Here are some interesting ethical questions to ponder. How would you react if you were offered a job position, but the only reason the job exists is because of an illness that was leading to mass panic? If you took the job, would you feel you were somehow profiting from other people’s pain?
I ask because yesterday, I had an interview with a company that needs more temporary workers to package flu medication for the swine flu outbreak. It’s a decent job, which is right up my alley for the skills I developed at my last position.
But I can’t help but have the thought that my good luck is coming at the cost of a lot of suffering by other people. It won’t stop me from taking the job; if nothing else, taking this position will help to make more medicine available to those who are sick, which is never a bad thing. It just makes me wish that there wasn’t a need for this position in the first place.
But now it’s time for another ethical question. Ths position is slated to last for five to seven weeks, UNLESS the swine flu proceeds to get worse. In that case, the position could be last for up to several months. In other words, the worse the swine flu becomes, the longer I get to work.
So here’s the ethical question: do I hope for the swine flu to end quickly, and with it, my temp job, or do I hope for the swine flu to last for a long time and more people to become sick, allowing me to work more? I think it would be much better for the world in general (and Mexico’s tourist bureau in particular) for this pandemic to end soon, which is what I hope happens, and soon. But still, there is a small part of me that hopes the flu at least appears to be getting worse for a little while longer, at least long enough to get the company I’m going to working with to extend my contract for a few more months.
So anyway, that’s what has been going on with me; a potential temp job and something of an ethical dilemma.
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