Rabbi Nico here.
I was reading Proverbs 28 today and came across this:
“Better is the poor who walks in his integrity than one perverse in his ways, though he be rich.”
That’s verse 6.
On some level, we all feel that we know this. We think it’s talking about thieves and conmen, and how it’s better to be poor than to get rich by being deceitful.
But how many of us lie on our resumes, or during job interviews? I know I’ve done that in the past (more exaggerated than lied, but that’s still dishonest), and the truth is that it avails very little. Eventually, the ways we lied on our resumes or during job interviews come to light, often with the discover that we can’t actually do the job we were hired to do.
Employers often engage in this sort of thing too. They say the job entails one set of expectations, then, once you’ve been hired, they start telling you to do things that were not in the job description. Things you didn’t agree to when you took the job. In this way, they become rich off of perverse ways.
We need to be honest in our business dealings, because failing to do so just sets us up for failure in the long-run.