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According to the Oxford dictionary, a dilemma states to be a situation in which an individual must choose between two alternative, particularly when either choice may result in undesirable consequences. .
As I have done a number of jobs while in India, I have faced an ethical dilemma more than once. But the one which was most typical, involved a case of theft. I was working in a very large book store in South Delhi as a cashier. I was very grateful to the manager as not only was he a nice person to work under, but he had selected me for the job without me having any cash experience, Along with the job at the till, I also had to update inventory logs. During the course of the job, some of my office colleagues turned into general friends and we all started spending a lot of time together on as well as off the job. .
Two weeks into the job, this office colleague who was also a pretty close friend of mine by then, approached me with a proposition. He said that he would smuggle out stationary like pens, folders, files and other items and I would only have to overlook missing items in the inventory logs. I was completely appalled as theft goes against my moral values. Also, the organization had been good to me and thus it would be a breach of good faith if I would overlook such an act.
I tried reasoning out with my colleague that since we were being paid reasonably well by the organization, there was actually no reason to commit such a dishonest and manipulative act. But since he was not convinced, I weighed the other alternative courses of action I could take. I could report the incident to the manager which would most certainly cause my colleague to lose his job, but that would completely antagonize his attitude towards me as well as alienate me from the rest of my office colleagues. The other option I could take was to increase vigil and ensure that inventory checks were carried out vigorously so that there was very little probability of missing items going undetected.
