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New Another "by that logic"
I work for a corporation. That corporation strives to make money, therefore it is evil. Therefore I am evil for taking money from them.

Eh?

You see, when a person goes to work for a company they are setting aside their personal morality and making decisions based on what is best for the company. The company exists only to make money.

Excuse me, but I work for a company and I try to make the company's customers' lives better. I often fail, hideously, but my goal is, really, honestly, although I am evil, to make their jobs easier or better to do, or to fix their problems.

Jay, you are playing generalist and are plain fucking wrong. End of story.

There are some corporations that exist to screw their customers, or some generic consumer. With employees that willfully participate in the screwing. I damn them. But not all corporations are like that. I'd say not even a good percentage of corporations are like that. If I were working for a company that I thought was trying to screw its consumers, I'd resign, effective yesterday. The company I'm currently with has made some bad decisions sometimes, but they're more along the lines of brain cramps than trying to squeeze the consumer.
Where each demon is slain, more hate is raised, yet hate unchecked also multiplies. - L. E. Modesitt, from his Recluse series
New How many times must I hammer this
I work for a corporation. That corporation strives to make money, therefore it is evil. Therefore I am evil for taking money from them.

How many times must I hammer this down? Did I say that? Did I imply that?

No

I said exactly the opposite. That in many cases the goodness or evilness of the employees of a company is unconnected the nature of the company. That many people working at companies are just trying to make a living and trying to do their jobs.

But that doesn't stop those things from having evil consequences. That doesn't stop the company from being evil as whole. Even if the employees have the best of intentions the company as a whole might be evil.

There are some corporations that exist to screw their customers, or some generic consumer. With employees that willfully participate in the screwing. I damn them. But not all corporations are like that. I'd say not even a good percentage of corporations are like that. If I were working for a company that I thought was trying to screw its consumers, I'd resign, effective yesterday. The company I'm currently with has made some bad decisions sometimes, but they're more along the lines of brain cramps than trying to squeeze the consumer.

Few companies are set to outright screw their customers. But it's not generally a moral decision, it's just the knowledge that if you treat your customers well they will remain your customers.

But that really isn't what I am talking about here.

What I am talking about is when simply doing your job and making a living can result in evil, even if you have done no evil your self. That companies can corrupt the system, even though no person involved is directly or intentionally evil.

Jay
New I must have overlooked it
Almost everything you've posted in this thread seems to postulate that corporations are money-making grubbers of corporate evil.

Pardon me if I have misread the posts you have made.
Where each demon is slain, more hate is raised, yet hate unchecked also multiplies. - L. E. Modesitt, from his Recluse series
New If you get scared you must overlook it, besides you knew
the job was dangerius when you took it!

Most Corps are greedy, money-grubbing, employee abusing, lying, cheating, manipulative, backstabbing, evil machines that just exist to get as much money as they can for themselves and the stockholders. Everyone else be dammed besides the stockholders and the managers that get the majority of the money after expenses. If it means destroying the evironment, or killing employees or customers slowly to make that money, then you better believe that they will do it! My former employer tried to kill me or force me to kill myself by piling on the workload, harassing me, and doing whatever they could to stress me out so that I could be gone. After I wouldn't kill myself and got three months off for the stress, they took me back for three weeks and then made up a bogus reason to let me go. Now they gave all of my workload to one person and are trying to get that person to quit. If that isn't evil, I don't know what is!

"Will code Visual BASIC for cash."
New Norm, you gotta get over this...
First: the generalizations are a bit much. I work for a BigAssedRouterAndNetworking company. Their avowed purpose is to make money for shareholders (employees are shareholders also, by the bye.) Their primary focus is customer satisfaction. They also hammer on ethics. Mind you, they are known everywhere for not paying any taxes that they can afford (see avowed purpose.)As far as I know, "employee abusing, lying, cheating, manipulative, backstabbing" is pretty much at a local level and can be dealt with there. I'm pretty sure that I do not work for evil. I'm pretty that the company I work for does not work for evil. They probably cut as close to the law as possible, that being their function, but they are still a responsible social entity. (I have exceptions with some of their policies, but that's not really pertinant here.)

Second: Indentured servitude was abolished long ago. If you kept a job where your employers required you to destroy yourself (functionally, if not literally), it's your problem. You've been doing this for *YEARS*, not just since the economy crashed. I can't speak for others, but I'm getting a little tired of hearing about how your previous employers buttfucked you on a regular basis. You stayed in a good economy. I gotta draw my conclusions from that. Your participation was voluntary. Please don't bitch about it any more. Please?

Listen up: I am not your enemy. I have no agenda regarding you.

Item: You are not doing yourself any good in the mode you are in now. The pathetic bit does seem to keep people in this community from picking on you. In the real world, nobody in their right mind is going to give a responsible position to someone who relies on excuses rather than results. "They were so bad to me" is not a useful arguement, unless you are in court, in which case all bets are off. The real world requires accomplishments or gains garnered from failure (blue sky research projects for example.)

Item: If you link your self to a language or an operating system, you are pretty much fucked, even if the language or system is currently the cat's meow. That's my personal observation; no hard data to prove it. I haven't lived that long... I'm still waiting for kernel code to be written in visual basic... but I digress...

Item: You may want to analyze your current marital sitiuation. It's supposed to be a 2 way street. My wife and I regularly fight over major and minor things in our lives, but if either of us is hurting, the other is there without reservation. I don't know how your home runs, but if you don't have backup in time of need, then you are probably screwed... If you stay, it your choice again (see above.)

Norm, you need to get better. Trying to maintain a miserable existance will cause you to tank. I read your posts and oscillate between annoyance and pain for you. I don't like vicarious pain. Please get your self some help.

Best regards,
Hugh
New Did you even bother to read my posts
from two or three years ago? I tried to get out, but couldn't find anything. The best I could do was come in 2nd or 3rd place, and only one position was available.

The only way to end my misey is to kill myself, no brain, no more pain. A friend of mine did that in 1999, and I am starting to see why he did it. His employer screwed him as well, made him work several jobs at once, no pay for overtime, etc. He had other issues, but I won't go into them. I think that the job was a big factor, when they let him go it was because of his depression and alchaholism getting in the way of him working the extra hours they wanted him to work. His widow was denied his pension, his profit sharing, his 401k, and other things that were due to him. She couldn't afford an attorney. so she couldn't get those things. I've seen people destroyed by corps, or worked so hard and under so much stress that they just snap. My mother's friend had her husband set a trashcan on fire, after the way his managers had treated him. I am not sure why he did it, but he never was the same again. Before he worked for that company, he was one of the sanest men alive, afterwords, he couldn't hold a job and was disabled mentally. This is the type of evil that I am talking about. Companies should be held liable for causing mental health issues with their employees from overworking them and stressing them out.

Let me tell you more about my former employer, I told them about my health issues, and I told them they are putting too much stress on me. I had notes from my doctors, and had proof that I was ill. What did they do to accominate me? After being out on sick leave for three months they took me back and after three weeks they let me go. Nothing was done to accomidate me, I was not given help on my projects, and they kept piling on project after project on me until I could no longer work at a pace they wanted me to work at.

Am I crazy? Most likely, if I could afford to go back to my doctor I would, but I was screwed out of my old health insurance and I am waiting to get my 401K and profit sharing rolled over to an IRA and the firm is dragging their feet to do that. I sent it certified mail to make sure that they got it. They'll most likely use the "It got lost in the mailroom" routine as someone from the mailroom signed for it and not the lady I addressed it to. I have my wife's insurance, but it may not cover mental health issues because it is minimal coverage.

Since 1997, my resume has been at just about every company in the Saint Louis area. Why won't companies hire me? I am not sure as they don't tell me why. But I was able to get a job anywhere until I worked for this lawfirm. I wasn't suicidal before I worked for this lawfirm, and I wasn't this bad mentally before I worked for this lawfirm.

All I want is true justice, I want them to own up to their mistakes, and I want them to admit to their misdoings and take action to prevent it from happening to other staff members.

"Will code Visual BASIC for cash."
New Re: Did you even bother to read my posts
Sorry about the delay in responding. I was called away... something about having a life without computers...

Yes, I have read your posts back on IWE when you were being Cable4k or something. I seem to recall that some of those posts could be construed as just a bit whiney in tone. This perceived attitude trait could possibly be part of your employment difficulties.

I'm familiar with suicide. It seems to run on my father's side of the family (one uncle, two cousins.) In my experience, it helps nobody who remains behind. I wish you wouldn't dwell on it; nothing is accomplished and it screws up your attitude.

I really don't want you to tell me more about your previous employer. See my original post. They are in the past. They are history. This is your problem now and crying about past injustices is not going to help you (unless you take the American way out and sue everybody who has accumulated enough to be targeted by a lawyer...)

I notice that in response to another post, you speculate that my employer uses loop-holes in the law and is therefore evil. I submit that in obeying the law, loop-holes and all, they are maintaining their contract with society. Their behavior is responsible, not evil. If you feel strongly about the tax laws, work to get them changed. Representative government and all that, y'know?

I hope you can put your bad experiences in the past where they belong and get your attitude together. I do wish you the best.

Regards,
Hugh
New Reform!
I have pushed for reform, and voted for people who I believed could reform the US government. But they never get elected to office. I try to get support for laws that will close out tax loopholes and employement loopholes, but they always get voted down.

Whine? I am complaining because something needs to be done to change things! I don't want someone else to suffer as I have, or suffer worse than I have. But nobody seems to care, nobody seems to notice, and nobody wants to do anything about it. Just get their riches and screw the other people as much as they can. I don't want to live in a world like that, and would rather end my life than end up like those jerks(*ssholes).

"Will code Visual BASIC for cash."
New Interesting phrasing there.
I'm pretty sure that I do not work for evil. I'm pretty that the company I work for does not work for evil. They probably cut as close to the law as possible, that being their function, but they are still a responsible social entity.
A responsible social entity that cuts as close the the >LAW< as possible.

Quick question. Pure opinion.

If the laws was changed to be more lax, do you think they'd still cut as close to it as possible?
-OR-
Do you think they'd hold their current behaviour (being the responsible social entity that they are).
New Hmmmm interesting!
They cut it as close to the law as they can without breaking it. Sounds like they use loopholes to me. Like loopholes to get out of paying taxes, or loopholes to get out of having discrimination and harassment lawsuits filed against them by doing things to change the facts? Since being a jerk is not against the law, management can do these things by being a jerk to their employees. This, in itself, makes the company management out to be a bunch of high school bullies that never grew up. In my mind that makes them evil, EVIL, I tells ya!

"Will code Visual BASIC for cash."
New Hmmm
When the speed limit was 55, I drove 55. When it was raised to 65, I started driving at 65.

Are you saying I should be driving around at 55 when everyone else is going 10mph faster?
Ray
New We seem to have come full circle - back to the daleross(?)
thread at IWE - "if it's legal - it's ethical".

Or: how is an arbitrary speed law (most often intended to raise revenue, under the rubric of 'safety') - anything like a decision about - "what constitutes ethical behavior" ?

If.. one is Good at 55, but becomes Evil at 56 mph (a sop to those who like precision, even where it is inane) - do you see also some digital ethical / not-ethical decision, just as simplistic? And does that discrimination come from some statute of this or last year - or from within?

(Surely you never meant to imply, "if everybody does it - so can I". Surely.)


A.
New Not as stoichastic as you suggest...
Speed limits are a fairly simplistic law with absolute boundaries. 55 mph is fairly easy to distinguish. Good and evil do not really apply to incremental changes in speed either. Neither do ethics.

Tax laws are ostensibly promulgated by our representatives and are screwy enough to confuse some tax lawyers. Now, this discussion can go at least one of two ways: either we are arguing that the company was unethical in getting unfair tax laws past, or they have an ethics problem for using the tax laws as written to minimize their tax bill. Since there has been no suggestion of impropriety,("if it's legal - it's ethical"), I assume we are discussing the latter.

I suggest that they would be behaving against stockholders interests if they deliberately paid more taxes than necessary. I don\ufffdt know that it would be unethical, but a publicly held company is supposed to have a responsibility the stockholders. In this instance, I believe that behaving legally is sufficient.

The problem I see with this model is that too many CEO\ufffds have evidently seen \ufffdHighlander\ufffd way to many times and have adopted the \ufffdIn the end there can be only one\ufffd mentality. To maintain constant geometric growth, which is what Wall Street seems to expect, companies seem willing to crush all competition to pick up whatever trace amounts of profits the might have taken away. This behavior, which may be legal and/or ethical, appears to be ugly in the extreme to me.

So what\ufffds the solution?

Go head to head with Wall Street? And face all the people who lose money though restraining the trade of the Big Guys? That\ufffdll go over big, especially since our representatives in government will lose a lot more than most of their constituents (private people, not the businesses.)

Maybe regulate monopolistic corporate behavior? Sure, we\ufffdll start with Microsoft. We\ufffdve already got a conviction\ufffd They are going to skate eventually. So maybe we\ufffdll get the next one\ufffd

Sorry Ashton, I have no easy solutions to propose. It would be nice if everyone would just live nicely together, but I remain less than optimistic.

Regards,
Hugh
New Allow me to clarify.
The original post was about a company with ethical standards.

That cut as close as the law allowed.

I asked what said company would do if the law was changed to be more lax.

Allow me to phrase that in speed limits.

You have an ethical standard regarding speed (assume that it is because you believe that more people die when the the limit is 65 as opposed to 55).

When the limit is 55, you drive 55.

When the limit is 65, the law is more lax than your ethical standard so you drive 55. You adhere to your ethical standard.

If you drive 65 when the law is 65, and 75 when the law is 75, and so on........ What is your ethical standard? Do you have one?

Which brings us back to Ashton's recital of Dale's "legal == ethical".
New I think you've hit on the REAL problem...
I work for a BigAssedRouterAndNetworking company. Their avowed purpose is to make money for shareholders (employees are shareholders also, by the bye.)


Boy, am I a dunce! Put a cork in it, Beep!...at least until I'm done with my rant! ;-) Here all this time, I thought the "avowed purpose" of BigAssedRouterAndNetworking Co. Inc. was to make the best damn BigAssedRoutersAndNetworks they possibly could, thereby making their products the most attractive in the open marketplace, thereby insuring a healthy profit, thereby insuring that their shareholders got a reasonable return on their investments. How could have I been so silly as to believe this Capitalist tripe?!?

I guess nobody needs to do Commerce anymore, when the first derivitave of Commerce will do good enough!

OK, Beepster...your turn...
jb4
(Resistance is not futile...)
New Once that may have been true
Here all this time, I thought the "avowed purpose" of BigAssedRouterAndNetworking Co. Inc. was to make the best damn BigAssedRoutersAndNetworks they possibly could, thereby making their products the most attractive in the open marketplace, thereby insuring a healthy profit, thereby insuring that their shareholders got a reasonable return on their investments


All of the different corps I have worked for have expressed that the main purpose of the company was to "maximise shareholder value". That may involve making a better product. But the product is the means, not the end. I may be wrong about BigAssedRouterAndNetworking Co. Inc., but I suspect not.
With this much manure around, there must be a pony somewhere.
New Sadly, I believe you are correct.
Twenty years ago, or so, when I was getting out of engineering school, they were a struggling router company. They focused on absolute quality in their product and nearly got their ass handed to them. Now they focus on customer satisfaction and were doing quite nicely until the economy went crunch.
I stand by my statement that the avowed purpose is to make the shareholders profit. Producing a product pleasing to the buyers is the means. I still take professional pride in my contributions to the product and therefor the end product. When I can't take pride in my work, it's time to move on. Whores can be fickle that way...
The focus *IS* changing from doing a thing right because fine craft is a good thing to doing a thing in the manner that will product the most profit. I can't help regarding the transition without a sense of loss.

Regards,
Hugh
New Putting the cart before the horse
One can also "maximize profits" throught stock market manipulation[Enron], "cooking the books"[Enron, Micros~1], illegal marketing practices[Enron, Micros~1], monopolization[Micros~1, IBM, AT&T], lobbying to hamstring or outright outlaw your competition[any NTSA body shop], fraud[the list is too long to put here],...or by making the best damn product at a reasonable price and competing fairly in an open marketplace[ ]. (Notice the size of that list...)

hnick, I wasn't in BigAssedRoutersAndNetworks board room (or in their marketing dept, thank Ghod), but I sincerely doubt that BAR&N "nearly got their ass handed to them" simply because they "focused on absolute quality". There were other problems in their bizniss plan if they "nearly got their ass handed to them". Perhaps they "nearly got their ass handed to them" because they didn't give a rat's ass about customer satisfaction, or their prices were too high, or their routers were a pain in the ass to keep working, or whatever. Your premise is just too simplistic to be accurate.
jb4
(Resistance is not futile...)
New Ok, you have a point
I've been with the company about 2 years since we were acquired. I have no idea what the business plan or products were like in the late 80's. My statement was a short version of what I was told during an indoctination speech immediately after the acquisition.

Yeah, it's simplistic. Your point.

Hugh
New Now this may sound silly
but making the best product means jack squat if your company is not profitable. Hire some PHBs to "maximize profits" by getting rid of the people who made "quality products and services" and replace them with recent college graduates who will earn below average for their job positions and do a sloppy job at it. As long as the products works (somewhat) and the customers are happy (d*mmit I'll teach you to be happy!) about the product and the stockholders earn tons of buckazoids, who gives a rat's *ss if the product goes defective after the warranty expires or blows up in the customer's face?

As in "Tommy Boy" 'I can sh*t into a box and write "guarantee" on it, but all that means is that I've given you a guaranteed piece of sh*t. Wouldn't you rather have a part that works and doesn't need a guarantee?'

Making parts that last a lifetime only works for Maytag and Craftsman, the rest just can make it as sloppy as they can and then sell them another one later on. The more defective the better, just contract the helpdesk out to an India or Pakastan firm to handle the complaints. The more thick-accented phone operators, the better. Get some that don't even know how the product works, and just pawns the caller off to other companies, or place blame in other areas so your company isn't liable for anything.

"Will code Visual BASIC for cash."
New And your point is...?
Norm, even I'm having trouble following here. Are you being sarcastic, or are you purporting to explain the Corporate Mindset behind all Corporate Decisions made these days?

And what is your point if either of these are true?

(I know you're pissed and disillusioned, and with good reason. But remain focused, and you'll remain coherent. Remain coherent, and people will have to deal with you! ;-) )
jb4
(Resistance is not futile...)
New My point, dear JB,
is that the Corporate System which most managers are using is basically f*cked in the head. Even a 6 year old can run a better company that most managers out there. I am not sure what in the seven levels of H*ll they teach them in college, but one thing is for sure that management does not know how to manage employees correctly, and end up abusing, harassing, and overworking them, etc.

Ever notice when layoffs happen, the top management get to keep their jobs despite being the ones that allowed the mistakes to happen or that made the mistakes themselves? There is no responsibility amoung the top brass, and they just blame the people working too hard under them for management's own shortcommings.

Our US Corp system needs a big overhaul and reorganization and reform is all I am saying.

"Will code Visual BASIC for cash."
New Not necessarily true
about layoffs in the upper management that is.

One example:

I was a low level developer at Yahoo until I got laid off this past December. I was one out of about 300 - 400 employees let go. After I left, I found out that some of mid-level managers that I knew were escorted out too later that day. And still later I noticed that senior executives were 'resigning' enmasse to 'spend time with family'. This past year we've seen the 'resignation' of most of executive management, including the CEO and COO. IMHO, I think the board is laying them off but allowing them to officially resign so as not to panic the stock holders.
Ray
New What you fail to mention...
..is that those "resignations" to "spend more time w/ their family" are, without exception, accompanied with "golden parachutes" equal to well over their salary for a year.

What was in your golden parachute?

(Yeah, It's really none of my damn bizniss; I'm just trying to make a point. Norm is correct on this point...)
jb4
(Resistance is not futile...)
New I know, I know...
my parachute wasn't golden but it was enough to carry me through (3 months pay up front) until I got my next job. Since I started interviewing before the lay offs - I new odds were against me - and got a new job about 1.5 months later, I ended up fattening my bank account a little instead of taking a loss.

As for the execs at Yahoo that left, I don't think their parachutes mattered much to them anyway as most of them got rich from their stock options long before. Most of those guys had salaries in the $100-300k range but cashed out tens or hundredes of millions in options from '98-'00. When you're that rich, I think the power and prestige of being a CEO or co. president is more of a lure than the base salary.

I think both Norm and I are right. It's just our perspectives are different. Norm worked for a horrible company, a sweat shop. Yahoo did their best to make the situation tolerable. Everyone got severence pay and a continuation of medical insurance. They paid for one-on-one job counselling with Spherion (it really helped too!). There were no guards to escort people out; I had time to go say 'goodbye' to friends that remained, get my last free mocha, and steal some office supplies. My manager called some of his friends at other companies to setup interviews. The vp of my division came by to apologize for not being able to keep me on (Incidentally, my vp's boss was let go too). And so on.
Ray
New At the very least
your former company helped you to get a job. I couldn't even get my former employer to reconmend me to anyone, and not say anything beyond that I worked for them on the dates that I worked.

"Will code Visual BASIC for cash."
New And your point is...?
Norm, even I'm having trouble following here. Are you being sarcastic, or are you purporting to explain the Corporate Mindset behind all Corporate Decisions made these days?

And what is your point if either of these are true?

(I know you're pissed and disillusioned, and with good reason. But remain focused, and you'll remain coherent. Remain coherent, and people will have to deal with you! ;-) )
jb4
(Resistance is not futile...)
New Must you hammer this???
Would you also classify and "not for profit" Corporation as evil then?

Would you classify an educational establishment funded by public moneys and tution as evil then?

You see there are ALOT of evil people in those institutions, largely, faculty only view themselves as the REAL reason to have classes there, and that they are the biggest reason to get what they want.

I work for a College and see many, many, many, many actions that should and do go heavily punished in the Public sector. But in these arenas they go on just as though nothing ever happened. I happen to work for one of those "justifiably evil" persons that recently "discovered" christianity. Reason I say, they now use christianity to "judge" things by. But mystically NONE of thier actions are judged that way. No of the using of "documentation" to inform certain people they knows certain things about peoples activities either using the phone or computer systems in general. Be it infidelity or other things... it is amazing how this person gets thier way a highly inordinate amount of the time.

Now, Jay after this little tidbits of info, I would also tell you there are alot of other people in those educational establishment and other not for profit corporations that are indeed evil. Take a look at Greenpeace, they out and out do BAD things to PEOPLE not to Corporations, and they do it consistently and without duress. They usually have thought it out carefully on how to COST the most money or inflist the most pain or to get the biggest piece of propaganda, all while using the same "remove themselves from liability" thinking you are talking about.

Hope you get my picture I am trying to paint. If not... ask for clarification.

I tolerate the person in question here at my place of work, mainly cause I believe I can change things from the ground up, using the TOP down appraoch!! (been getting some headway as of late)



greg, curley95@attbi.com -- REMEMBER ED CURRY!!!
In 2002, everyone will discover that everyone else is using linux. ** Linux: Good, fast AND cheap. ** Failure is not an option: It comes bundled with Windows. ** "Two rules to success in life: 1. Don't tell people everything you know." - Sassan Tat
New The part I was hammering
The part I was talking about when I mentioned hammering is the bit about personal morality and corporate morality not being tied. More then one person that replied to my orginal post reacted as if I had accused them of being evil because they worked for a big evil corporation.

But the point I was trying to make is almost exactly the opposite, that a corporation can be evil and do evil, even if nobody involved is evil.

As for not for profit corporations, they are a legal absurdity. They are charities that are organized as a corporation because the legal and monetary advantages of being a corporation.

As for the rest of your post, I'm not sure what point your trying to make. I am not nearly stupid enough to think that any human endevor is free from evil. But at the same time I'm not willing to fall into the idiot relativist trap of thinking that all things are equal either.

Jay
     Corporations and evil - (JayMehaffey) - (99)
         Thanks for cutting through the bull. -NT - (Silverlock) - (3)
             Figures you'd say that. -NT - (marlowe) - (1)
                 Nickel. -NT - (Silverlock)
             Bull? BULL???? My posts were NOT BULL!!! -NT - (mmoffitt)
         But does it have to be that way? - (Brandioch) - (37)
             I love those ethics. - (bepatient) - (34)
                 Jawohl! - (Brandioch) - (33)
                     You obviously know zero about this case..(added link) - (bepatient) - (32)
                         Hmmmmm, maybe you're right. - (Brandioch) - (31)
                             A jury did settle it. - (bepatient) - (30)
                                 I've read the case. - (Brandioch) - (29)
                                     So... - (bepatient) - (28)
                                         Just giving you enough rope. - (Brandioch) - (27)
                                             Answer the question. - (bepatient) - (26)
                                                 You're just hanging yourself higher. - (Brandioch) - (25)
                                                     Childish little prick - (drewk) - (8)
                                                         how do you know he's little ? ]:-> -NT - (boxley)
                                                         You can quote, but you lack understanding. - (Brandioch) - (6)
                                                             You don't need to be manipulated - (drewk) - (5)
                                                                 Don't hate me because I'm beautiful. - (Brandioch) - (4)
                                                                     Oh, no wonder you're so upset - (drewk) - (3)
                                                                         Let's go over that again. - (Brandioch)
                                                                         Don't bother DK... - (bepatient)
                                                                         Don't bother DK... - (bepatient)
                                                     Yeah...sure... - (bepatient) - (15)
                                                         *SCORE* - (Brandioch) - (14)
                                                             Somebody needs to lighten up and get laid. - (Silverlock)
                                                             Whatever. - (bepatient) - (12)
                                                                 Weasel weasel weasel.... - (Brandioch) - (11)
                                                                     The officers of Enron thank you for your support! - (a6l6e6x) - (2)
                                                                         Why oh why oh why. - (Brandioch) - (1)
                                                                             Re: Why oh why oh why. - (a6l6e6x)
                                                                     I'm so happy for you. - (bepatient) - (7)
                                                                         Hey, I'm not the one with the problem. - (Brandioch) - (6)
                                                                             say what? - (boxley) - (2)
                                                                                 Um, okay. "What". - (Brandioch) - (1)
                                                                                     thats fine -NT - (boxley)
                                                                             Are you even trying anymore? - (drewk) - (1)
                                                                                 Clarification. - (Brandioch)
                                                                             Sure... - (bepatient)
             B & J are eeeeevil! - (rsf)
             Ben and Jerry's is GONE. -NT - (mmoffitt)
         Mom & Pop shops too? - (rsf) - (2)
             Thank you for that. One point down. -NT - (bepatient)
             That depends - (JayMehaffey)
         So... - (bepatient) - (13)
             Just more sympathetic magic - (Ric Locke) - (11)
                 Your making my point for me - (JayMehaffey) - (10)
                     Evil is as evil does - (nking) - (7)
                         I wouldn't have said it quite that way - (wharris2)
                         Re: Evil is as evil does - (Ric Locke) - (5)
                             Then it is the evil managers - (nking)
                             Trying to set some basis - (JayMehaffey) - (3)
                                 Relativism - (Ric Locke) - (2)
                                     Re: Relativism - (JayMehaffey)
                                     Interesting. - (Brandioch)
                     Evil is as evil does - (nking)
                     What acts in an evil manner? - (marlowe)
             Re: So... - (JayMehaffey)
         Another "by that logic" - (wharris2) - (28)
             How many times must I hammer this - (JayMehaffey) - (27)
                 I must have overlooked it - (wharris2) - (24)
                     If you get scared you must overlook it, besides you knew - (nking) - (23)
                         Norm, you gotta get over this... - (hnick) - (22)
                             Did you even bother to read my posts - (nking) - (2)
                                 Re: Did you even bother to read my posts - (hnick) - (1)
                                     Reform! - (nking)
                             Interesting phrasing there. - (Brandioch) - (5)
                                 Hmmmm interesting! - (nking)
                                 Hmmm - (rsf) - (3)
                                     We seem to have come full circle - back to the daleross(?) - (Ashton) - (2)
                                         Not as stoichastic as you suggest... - (hnick) - (1)
                                             Allow me to clarify. - (Brandioch)
                             I think you've hit on the REAL problem... - (jb4) - (12)
                                 Once that may have been true - (Silverlock) - (3)
                                     Sadly, I believe you are correct. - (hnick) - (2)
                                         Putting the cart before the horse - (jb4) - (1)
                                             Ok, you have a point - (hnick)
                                 Now this may sound silly - (nking) - (7)
                                     And your point is...? - (jb4) - (5)
                                         My point, dear JB, - (nking) - (4)
                                             Not necessarily true - (rsf) - (3)
                                                 What you fail to mention... - (jb4) - (2)
                                                     I know, I know... - (rsf) - (1)
                                                         At the very least - (nking)
                                     And your point is...? - (jb4)
                 Must you hammer this??? - (folkert) - (1)
                     The part I was hammering - (JayMehaffey)
         Setting aside their personal morality for the company? - (marlowe) - (6)
             been there done that - (boxley) - (5)
                 'Evil' Corporations..? - (Ashton) - (4)
                     Arguing over definitions again, I think - (Silverlock) - (3)
                         No, "Evil" fits - (Ric Locke) - (1)
                             Seconded in spades. - (Ashton)
                         Since a corporation by legal definition is an - (boxley)
         After a long pause, my reply... - (screamer) - (3)
             The kudos always go to those who - (Ashton)
             Mostly I agree - (JayMehaffey) - (1)
                 It's a love fest then... - (screamer)

You're right, because clearly cabbage soppy wankel ebbeh gruntsponge.
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