with the task of doing something that you don’t morally agree with in order to stay employed would you? As I sit here and type these words out on this page I can say that I was only once asked to do something that did not sit well with me.

Here I was this 15 year old boy working at this well known breakfast restaurant chain bussing tables for a summer job. I have always been one with a good work ethic so it did not take long for me to move up in the ranks. With in a few weeks I had moved from the cute lil boy that worked in the back washing dishes to head busboy. The title didn’t mean much, there were only about 12 of us but it came with a raise and a bit of authority which meant I was never washing dishes again! Even though I had gain some power my thirst did not stop there, before long I had moved to the kitchen as a junior cook, even though I was well under age to be there and very immature.
Well as the story goes, one day I was told to empty some contents from a can into smaller containers for storage. Not knowing what I know now about restaurant inventory control, and portions I emptied the can into the containers and chucked the can into the trash, then report back to my work station. The new owner; some greasy older Arab dude, came thru the work station and spotted the can at the bottom of the trash can fish it out of the bottom and requested the person who did the prepping to step forward.
Even at the age of 15 I wasn’t afraid of anything I stepped up and owned what I had done. Looking at the can with about 1/8 of the food still in it he exclaimed that what was inside needed to be scraped out and put into the containers with the rest of it. To make a long story short, I didn’t lose my job that day for not putting that food in the containers but it went against what I thought was right so I didn’t do it. I hid the can in a different trash can and made sure I took the trash out. LOL!