Am I being asked to lie in my job?

Question

I work in a call center. If I can’t fix something remotely, I schedule a technician to go fix it. A supervisor gave directions to everyone to only book appointments for technicians after the end of this month. Note that the scheduling system we use to book appointments still shows availability in this month that we can select. The other day I had a client who said “I don’t believe you have no technicians available for over a week”. It suddenly struck me, she’s right. In a sense I feel I’ve been told to lie. In this situation I booked them a tech for this month, but got in trouble with management (I had initially been under the impression this wasn't a firm rule, but apparently it is).

Their reasoning for this new rule has something to do with business/revenue/end of year stuff that I’m not really privy to.

My question is, am I lying to clients by saying I can’t book them a technician to fix their problem sooner than next month? If yes, what can I do? Most clients are individuals, not businesses. I'm totally open to the possibility that I'm looking at this completely the wrong way.

EDIT: not that it invalidates answers, but I am sure that if I do schedule a technician before the end of this month, and a supervisor doesn't remove the scheduling, then the technician would show up and do his job. So it's not a matter of not having none available.

Answer 1

Your supervisor has told you that there is no technician available for this month. You are not lying if you tell your customers exactly that.

Why there is no technician available, whether they are all busy or the whole crew was fired or it's not economically viable for the company to send one this month is none of your business (your supervisor did not tell you) and none of the clients business either.

The fact that your scheduling software displays a green icon, does not mean there actually is a technician available. It's just a piece of software.

The client is free to decide that they want to take their business to a competitor with better availability of technicians, but again, that's their decision, not yours and it's probably not based on why your technicians are unavailable. As I client, I don't care why you cannot service me. If you cannot, I will go to somebody who can.

To the best of your knowledge, you cannot send a technician this month. That is the truth.

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The question pops up again and I have already answered it in comments once, but they got deleted: why is the why none of the clients business? Because they shouldn't care. The only thing you need to know as a customer is whether there is a competitor who can deliver a better package.

If you get bad service (for example cold fries) you ask for better service (hot fries) and if that cannot be delivered, you go to a competitor that can. As a customer, I don't care why my fries are cold. There is no explanation that would make me go "oh ok if that's the reason why, I will come back tomorrow and get another bag of cold fries."

Asking why only signals that as a customer you will not go with the better package, but with the better salesman/sob story.

Answer 2

From a point of view of human decency yes, this might be called lying.

From the POV of professionalism your superior has decided that there are no resources available, even if you scheduling system does not reflect this. So as far as you are concerned you are not lying, your are relaying a company policy. If you have an issue with that you should probably take this up with your superiors instead of ignoring their orders.

Kudos, though, for thinking about your clients first (to the point of risking your job for their convenience).

Answer 3

As other answers have stated, it seems that there may be more than meets the eye as to why the technicians are shown as available in the software while your manager tells you not to book any before the end of the month. Rather than just answer your question with a simple "yes" or "no" as to whether you're lying, I think it would be more productive to get to the root cause of the problem.

Speak to your manager. Ask why you shouldn't be booking before the end of the month, and suggest that, if the technicians are actually not available (perhaps they're scheduled for training, or are being sent off to a remote site to do some work, or whatever else), that they should be marked as such in your scheduling software. If your manager says that technicians are available but still should not be booked, provide your anecdote about the upset customer you spoke with -- you documented the call in your support system, right?

At the end of the day it's your manager's decision as to whether you are permitted to schedule these technicians, but perhaps there's a reason for it, and addressing it directly (but politely) with your manager is the best approach. If the technicians aren't available, ask your manager if you can inform customers of the reason. They may still be unhappy if all your technicians are unavailable due to training or some other activity, but at least they will know that no, there actually aren't any available.

Answer 4

Seems like all the answers and most of the comments have made an unsupported assumption about the reason for the instruction. I take another viewpoint: either the manager that gave the instruction has an ethical reason, or they don't. Either way, you jeopardize your job by disobeying. But the consequences of obeying may be different. If the manager and the instruction are ethical, the worst that happens to you is the customer yells at you. If you obey an unethical instruction and there is any negative consequence, the unethical manager denies giving the instruction and lets you take the fall.

Example: I once chose not to take a hint to falsify a time-sheet. My next evaluation had words like "decisions not always in the best interests of the business" and soon after, I was unemployed. If I had taken the hint and the customer (government) found out, I would have been in jail instead of unemployed and the real frauds would still be in management (claiming that they NEVER suggested mischarging).

Answer 5

My question is, am I lying to clients saying I can’t book them a technician to fix their problem sooner than next month?

No, you are following your supervisor's instructions.

Continue doing what you were told. You are most definitely riding a bit of a fine line as you will have to do at times in your career. I would look at it this way if I were you. "I am following my supervisor's instructions", and I need my job so I will follow my supervisor's instructions, and leave it at that.

Also, just because your system says you have techs available, doesn't mean you do. Do you your job to the best of your ability, following your supervisor's instructions and carry on.

Answer 6

You do not have the authority to book a technician before that. You can simply say "I can't book anyone before X date." That is true, because it is not your decision, as you found out when you tried to do it. The details of the meaning are possibly different from what the hearer assumes, but you are not deliberately deceiving them, just telling them what is in your power to do. If they press you, as that person did, you can say "it is not in my power to make a booking any earlier than that". If they want a supervisor, give them a supervisor.

Answer 7

If a customer asks if there are technicians available this month, you're not lying if you say that there aren't, because that's what you've been told by your supervisor. However, you may quickly get into difficulty if an unhappy customer has follow-up questions: "Why aren't there any technicians available this month?" "What are they all doing this week?" and so on. I would suggest that you may need to refer such questions to your supervisor.

Answer 8

I fully agree with the Brichins' comment under your original question. You will not find the answer whether this is ethical on this forum, this is something that you can only find out yourself.

It is this whole business/revenue/end of year thing that makes me too think it reeks by some managers' attempt to fix the short term numbers to achieve their end period's targets and get a bonus, without any regards to potential impact on the relationship with the clients and long-term business.

This is something very typical, especially now in the time of aggressive cost savings, and tends to affect pretty much every area of business, e.g. I have seen some very nasty pressures for not paying invoices to suppliers before the quarter-end (let alone year-end!!!) to skew the numbers resulting in loss of service (impacting delivery to clients) and even suits from suppliers because T&Cs of payment were grossly breached.

Larger corporations typically try to fight this tendency by deploying trainings/e-learnings and internal whistle-blowing policies and to be honest what you describe is some of the prototypical cases of what these trainigs identify as suspicious situations. The general rule is if it feels fishy, you should raise/report it, and even if it turns out to be a non-issue, you should be protected by some non-retaliation policy (or legislation), provided you reported the problem cum bona fide (which does not mean it will not strain irreversibly your workplace relationships).

What to do... is up to you (as always:)) and depends largely on your work conditions. My general approach would be to raise this with your direct manager first in some polite and neutral way (but beware, it may also be their bonus at stake!) and perhaps they will alleviate your concerns by giving some very good and plausible reasons (like "3rd party techs are available but just run out of money, so if we order them, we won't be able to pay them, which is in my book unethical behaviour and I'd rather our company to swallow up responsibility even if it means loss of business for us") but if you still feel it is fishy, you can try escalating somewhere further in the business (if you are a large company, you may have a white line to report this kind of stuff anonymously) because somebody higher up might no be of the opinion that mid-level manager's bonus is worth a lost client. Also it may be just a bad business decision (somebody taking directives from Finance over-zealously without assessing the business impact), you never know.

Bad news is that either way, it can cost you your job:

If you raise it and delve into some shady corporate stuff, your manager may try to get rid of you (which again may be technically a wrongful dismissal but not sure if you want to continue the dispute at a court...) - this depends mostly on your workplace culture.

If you do not raise this, your company may lose clients and business and you may find yourself out of a job because of redundancy.

Answer 9

You are looking at it the wrong way. It should be understood that "no technicians are available" does not mean, "no technicians could be made available" -- there are undoubtedly things that could be done (both fair and foul) that would open up a technicians time.

Take a similar situation, Amazon and a book that has a publish or release date. If you call up and say that you want a book today that is scheduled for release tomorrow, and say you don't believe they can't sale you the book today, you are both right and wrong. If you were to kidnap their family and hold them hostage, they could undoubtedly find a way to get you the book today. If you pre-paid a billion dollars, you could undoubtedly get the book today. But in the normal course of business the book will be available tomorrow...

Likewise with your technicians -- you have no technicians available to book for a week, because you have been told not to do so. The fact that a piece of software says they are available, doesn't mean they are available to you.

You aren't lying. On a separate note, the client probably wasn't accusing you of lying, she was probably asking for help -- asking what she could do to get a technician sooner.

Answer 10

Yes, this is definitely lying. Whether or not management is asking you to lie is less clear. My understanding is that they said not to book them, which doesn't strictly mean to lie about it.... and I'm sure if anyone is investigating later their story will be that you were not asked to lie. Then what you can tell customers is that you will not book them a technician sooner or that you are not authorized to book them a technician until next month. At least my reading of the OP's statements is that:

1. Technicians are available
2. They actually can be booked in the system
3. OP has been told not to do so

To say that they are not available is a lie. To say that you cannot is also a lie.

Answers that try to twist lack of availability into some sort of 'in effect' truth are, in my opinion trying to justify their own thought process to avoid the cognitive dissonance of considering themselves liars.

To say that you have been instructed not to is the most true. It passes the buck to management, which is where it really should go, but they will likely not appreciate it as the probably consider customer service their shield of convenience in these matters. So that may be undesirable for the OP's career.

A statement that you/the company will not book a technician sooner is truthful but may be questioned. If they do so then you may need to make the call of stonewalling or passing the buck if you want to avoid lying.

Customer: "I don't believe there isn't a technician available for a whole week"
Call Center: "I'm sorry sir, but the soonest we will book a technician for you is the start of next month."
or
Call Center: "I'm sorry sir, but the soonest I'm authorized to book a technician for you is the start of next month."

You could do it... you're just not supposed to. Some others might say these are silly semantics and they risk more customer anger. I'm of the opinion that semantics are important (the real reason to distinguish between 'can I' and 'may I') and that a customer irritated by this is less of a risk than customers' fury if they find that they're being lied to, and I think that from the customers' point of view it is lying.

I say that to say you cannot would definitely be a lie, the twists and turns in other answers might let you consider it one of a variety of kinds of lies that may have less guilt, e.g. a half truth, a white lie, or misleading.... but a rose by any other name.... etc.. it's still a lie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie

Answer 11

For purposes of this answer, I'm assuming that you've provided correct and complete information and that there are no significant factors that you're not aware of. That is, that the technicians are in fact available -- they're working, have no other commitments, and could do the job if they were scheduled. And that your understanding of the rationale for not booking the technicians is correct -- the supervisor is trying to game the accounting so that revenue is booked in a later quarter.

Yes, you are being asked to lie. When a customer asks you if a technician is available, they are asking whether the technician is working, not assigned to do anything else, and could do the job if assigned it. They're not asking about whether they can help your supervisor game your company's accounting. In the sense the customer is asking, they are available. You are being asked to tell the customers they aren't even though they are.

The test of whether you're being asked to lie is simple -- would telling the whole truth accomplish the same thing as saying what you're asking to say? And here, it's clearly not.

Now, the next question is how big of a deal this is. And to know that, you have to know what the supervisor is trying to accomplish. On the less awful side, they may just be trying to reduce the company's tax obligations by realizing income in a later quarter.

On the more awful side, they may be trying to shift income to a quarter in which they are eligible for bonuses and away from one where they're not. This hurts the company because it means they'll have fewer technicians available next month and will likely produce less total revenue and they'll pay out undeserved bonuses. Also, this puts stress on employees like you, which hurts the company.

But the most important thing is this: People are entitled to get satisfaction from their work and know that they are doing right by the people they interact with. It sounds like your supervisor doesn't think you deserve this because you have not been given sufficient information to know that you are doing this or, worse, are being asked to harm your customers and company so someone's numbers can be inflated.

What you should do about it depends a lot on how much you care about things like this and what other options you have.

Answer 12

You have been told that the technicians are not to be booked, so from the perspective of what you are authorised to do, it is completely true that they are not available.

That said, the clients would probably be extremely annoyed if they found out the reason why they are unavailable. By changing your position from "I have no technician available" to "I have someone available if you insist" you have revealed to the client that technicians are being witheld for reasons other than simple physical availability. Your immediate change of position shows the client that you were not telling them the complete story regarding the availability, which may lead them to have a poor view of the company, and the experience may lead them to be more pushy with you and your colleagues next time they call. These are the reasons, besides disobeying an instruction, that your boss is annoyed with you.

Some clients may be more inconvenienced by a technical issue than others, and some clients may be more important to the business than others. If you feel that a particular client who spends a lot of money will be particularly inconvenienced by the lack of a technician, you can tell them "I can take your details call you back if a technician becomes available" then put the phone down and discuss the situation with the manager. If the manager agrees, you can then call the client back and tell them you have managed to find someone. There are two advantages to this approach. 1) You have followed your boss's orders 2) Instead of looking like you were trying to hide availability from the client, you now look like you have made a special effort to find availability for them.

An example from my own experience: Not long ago I had one of our technicians on a client site who required a particular spare to perform a breakdown service (free of charge under warranty.) Our spares department found a supplier who had one for $5000 immediately, and another who had one for $1500 on a one month lead time. The spares guy and I decided the best thing to do was not to tell the client about the $5000 option until he had finished checking other suppliers. The client phoned me to check on progress, and I told him "the best we have at the moment is one month, we are checking with other suppliers." The client then wrote me an email about how he needed to get his production line running again. We discussed this with management, and we made a business decision: it was worth taking the $5000-$1500=$3500 hit in order to maintain goodwill with the client. The $5000 spare was sent to them overnight and installed a day later.

Answer 13

Yes - If you know they are available but you tell the customer they aren't, you are lying. You have to decide if you can live with that. The why doesn't matter and doesn't determine whether you are lying.

There may be times when as an adult (or even a child) you have to lie to protect something (your job) or someone (your mother's terrible cooking).

You can maybe make it easier on everyone involved by saying, "There are no available slots until next month." But it is a lie. If you are willing to lie for your employer is completely your decision, but sometimes decisions have consequences, physically (loss of income) and spiritually (loss of self).

You can try to say "My boss made me lie, but you are ultimately the one delivering the lie

Answer 14

Try this absolutely honest answer:

"I don't know the exact reasons, but I'm not able to book a technician before [date]. I'm really sorry about that. Would you like me to book you the first appointment I have after that?"

Short simple and honest.