I will soon be doing work experience with a small company for a month. I will not be paid, but I have been offered petty cash every day to buy lunch. Is it ethical to bring lunch from home each day (for which I would not pay) and save the money intended for my lunch to fund my visit to Africa, where I will be helping deprived children?
Of course, without the charade of “work experience”, you would not need to be facing this dilemma at all. Work experience so often turns out to be most suitable for those proceeding to a creative-writing course. Why? Because often it focuses on finding ways to make your various office experiences: photocopying; fetching coffee; fetching more coffee because you bungled everyone’s orders the first time; trying to conceal the fact that you got the placement only because the boss is your uncle; snitching to your uncle what his staff think of him; surfing internet sites banned by your parents at home — all sound, on your university application, like a series of life-changing insights that have helped to crystallise your thoughts on your future career (possibly, that you’ll be moving to a beach in Hawaii the minute you graduate).
Not only does it seem unethical to pocket lunch money that a company has coughed up to make your working day feel less grim but, frankly, it is not the smartest way to strike up a trusting relationship with a company that one day, you may hope, will employ you. Let’s recap: you plan for your parents to provide your lunch, and your temporary bosses to pay for a second lunch, with you keeping all profits on the deal. There are, of course, careers for which such small-time racketeering would be handy preparation. At least, there were until Enron got busted.
FACING A DILEMMA?
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E-mail: modernmorals@thetimes.co.uk