Honesty Is Not the Best Policy?

Yes , the first post is something counter-intuitive to what most of us have been brought up to follow.  The whole “Honesty Is Best” policy that our parents, since our coming into this world, have shoved and shoved some more upon us has become a washed up, has been of moral fiber.

I suppose the start of my shifting view of the good ol’ rule began approximately 3 years ago when I was utilizing a tuition assistance program that my employer offered. The criteria of this plan was simple… Submit the course information, choose if it applies to your job, get a good grade and BAM!  Said course is paid for.

Now hopefully you caught the main caveat from the above excerpt but if you didn’t it was the  “applies to your job” portion of the program that is cause for this post.  I was honest when filling out this option for the request of tuition assistance.  BIG MISTAKE!

Lets fast forward to year end of when I received my associates degree in Business Administration (which was not applicable to my position/title with my employer). Hey looky here its also tax time for the year so let me go ahead and get a start on this with my handy dandy turbo tax software.  Ok, how much money can I expect Uncle Sam to give me back?  SCORE!  He is giving me five thous… wait … the text is in red and a minus sign in front of it?  Insert series of expletives … I owe 5800.00 to the government.  How can this be?  So I made the sequence of expected calls to the IRS and the tuition assistance program and lo and behold since I selected does not apply to my current position I have to pay all the taxes on my tuition.  My inquiring mind went to work asking around to other coworkers that have made use of this program and all of them tell me to never , ever select that the courses “do not apply to your position”.

So how was honesty the best policy in that situation??

Ok thats one example.. but lets look at another.

I work with a large customer base from all over the country in my job and because of that I have to adapt from client to client.  However I get more complaints about me to my supervisor because I’m honest with the customers and don’t lie to them just to appease them and get them off my phone like most of my coworkers.  If you call me and your crap is broke I’m going to tell you its broke.  It’s not that I lack tact in relaying the bad news it is just that people I find just want to be lied to and when you challenge  that with old fashioned honesty you get reprimanded for it.

I end with a quote from Billy Bob Thorton from School for Scoundrels.  “Lie, Lie and Lie Some More”