This lady graduated from a prestigious university but she was told that no company would want to hire her because of one thing she took for granted.
Ethics are one of the important qualities a person must have. It is beyond one’s status or wealth. No one will trust you if you do not have ethics even if you have an impressive social status and educational background.
According to Good Times, a girl who had just finished her high school went to France to further her studies 12 years ago. The first time she arrived in the country, she noticed that all tickets for public transportation were sold at the self-service machines. She also noticed that there were no machines to validate the ticket nor ticket inspectors walking around to check tickets.
There might be a few ticket inspections but they were really random and rare. So, she calculated the probability of her getting caught without a valid ticket and figured out that the odds of getting caught were only three out of 10,000 times.
Realizing how much money she could save by not buying tickets and thinking that she would never get caught if she did so, the girl then started to use public transportation without buying a ticket beforehand
“I’m a student and if I can save money by not buying tickets, why not? No one will ever caught me anyway,” the girl thought to herself.
Four years later, the girl finally graduated with flying colors from her prestigious university. With her excellent results, she was confident that job offers would start pouring in.
She then went to several large companies to send in her resume in hope to land her dream job. However, it turned out that the companies were not impressed and rejected her application a few days after she sent her application.
After several rejections, she thought that these companies may have rejected her for discriminatory reasons. Unsatisfied with her unsuccessful applications, she then confronted the manager of the company to ask for the real reason for her being rejected by the company.
To her surprise, the manager’s answer gave her an unexpected answer.
“Miss, we do not discriminate against you. On the contrary, we really appreciate your interest to work with us and frankly, we are very impressed with your educational background and academic achievement. Based on your resume alone, you are the exact person we are looking for the position,” the manager replied.
“If that so, then why did you reject me,” the girl asked.
“Because from the background check we did on you, we find out that you have three outstanding fines of failure to present ticket on public transports.”
The girl was surprised with the manager’s reply.
However, she thought that reason was nothing for the company to reject her application
“I’m not denying what you have just said but this trivial matter is not related to my job application at all. How could you reject me based on my failure to buy tickets for public transports?”
“Because from the background check we did on you, we find out that you have three outstanding fines of failure to present ticket on public transports.”
The girl was surprised with the manager’s reply.
However, she thought that reason was nothing for the company to reject her application
“I’m not denying what you have just said but this trivial matter is not related to my job application at all. How could you reject me based on my failure to buy tickets for public transports?”
“Trivial? We do not think that this matter is a trivial thing. At first, we noticed that your first fine was when you first came to this country. So, we let it go thinking that you were not familiar with the ticketing system yet. However, we find out that you continued to do so after that in more than two occasions.”
“I just did not have money at that time.”
“No, young lady. We do not accept such manner in our company. I am sure you have never paid for tickets before.”
The girl was not satisfied with the manager’s reply. “But you do not necessarily reject me for that reason. Is there anything that I could do to fix it and still get a job here?”
“No, I’m afraid not. It shows to us two things. First, you do not respect the rules. You found a loophole in the system and yet you deliberately broke the law.”
“Second, you have shown to us that you cannot be trusted. While most of our jobs require a high discretion to protect the company’s privacy and rights, what would happen if we were to give authority to a person like you who would find it okay to abuse your power and knowledge about the company for your own benefit?”
“So, we cannot accept your application. In fact, no companies in this country will hire you. Not even the entire Europe, if I may say,” the manager said firmly
At that moment, the girl realized the consequences of the thing she thought trivial.
The manager then further said: “Morality can always supplement the lack of intelligence but intelligence can never justify one’s lack in ethics.”
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