A Foundation of Truth

16There are six things which the LORD hates, yes, seven which are an abomination to Him:
17Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
18A heart that devises wicked plans, feet that run rapidly to evil,
19A false witness who utters lies, and one who spreads strife among brothers.
Proverbs 6 NASB

"When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost."
Billy Graham

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Graduate school was expensive. To earn my way, I worked at a Wal-Mart warehouse unloading trailers and as a substitute teacher at a nearby school district. I had worked as a teenager and through college at a Wal-Mart store and enjoyed it. It was like a big family that struggled together. I was successful and respected.

The warehouse came as a shock. The wage was extremely competitive for unskilled labor and I soon found out why. Employees were held to a strict production quota -- one so high that it was utterly impossible to keep up without cheating.

Everyone cheated on Production. Every single day. There was simply no way to keep up without cheating -- even if you worked through lunch, breaks, and early and late off-the-clock (I tried). It could not be done.

Each job in the warehouse had its own unique forms of cheating. Ideally, one wanted a way that could not be audited and discovered with ease. There were various truly ingenious forms of accounting slight-of-hand, or as some people quietly called it "creative mathematics".

Everyone knew about it, including management. Most of Wal-Mart's managers came from the bottom ranks, so all of the supervisors had cheated on Production themselves. Anyway, you didn't need to have done it yourself to be aware of the massive fraud going on. If one million cases come into a warehouse and two million are processes, then that means that a lot of people along the way are padding their numbers.

Management kept quiet. After all, other warehouses had extensive cheating (as transfers asserted) and the warehouse's managers had to complete with the fake numbers of other warehouse managers. So everyone lied all the way up to corporate HQ in Bentonville.

Here's the thing: every employee, every single day, walked into that warehouse with one thought on his mind "How can I most effectively lie today?"

When that becomes one's primary motivation, a workplace culture turns into something profoundly ugly.

Over my three years there, I noticed a change in people. I came in with a batch of new employees. Very few remained by the time that I left. Those that did had become utterly convinced that no cheating occured whatsoever. In their minds, they could break down a pallet of 100 cases, mark down 200 on their Production sheet, and never process what they had just done.

They had placed a block in their own minds that prevented them from recognizing the immorality of their actions.

There were some new hires who refused to buy into this system. They marked down their Production honestly. And one by one, they were fired.

I hated working at the warehouse. But...I stayed. I needed the money. If I had left for another place (and boy, did I look), I would have had to drop out of graduate school. Then I would be stuck in a low-wage job for the rest of my life, and that would be unacceptable. So I cheated on production. Every day.

After I left the warehouse, I noticed a change in myself. I would lie -- casually -- when I didn't need to. I lied for momentary advantage, or worse -- for no reason at all.

It took me a long time to get Wal-Mart out of my head and patterns of behavior.

In the movie Excalibur, King Arthur asks Merlin what is the greatest virtue. Merlin replied, "Truth! When a man lies he murders some part of the world." Indeed. Truth is the foundation of morality. Without truth, you have nothing at all.