Sunday, August 26, 2007

Obligations

Recent events in my company has cause me to question who I am obligated to. Am I obligated to the customer or to my boss? My boss promised a certain customer in Jakarta that he will visit the customer this week (the customer requested the visit). So last week when I was in Jakarta, I told this customer that my boss was coming as promised and he(the customer) was looking forward to it. I gave this customer my word.

But due to some crappy planning (in my opinion) by my boss, he had to postpone the trip to an as yet undetermined date. Now I must be the bearer of bad news to this customer and no doubt bear the brunt of his complains. In other words, I must put up with all the shit but that is not important, the important thing is that I broke my word to the customer. Now this is not the first time this sort of thing happened, there were quite a few times whereby I have to go back on my word just because my boss couldn't deliver on his.

Now I am not dissing my boss at all, my question is to what extent am I obligated to the customer who is paying for a top quality product? In other words, if earning my paycheck requires me to go back on my word, whether or not it is on behalf of my boss then is it right? Am I doing right by God breaking promises I have made to other people? Well it sure felt wrong to me, each time I do it I feel a slight sense of guilt. The worrying thing is that even that is beginning to fade. God help me to sort this out.

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