Math Is Fun Forum

RealEstateBroker

Member

Registered: 2006-06-01

Posts: 45

Ethical Businessman

A businessman goes to his minister and says:

"I need guidance on a matter of ethics. My company received a check today for $10,000, which we don't have coming to us. It was sent by mistake. The company which sent it is a big corporation. If we cash the check, no one there will realize it, and we can easily get away with it.

I want to do the right thing, but I am in a cash crunch right now, and desperately need any funds I can lay my hands on. I need you to tell me what the ethical thing to do is in this situation: Should I tell my partner and split it with him; or should I not mention anything, and just keep the whole thing for myself?

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Love is what matters most!

justlookingforthemoment

Moderator

Registered: 2005-05-26

Posts: 2,161

Re: Ethical Businessman

Um... is this a joke?

[Hehe, whoops, I misread the whole thing and thought you were talking about something different unrelated to the joke at the end. Excuse me while I go and dunk my head in a bucket of water.]

Last edited by justlookingforthemoment (2006-06-03 14:26:48)

Ricky

Moderator

Registered: 2005-12-04

Posts: 3,791

Re: Ethical Businessman

Hah!  Good one.

The normal question would be, "Should I keep the check or should I give it back to the company?"

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"In the real world, this would be a problem.  But in mathematics, we can just define a place where this problem doesn't exist.  So we'll go ahead and do that now..."

MathsIsFun

Administrator

Registered: 2005-01-21

Posts: 7,713

Re: Ethical Businessman

On a true note: a guy joined a large (20,000 employeee) company I once worked for, but quit after a few weeks. He came round to my place and asked me to return the company coat he had been issued with.

I tried to return it to stores, but they said it would be too complicated to receive goods like that - they didn't want to do the paperwork for just one coat. Weird world.

And another story about that same stores: another co-worker broke one of the laces on his boots, so went to stores to get a replacement. They said "the minimum issue is 100 pairs of shoe laces, or we could give you a brand new pair of boots". He opted for the shoe laces. You should have seen our office - no one used string for a year, we used shoe laces! Shoe laces holding up plants, shoe laces on boxes, shoe laces everywhere!

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"The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God ..."  - Leon M. Lederman

mikau

Member

Registered: 2005-08-22

Posts: 1,504

Re: Ethical Businessman

did you floss your teeth with them?

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A logarithm is just a misspelled algorithm.

MathsIsFun

Administrator

Registered: 2005-01-21

Posts: 7,713

Re: Ethical Businessman

did you floss your teeth with them?

Only old Gap-Tooth ...

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"The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God ..."  - Leon M. Lederman