4 ms·

> 7. If they cheat at small things, they will cheat at big things. This is old adage bullshit. It’s simple enough to make sense intuitively, there are similar

> 7. If they cheat at small things, they will cheat at big things. This is old adage bullshit. It’s simple enough to make sense intuitively, there are similar sayings in almost every culture, so it must be true, right ? Except in practice people don’t work that way. Some might cheat at small and big big things, but most of us still apply different principle to different things. Try to apply it to yourself: if a coworker left their desk unintended you could enjoy yourself messing with their system settings. If on top of that they left their bank account unintended you wouldn’t shuffle their savings options and hide their money in obscure accounts. In a way, people deeply believing this are super scary to me. Do they work see their own little lies as an effect of an internal broken moral system ?

ValentineC 4y ago
> Except in practice people don’t work that way. Some might cheat at small and big big things, but most of us still apply different principle to different things. This just came to mind: how would the same point work out for people that wouldn't mind buying an item that's obviously mispriced, or credit card rewards terms that weren't implemented properly? Or pirating when one's a software developer? I personally wouldn't mind hitting a large public company for all I've got, but I wouldn't touch a small business that's just trying to feed themselves.
mattmanser 4y ago
Messing with someone is not cheating. Cheating at golf is cheating.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  But cheating at golf also stays that, just cheating at golf. My analogy was clunky, but the author doesn’t expand on anything that happens besides that golf story. The guy that moved the ball might as well be extremely ethical in his business deals, we have no idea.
  - gwd 4y ago
    On the contrary; the guy who cheated at golf later robbed his business partner: > I recently heard a man complaining about a bad business deal. His partner had robbed him, and he should have known better. The story about golf is the reason, in retrospect, why the man who was robbed said he "should have known better".
D13Fd 4y ago
Not a great analogy. It’s more like if you steal their lunch you are more likely to steal money out of their wallet if you run short. Or, if you’ll lie on an expense report, you are more likely to falsely shift the blame to them when the chips are down. It’s not a foregone conclusion, but there is a correlation.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  But if you ever had your lunch stolen at work, did you also end up with your money stolen ? We hear about petty “I put my name on that drink in the fridge and someone drank it” stories relatively frequently. Hell, I’ve witnessed people taking a beer from the fridge with someone’s sticker on it, and shrug it off with “I’ll bring some replacement later” (an no, they don’t) But these people aren’t stealing from their coworker’s wallets, at least I never heard that happening at any of my workplaces. PS: we want there to be a correlation, because it would be really convenient. As in the article, it would help avoid heavy loses by looking at simple signs. I see the impulse, but the world isn’t just that simple.
  - gwd 4y ago
    > Hell, I’ve witnessed people taking a beer from the fridge with someone’s sticker on it, and shrug it off with “I’ll bring some replacement later” (an no, they don’t) If I saw someone do that I would be livid. I would immediately stop what I was doing, say "I can't believe you just did that", and be extremely wary of that person afterwards. The only exception would be if I knew that the two people were good friends; and then a minimum level of courtesy would be to tell your friend later that you took one of their beers.

ValentineC 4y ago

> Except in practice people don’t work that way. Some might cheat at small and big big things, but most of us still apply different principle to different things. This just came to mind: how would the same point work out for people that wouldn't mind buying an item that's obviously mispriced, or credit card rewards terms that weren't implemented properly? Or pirating when one's a software developer? I personally wouldn't mind hitting a large public company for all I've got, but I wouldn't touch a small business that's just trying to feed themselves.

mattmanser 4y ago

Messing with someone is not cheating. Cheating at golf is cheating.

makeitdouble 4y ago
But cheating at golf also stays that, just cheating at golf. My analogy was clunky, but the author doesn’t expand on anything that happens besides that golf story. The guy that moved the ball might as well be extremely ethical in his business deals, we have no idea.
- gwd 4y ago
  On the contrary; the guy who cheated at golf later robbed his business partner: > I recently heard a man complaining about a bad business deal. His partner had robbed him, and he should have known better. The story about golf is the reason, in retrospect, why the man who was robbed said he "should have known better".

D13Fd 4y ago

Not a great analogy. It’s more like if you steal their lunch you are more likely to steal money out of their wallet if you run short. Or, if you’ll lie on an expense report, you are more likely to falsely shift the blame to them when the chips are down. It’s not a foregone conclusion, but there is a correlation.

makeitdouble 4y ago
But if you ever had your lunch stolen at work, did you also end up with your money stolen ? We hear about petty “I put my name on that drink in the fridge and someone drank it” stories relatively frequently. Hell, I’ve witnessed people taking a beer from the fridge with someone’s sticker on it, and shrug it off with “I’ll bring some replacement later” (an no, they don’t) But these people aren’t stealing from their coworker’s wallets, at least I never heard that happening at any of my workplaces. PS: we want there to be a correlation, because it would be really convenient. As in the article, it would help avoid heavy loses by looking at simple signs. I see the impulse, but the world isn’t just that simple.
- gwd 4y ago
  > Hell, I’ve witnessed people taking a beer from the fridge with someone’s sticker on it, and shrug it off with “I’ll bring some replacement later” (an no, they don’t) If I saw someone do that I would be livid. I would immediately stop what I was doing, say "I can't believe you just did that", and be extremely wary of that person afterwards. The only exception would be if I knew that the two people were good friends; and then a minimum level of courtesy would be to tell your friend later that you took one of their beers.