Protest misses yuletide target

Every Christmas, the company I work for has a food drive including 50/50 draws, silent auctions, bake sales and the like. They match money raised by employees dollar-for-dollar. While this is an excellent contribution to the less fortunate, I refuse to participate. It goes against my ethics to support a company that relies heavily on contract work, loves to hire new immigrants who work for free and gets rid of people as soon as they are redundant. Am I wrong boycotting something beneficial, in order to stand up for what I believe in? Yeah, you sure are. For three reasons. First, and most obviously, by not participating in the food drive, you aren’t punishing the company — you’re penalizing the hungry, would-be recipients of your withheld largesse. Clearly, you are angry with your employer, perhaps for good reason. But directing that wrath at the food drive is like getting mad at your 18-year-old son, then slapping your 6-year-old daughter.

Because the workplace irritants are bigger than you, you’re focusing your anger on the weak sibling — even though the food drive has nothing whatsoever to do with issues that upset you. To mix metaphors, that’s like getting mad at work, coming home and kicking the cat.

Second, your argument seems to be that, because your company is in many ways a poor employer, nothing it does can ever be any good. Followed to its logical conclusion, that argument sets the ethical bar at a level few of us can ever get over (or under, if we’re talking limbo rather than high jump).

Few of us, individually or corporately, are perfect, yet many of us strive to do a few good things in the midst of otherwise mediocre ethical lives. By your standards, however, that good would count for nothing; unless every action is noble, nothing can be noble. The logical conclusion would be that there’s no point even trying — no matter what we do, it counts for nothing.

If every employee in your company, or even most of them, responded like you, the company’s justified response would be, “To hell with it. What’s the point even trying?” It’s hard to see how anyone gains by that.

Finally, it’s worth noting that your little protest/hissy-fit is, I guarantee, 100 per cent ineffective. Do you honestly believe the company, especially one that behaves as you describe, gives a flying fig whether you support a food drive? If your boss hears about your parsimony, do you think he says “Wow, we really need to do something about the way we treat immigrants?” If so, let me set you straight. If word finds its way upstairs about your response, the conclusion will be this: “What a jerk!”

In the end, your response is little more than cheap self-righteousness. It costs nothing, is directed at the wrong victims and effects zero change in the workplace; indeed, all it accomplishes is allowing you to feel ethically superior to those work-for-free immigrants who baked cookies, ran auctions and organized raffles to do something nice before the festive season.

I hope the company doesn’t match your contribution. Zero + zero = zero. Send your questions to star.ethics@yahoo.ca