I have a problem with my job. Yeah, like that’s a surprise. I really have found myself in an unpleasant situation though.
One of our clients is about to add pieces of wood from the RMS Titanic to the retail inventory. When ships arrived at the scene of the wreck there were pieces of wood from the Titanic floating in the water. Not only did these ships pick up the survivors they also picked up quite a bit of this wood. Small chips of this wood has been sold as souvenirs of the wreck. Now I am expected to sell some of those wood chips.
I don’t like this situation at all and have made this known to management. I didn’t go in with both guns blazing and raising hell when I expressed my opinion about this. I explained myself in a calm manner and asked that I be excused from having to sell these items. I first learned these items were being added to the inventory almost two weeks ago and I took almost two weeks to think about it and come to terms with how I feel about it. On Friday I made my opinion known and now I’m waiting for an answer. In today’s job market I’m taking a big chance making this stand.
Understand I don’t feel this way because the items come from the RMS Titanic. The items could come from any shipwreck where lives were lost. When a shipwreck takes lives with it I believe the final resting place of the ship becomes the final resting place of the people that died. To me this is a moral issue and one that I just can’t take lightly.
I used two examples in my presentation to management:
- If I purchased land and found that in the past it had been used as a burial site I wouldn’t tear it up and sell pieces of the items found there are souvenirs. I alluded to Native American burial mounds to make my point.
- I pointed out that this was a moral issue with me and compared it to asking somebody of a strong Christian faith to sell copies of Anton LeVay’s books.
We’ll see how this goes.
