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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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Would you enter into a business venture with someone you know to have been unfaithful to their wife?
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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At risk of receiving yet more of Marc's wrath...
I would say that questions of personal morality are irrelevant except where they are pertinent to the business (and your happiness stemming from smooth running of that business). It's entirely dependent on the circumstances.
If it is essential that you respect him, then his marital fidelity would likely work against him. If it is essential that you can trust him (as it is in almost all business ventures) then knowing that he has cheated on his wife would indicate that he is sometimes dishonest. Whether or not this would carry over to business dealings... well, you'd need to make an objective decision.
It's also too simplistic to state that marital infidelity should automatically condemn someone. What if he and his wife were separated? What if he knew his wife was having an affair also? What if there was an implicit or even explicit understanding in the relationship? These may make a difference.
A business partner is not the same as a friend, so you have to judge them using different criteria.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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It lets me assess the risk. So a qualified "yes"
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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This is way outta my experience. However,someones personal relationships are their business and non of mine.
I believe in Karma....what you give is what you get returned........
Affirmation........Savage Garden
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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What if he walked away with the bank roll?
What if he splintered off and offscounded with all your clients?
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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As for wrath...
Precocious children do have a way of causing the most annoying sounds dont they?
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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Whether or not someone was faithful to their wife / husband / CP would have no bearing at all on whether I'd be happy to go into business with them. I simply don't see it as relevant.
Unless, of course, they'd asked me to cover up for them - for example, by saying they were away at a conference when I knew damn well they were in fact off having a "bit on the side". That would take it out of the neutral area, and into the area where they were actively trying to make me go against my own beliefs.
This is slightly from experience ... about 12 years ago, someone came to work for me in a supervisory capacity. He started an affair - entirely his business - although his wife was then six months pregnant. However, he started to ask staff to cover up for him, and to lie to his wife when she rang him at work and he wasn't there. After a certain ammount of soul-searching, I told him at the end of his probationary period that he wasn't working out, and gave him a cheque for three months wages in lieu of notice. I *really* didn't like doing this to someone with their first child on the way ... but we worked in a potentially physically dangerous industry, where everyone is reliant on everyone else for their safety, and he had lost the trust of his team and of myself. Not for his sexual infidelity, but for his faciltiy in lying to cover up, and his willingness to try to make others lie on his behalf.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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So his infidelity did carry on into his "job"....
His behavior caused a character flaw to exhibit itself....
The only difference I can see is that he was hired and the behavior manifested after the fact.
On another note.....
What sort of dangerous scary creepy work was it?
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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Marc wrote:
> So his infidelity did carry on into his "job"....
>
> His behavior caused a character flaw to exhibit itself....
>
> The only difference I can see is that he was hired and the behavior manifested after the fact.
Oh, I've also worked with at least two people who were having extra-marital affairs ... although in both cases I didn't know that that was so until some some years after we'd stopped working together. Not to mention the unknown number of people I've worked with who may have had affairs that I had no reason to know about!
> On another note.....
>
> What sort of dangerous scary creepy work was it?
The wonderful world of technical theatre. Typical example that happens several times a week ... A is up a tallescope (basically, like a twenty-five-foot vertical ladder on wheels, B&C are at the base of the tallescope as required by Health and Safety. A is letting down a rope from the top of the 'scope, D is attaching theatre lanterns to the rope, A is pulling them up and hanging them on the lighting bars (which are 30 feet above stage).
BCD rely on A not to drop lanterns, safety chains, etc onto them.
BC rely on D to fix the lantern to the rope correctly, so it doesn't come off while being hauled up
A relies on BC to move the 'scope sensibly .. to get near enough the edge of the stage to be useful, without putting the wheels over the edge and tipping him into the orchestra pit.
Just a typical example (many other examples of total reliance on other team members occurred every day - especially among the electrics team). When I was active in Theatre there used to be three or four 'scope-related accidents in the UK every year of sufficent severity to have to be reported to the Health & Safety executive.
Technical theatre is in fact sufficiently hazardous that many insurers charge a much higer than average rate for personal injury insurance for freelancers.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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Ahh...... I see....
Stage rigging kind of thing...
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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If we turn the table around -
About ten years ago I started working for a company and very soon discovered that it was in a less healthy state than I had been told when I was invited to work with them.
A year or so later the company went down the drain. It appeared that the company's boss and sole owner had been cheating everyone at every opportunity, the company's bank, staff, suppliers, customers, etc. She was charged with fraud and had to serve a prison term.
Regardless of sex - it might have been a man - would I want to have any sort of personal relationship with this person, even as a fringe friend? Not ever! She was the archetype of a person one should, at any cost, try to stay away from.
A good friend of mine did enter a relationship with her. He is a very nice chap, the sort of 'rescue the ladies' man. They were a couple for nearly two years, and she cheated on him in every possible way. He was a battered man when he eventually freed himself of her.
There is an obvious connection between this person's private and professional lives. Lies and deception are parts of her character and accompany her wherever she goes. I haven't met her since then. People say that she hasn't changed a bit.
In the case of your story, NW, I would, too, have been very uncomfortable with the situation. There may be many reasons behind infidelity, and it may be a symptom of a crumbling relationship which no longer serves any purpose. But one frequently sees that the person who is unfaithful, claims to have a right to be so, showing no regrets over the grief and embarrassment he (or she) is causing his spouse and the rest of his family, or is eventually going to cause them. These persons often reveal a degree of selfishness that makes it difficult to trust them unreservedly.
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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I think the problem is a bit more profound that some of the posts would suggest. Marc asked whether you would 'enter into a business venture' with someone who had been unfathful to their wife, not whether you would be willing to work with him.
If it's merely a question of working with someone, then I agree that their marital infidelities are no-one else's business - unless, as in the scenario put forward by NW, they try to involve you in the deceit.
If, however, I contemplated a 'business venture', the infidelity would be a relevant factor to be taken into account. If the venture were to fail because of a lack of integrity on the part of my associate, it could be very damaging both to my pocket and to my reputation.
Firstly, I'd consider the scale of infidelity. I certainly would't walk away from the venture if my prospective associate had merely succumbed to a moment of weakness; we are all potential victims of human frailty, however good our intentions may be. Similarly, I wouldn't be influenced by infidelity which had been admitted to the wife, whether or not this led to dissolution of the marrige. But if the infidelity was ongoing and involved continuing deception, it would at the very least cast doubt upon the prospective associate's strength of character.
In that situation, I would move on to my second consideration; what, exactly, would be the terms of our business relationship, and would the prospective associate be in a position to deceive me? If he would not - because, for example, I would be in full financial control - then I don't think his private life would be relevant, at least in the business context. If he WOULD be in a position to deceive me, I would probably decide not to go ahead. On the one hand, self-interest is often a characteristic of a successful entrepreneur, but on the other hand his basic integrity is compromised, and self-interest might lead him to deceive me in his business life as casually as he deceives his wife in his private life.
There's obviously even more to it than that; if I'd known him for a long time, that might influence my ability to trust him. Similarly, I'd attach much less importance to an affair which had long since ended; we are all capable of learning from our mistakes. My point is simply that, in the specific circumstances which Marc sets out, it is naive to say that private life and business life are not related.
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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