Moral Conflicts

The biggest challenge, I have faced on job is to deal with people - people who are not very literate, have low IQ, come from low income backgrounds and many times earn on daily basis.
So what are the challenges?

1. First and foremost is to know whether a person is actually idiot or just acting idiot to gain attention or sympathy. There are some who ask about each and everything all the time. Though they have been doing the same thing for a fairly long time. But they have the habit of just asking. It may also happen in case if the person has made some mistake. He knows he has so he acts idiotic to show he doesn't know. This brings up the correlated second challenge.

2. To know when someone is lying. How do you know if a person is telling the truth or not when he asks for a leeway on the pretext of some death in family or a court case or he being stuck in a traffic jam. Experience - some own and some of the others, tells that for every genuine case there are 10 fakers who have killed all their living relatives at some point or the other. Taking a morally correct path and accept the excuse every time may lead to you being labeled as "Soft" and may affect work in some cases. Sticking to "rules" may be considered rude and may not be acceptable to conscious. so how do you maintain the balance??

3. Then comes the 3rd case - When someone commits a mistake. Any mistake in my present line of work should be and are generally taken up seriously as it can take a real disastrous turn - take the case of recent fire in Jaipur. So strict action is sometimes taken against non-employee workers and drivers committing mistakes. The strict action, many times according to "rules", sometimes result in their loss of wages for the day. And hence comes the moral dilemma. Mistakes can be made by anyone but it can be a difference between life and death considering the sensitive work. So to punish and affect his earnings so that learns never to repeat it or let him go this time?

A special case of the above moral conflict comes when the person realizing his mistake, comes, pleads to you and some times even try and touch your feet. Mind you the person begging forgiveness is 10, 20, 30 years elder to you. what to do at this time? Even if you want, it is very tough to follow rules.
You know that the guy is doing it deliberately - to influence you, to soften you up but the oddity of the situation leaves you confused.

There are no easy answers and may be it is experience which gives the answers.


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