The body of this article is what an employee of a regional office of a multinational marketing service company told me about how he handled the unethical demands of his general manager. He had been an employee for approximately four years before he decided he had to resign. The names of those involved have been withheld at his request and that of his former employer. His story is a tale of creeping ethical compromise:

"I have to start out by saying that when I began working for this guy [the general manager], I had stepped up my lifestyle-a new apartment with a status address, collector furniture, that sort of thing. In a way, I helped tighten the vice-grip this guy would have on me because I drained most of my spare cash. More than ever, I needed my job.

'Also, I have to say that I should have gone straight to my father [a senior partner at a medium-sized urban law firm] when things started coming down. When I finally consulted him, he told me, `Look, this guy has asked you to do something wrong. You've taken a couple of steps, but now's the time to act against his instructions-even if you lose your job.'

"Well, I could see that if I went along with this guy, eventually the house of cards would fall down and he would have set me up to hold the bag because he was asking me to do his dirty work for him. After everything's over, what do I say to the people who were hurt along the way? Well, it's kind of hard to say, `I had to do it because I had to keep my job.' What kind of an excuse is that?

"This whole ethical thing started small. His first request that made me feel uncomfortable involved an advertisement for an ingredients company client. The ingredient was used in soft drinks, and the ad portrayed a lady relishing the taste of a soft drink. The packaging of the soft drink in the ad had to be generic that is, not showing Coke, Pepsi, and so forth. One of our other clients is a packaging association. Our creative department recommended use of a package type different from our packaging association client's. The general manager ordered the ad be changed in the interests of the packaging association. This order presented a conflict-the interest of the client paying for the ad versus the interest of the other client.

"The conflict issue did not escalate, but soon afterward we were `pitching' a new client who wanted to use a modified version of a famous poem in its ads. We secured agreement for the rights to use the poem, but were instructed that the poem could not be altered. Counsel from our New York parent company advised us that under no circumstances could the poem be changed. The general manager decided to take the chance anyway; he changed the poem, had the ad made, and just hoped that he didn't get caught. He had a back-up plan. He figured he could slick his way out of the problem by placing the advertising in a sister publication of the copyright holder. But even then, some other client's money would be used to cover this guy's behind instead of [being used] in the best interest of the client.

"Some time passed before the requests really got big. And then, they seemed to all come at once. One of the requests presented the biggest issue for me, and it was the last one. I was assigned a project which required that I lie to my co-workers, take out false client job numbers, and act in conflict with one of our existing clients. The general manager had accepted some business from a client's competitor and intended to keep it quiet from everybody in the company. He instructed me to put together a press kit, direct-mail brochures, and a custom-made mailing list-all on the `QT' I immediately told him that the whole thing wasn't right. He told me to sleep on it. Then, two days later, he told me, `you gotta do it.' I was told to lake out false job numbers-which I did. Somehow... somehow, he was going to intercept the ultimate bills and retype them or something. Also, I was to put all expenses under a different client's name and number. I didn't really understand how this whole thing was actually to be handled.

"It was at this time that I sought my father's advice-[his] advice [was] that I get on the next flight to New York and tell the top brass what was going down. I didn't go to New York. I basically stalled. Shortly thereafter, I decided to leave the company. But on the day of my resignation, I went to a company executive at the same level as the general manager. Files and evidence in hand, I spilled all the beans to him."

The general manager has since resigned from the company-"just ahead of the drop of the axe," as one of the company's top executives put it. Company officials are still discovering the extent of the manager's unethical behavior.