Cja 324 - Personal Dilemma

Personal Dilemma

Stephanie Swalve

CJA 324

October 30, 2011

Ricky Thompson

In everyday life individuals are faced with dilemmas in the work place. I am currently employed at a convenience store where I live. I work with the same individual every night when we are closing up the store. There are some nights that the she would take some items from the store that they needed at home. Whether it would be a gallon of milk, a pack of smokes, a candy bar, and a case of beer, or whatever else that the individual though that they needed that they could not afford to pay for. The she and I had become really good friends so the she just assumed that I would not say anything to the manager because of the fact that we were really good friends. The stuff that she was taking wasn't valued that much. She was an excellent employee other wise except for the fact that she was taking from the company. To make this situation even more complicated I knew that she had very little money and that she had younger children at home that she was raising all by themselves with no help. The ethical dilemma that I had been faced with was whether or not to tell the manager of the store what was going on at night when we close the store down.

The alternative courses of action that I contemplated was to talk to her myself and to let her know that what she was doing was not right and that some day something will happen because you will get caught. Another course I thought of was just to let it go for a while to see if it got better or worse. The last course that I contemplated was to let the manager know what was going on and take the chance of losing a good friend.

I thought about it for a long time for like two weeks as I monitored items that the she was taking to see if they were taking more stuff or less stuff. After monitoring it for a while and that I had noticed that the she was taking more items than what she had taken before, I than soon realized that it was appropriate to let the manager of the store what was going on whether it cosseted me a friendship or not. I knew that it was morally right to turn the individual in, to stop the stealing from happening before it got really out of control and they started stealing cash from the register and other things that were high value.

The decision that I concluded within myself was to tell the manager what was going on even though it would cost me a friendship. I knew that this was the right decision from the start so that maybe the she would stop stealing period and to let her know that it was not alright to take things from the