Why Is It So Hard To Do The Right Thing?

I mean, seriously. There is right and there is wrong. And it's usually pretty clear which is which. So why is it so difficult for so many people to grasp that concept?

For example, we had placed a bid on a house recently. But then the owner of the realty company that had listed the house made a deal with a friend of his. Since the realtor can't accept a lower bid after ours, they backdated the offer to three days before our bid. Now, this is difficult to prove, but they basically admitted to doing it. And this company had actually gotten in trouble for doing this about a year ago, when one of the owners lost his realty license. But since it's a bank-owned property and the bank is getting their money, nobody really cares.

And, truthfully, I don't care any more. I don't want to purchase a house from a company that does business like that. And we have already moved on to bidding on another house. But I am a little frustrated that it's such an unethical practice and they have no problem doing it. And I've no doubt they will continue to do it, with no guilt.

It bothers me when people know they are doing wrong and they still do it.

We have a customer who has been coming in to our store pretty much every day for the last 5 years. A soda is $1.25. He tries to toss a dollar at me and run every time. Every time. Usually when I have a million other customers to distract me. And when I call him on it, he says--every time--"I thought it was a dollar. It used to be a dollar." (It has always been $1.25.) But even as he says it, he has this look on his face like, "Damn it. You caught me."

Another customer tries to keep you talking at the register and then tell you the wrong price of something. (I suppose he thinks, even though it's marked $6, if he says it's $1 and he's talking about something else, you might ring up $1.) When you say, "That's marked $6." He decides he doesn't need it, after all. Sure, that could be an honest mistake... If it didn't happen 5 times a week.

When I was an employment recruiter, people lied on their resumes all the time. They lied about education, mostly. (Stupid, because it's so easy to verify.) And they lied about work experience. Most of the time, if someone said they "managed" something or were "in charge" of something, they weren't.

And 99% of the time, people lied about why they left their old job. Now, I'm a good interviewer, so I usually got to the truth. "There was no opportunity for advancement." was usually "I didn't really want to learn new processes/skills/take on new responsibilities." "It was not a very professional environment." was usually "I got into an argument with my manager and quit/was fired." And "I was laid off" was 100% of the time "fired."

Maybe it's not known univerally, but every recruiter can tell you: Banks don't lay off tellers. Restaurants don't lay off servers. There's usually enough attrition in those jobs that they don't have to. Usually, tellers and servers quit or they are fired. And the reasons that they are fired are all bad.

Before I worked for myself, I was always amazed at how much effort my coworkers would expend to keep from working. Usually, they worked harder to get out of working than they would have to just work. What is the point to that? Is it so much fun to get paid for doing nothing that you're willing to work twice as hard so you don't have to do what you should be doing?

And don't even get me started on the way some people treat others. Look, it's something you should have learned in Kindergarten--"Treat others the way you would want to be treated." But it's pretty obvious most people don't learn that. Unless most people want to be treated like crap.

I have no answers for you. I find that doing the right thing is usually easier than doing the wrong thing anyway, so I have no idea why people choose to do wrong. If you have any insight, I'd be glad to hear it.