CORPORATE DISTORTION

Wisdom Nugget: "Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech."

The shop keeper who uses false weights and measures or a poor quality of material or workmanship to deceive the public is as guilty of sin as the thief who robbed a bank. He's trying to get something more than a legitimate return for his product. He hopes to get an extra something for nothing. And this is a common thing today. People stretch the truth or lie about their products today. The greatest commercial sin today I think, is the practice of false advertising (corporate lying). The consumer is led to believe that the product will make their skin smoother, make him lose weight, make her hair longer or dye her hair permanently. In many cases these statements used in advertising is a blatant lie. The manufacturers know the product will do little or none of the things they said it will do but they go ahead to rob people of their money, rest of mind, happiness and sometimes even their health. Most companies have attained whatever they have today by deception, these are the days of corporate lying. This is the age of supposedly respectable and responsible people - lawyers, business owners, union leaders, government officials, university professors, etc, lying to us without batting an eye.

Think of the tremendous benefit that would come to the public if each company would honestly tell the truth about their product and honestly seek to serve the consumer's real needs. The effect of this would be literally astounding.

A store manager hears his clerk tell a customer, "No, ma'am, we haven't had any for a while, and it doesn't look as if we'll be getting any soon." Horrified, the manager came running over to the customer and said, "Of course we'll have some soon. We placed an order last week." Then the manager drew the clerk aside. "Never," he snarled, "Never, never say we're out of anything - say we've got it on order and its coming. Now, what was it she wanted?""Rain," replied the clerk. Hilarious isn't it? That is what most business men are today. They make a fool of themselves trying to make money. But they seem to forget that with time and experience the consumers will discover what a lie their services and products are and stop doing business with them. It's a ripple effect. One consumer will pass the message to others about what the product really is and with time, no one will be knocking at your door anymore.

From our text, if you want your business to see good days ahead, then keep your tongue from evil and lips off deceitful speech. You cannot lie to your customers and expect God to bless your business. He's not that kind of God. Put your honest best into your business, advertise your best and when your customers do business with you and see that you were honest with them, they'll come back again, and they'll be bringing someone else along. If your products have side effects, be honest about the side effect, if it has an expiration date; make it available for your consumers. It is better they acquire it with that knowledge than a false one. They'll never come back to you when they find out you lied. In fact, they'll spread your falsehood and that'll create a path that'll lead to the end of your business. Dorothy Allison said in Bastards out of Carolina - "Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies."

Young people today are learning to steal and lie in an immensely organised fashion. Not only are they stealing articles by the thousands from stores, shops, schools, and even churches, but they regularly organise an intricate system of cheating on tests and exams. It is a very big problem in our society today: cheating. Because it's generally looked on without too much alarm, this practice is really growing at an unprecedented rate. What the young people may not have been told is that cheating is taking a score or grade illegally. It's stealing or lying about one's base of knowledge being covered in a test or an exam. But students do it all the time. They find a way around tests, cheat, and then lie about what they really know. We really should start a move of change in our society today and call a lie what it is, a lie.

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