I have a category on this blog titled Doing the Right Thing in a not-so-subtle homage to the similarly named Spike Lee film. In it I tag posts that have to do with making good moral decisions in your creative and Day Job work. Recently I had to make one of those decisions.
Quick flashback: Throughout my twenties, I was never in a good place with money. I had enormous student loans, little savings, and most of the jobs I had either didn’t quite pay enough to let me live on my own, or left me scrambling to make ends meet every month. I used to take on a LOT of side gigs to bring in extra cash: selling used books on Amazon, Craiglist gigs helping people move, weekends handing out cheap prizes at the racetrack, and other random stuff. Even when I found full-time work as an elementary school secretary I still kept my old weekend gig feeding horses on a farm until the work ran out because I knew I could use the money.
The short version is, I used to take on any work I could to make an extra buck.
In the past few years my mindset about earning money’s changed, partly because I’m completely out of debt (thank God!), but partly because a few years ago I spent a hellish week at my old online test-grading job just because the opportunity came up. I was sick of the work, didn’t really need the money, and fell behind on my creative work as a result. There wasn’t any real reason for me to take the job, but I did anyway, just because picking up side gigs was an old habit.
The other experience that made me question my relationship with money was spending almost a year working for a company whose owners routinely broke overtime and tax laws while treating their employees like dirt. Seeing the way they behaved—and knowing that I was indirectly enabling their behavior by working there—made me realize how shitty it is to support questionable causes just because they’re bringing you in a paycheck.
That brings me to what happened last month. The odds of anyone involved with the incident seeing this post are slim, but just in case, and for professional integrity, I’ve decided to keep the details vague.
I Got Offered a Questionable Editing Job
As you probably know, my main side hustle is picking up editing gigs—novels, short stories, academic manuscripts, cover letters, resumes, and whatever people need checked. A few weeks ago I got a lead on someone who might have some work for me—like, good work, and a lot of it. The person seemed like a good networking contact to have, and while a few red flags come up, none of them seemed to involve the actual editing work they’d be asking me for.
Yeah, about those red flags—the contact person was interested in Conspiracy Theories. Not the QAnon garbage or the lies about election fraud that led to the riots and travesty at the capital last week, but older Conspiracy Theories I’d heard before and laughed off.
It’s the kind of thing that’s easy to dismiss when you’re looking for a job. Though I felt a little weird about the situation, I decided to check out the editing opportunity and brush off the conspiracy stuff as best I could.
The job the contact person wanted turned out to be very short and not what I thought it was at all—it was related to one of the Conspiracy Theories. Fortunately it wasn’t a political Conspiracy Theory, but rather a more harmless one that I won’t mention here. Still, in the process of taking the job I became aware of other, more troubling Conspiracy Theories the person believed in that I felt less comfortable with. By the end, I had a pretty bad taste in my mouth.
I felt pretty stupid when I realized what I’d gotten into, but I’d already said yes to the job and didn’t feel right backing out. I did the work, took the payment, then vowed to never work for the person again.
I made this vow because doing work that perpetuated an untrue Conspiracy Theory—even a relatively harmless one—felt wrong to me. I didn’t know how my work would be used, and the idea that it could spread incorrect information and mislead people made me uncomfortable, even if my role in it was very small.
Worse, though, was the thought that the small project I’d worked on could serve as a gateway to other, more dangerous Conspiracy Theories and lead people to more dangerous misinformation.
That’s why I decided not to work with this person again, even if they offer me a non-Conspiracy Theory-related gig in the future. And I feel really good about that decision.
In Your Day Job and Creative Work Life, Moral Decisions Are Worth Considering
Think back to a time when the place you worked did something questionable. How did you feel about it? Did you feel comfortable speaking up? Did the fact that the person or company was paying you affect your decision?
We all need money to pay our bills, but it’s worth considering the trade-off that occurs when we associate ourselves with questionable practices to get that money. If you find yourself in a position like this, ask yourself a few questions:
- How bad is the thing I’m associating myself with? How much guilt will I feel as a result?
- Is this something I’m able to speak to my supervisor about? Or, can I talk to someone else within the company or an outside group like the Department of Labor?
- If I’m not able to fix the problem, do I feel comfortable staying at a job where this thing I’m not comfortable with is going on? Can I find some other way to earn money, even if it takes a few months or years to secure it?
Final Thoughts
America saw a lot of people do the right thing in the days after the riots at the US capital, when multiple members of the Trump administration turned in their resignations and the PGA Tour, Deutsche Bank, and even the State of New York cut business ties with Trump. They didn’t feel comfortable associating themselves with an administration that aided and abetted an attack on the US Capital—so they walked away.
Maybe you’re in a position where you’re hard up for cash, like I was in my twenties. If so, I get it—in these situations you might have to compromise and continue associating with the bad thing because you need the money. And that’s OK.
For everyone else, though, I hope you consider the tradeoff of doing something questionable for a paycheck, because in many ways, doing the right thing is more important than earning an extra buck.