Consider the seven values used for ethically defining jobs: meaningful work, leisure time, money, power, prestige, comfort, and security.

• Just from what you’ve read about Everman and Cobain, which values do they share? Where do they diverge?
• Are there any values not on the list that could be added to apply to the careers of either Everman or Cobain?

Everman worked to live; Cobain lived to work.

• What does that mean?
• Do you think it’s true? Explain.
• Does this split also divide up the seven values used for ethically defining jobs? If not, why not? If so, what’s the split?

Everman is a sequencer; he wholeheartedly followed one career path, then a second, and a third. He’s a different kind of sequencer than the more standard version: a man or woman following a single main career path interrupts it to do something else (have a child, start a small company, travel around the world) and then returns to the old job.

• What’s the difference between these two kinds of sequencing in terms of the value of work and what it can give you?
• Would it be useful to have different names for these two types of sequencers, or would that be splitting hairs?

Cobain comes to believe that he’s unethically exploiting consumers.

• In what sense is he unethically exploiting consumers?
• What does Cobain’s feeling reveal about the values he associates with his work life?
• Was Cobain’s response to his perceived failure justifiable? Explain.

What are some of the advantages to being a policeman? What are some of the advantages to being a drug dealer? Presumably, Pulido started out being an honest cop, and over the course of ten years fell (or climbed) into the illegal drug business. Can you imagine how the seven values of his work might have shifted as this transformation developed?

• Which values grew in importance?
• Which might have fallen away?
• Could any of the values have been maintained through the shift in professions?

Imagine that you are considering two career directions: joining the police academy or growing some pot in the basement and getting a start in the drug-dealing business.

• Regardless of whether you’d ever actually do it, what ethical theory (duties, rights, utilitarianism, some other) could be employed to justify the decision to go the drug route?
• What ethical theory (duties, rights, utilitarianism, some other) could you employ to justify the decision to go the police route?

From the newspaper report on the Pulido case, “Pulido bought a Hyde Park building where his wife began teaching dance to children—and where once a month for the next several years Pulido hosted and provided protection for drug-and-sex parties. Admittance ran from twenty to forty dollars, and narcotics were often in open use. Lap dances in the “boom-boom room” cost an additional twenty dollars. As many as one hundred people attended on a given night, including well-known felons, drug dealers, and law-enforcement officers—some in uniform.”

Compare and contrast Pulido’s wife’s job and Pulido’s. Which post is most desirable for the person valuing prestige?

In a sense, Pulido’s wife worked for her husband. By running a dance school out of the building where Pulido operated, she provided cover for his operation.

• How could the argument be made that she has an ethical responsibility to resign from her job by shutting down the dance classes so that her husband could no longer use the space to sell drugs?
• In ethical terms, how could she justify pretending not to know what was going on in her building once a month?
• In ethical terms, and assuming she explicitly recognizes and accepts that she’s providing space and cover for her husband’s activities, how could she justify continuing to work for his operation?

Ethically troubling exploitation in the fashion industry.

• Do you think she thinks there’s exploitation in the fashion industry? Where?
• If there is exploitation—if something ethically reproachable is going on—what’s her relation to that blemish? Is she guilty too? Explain.

This comparison is a list of facts. Can you go through the list and attach ethical value to the facts? In terms of what value(s) does each fact make a job more or less desirable?

• Make the ethical case that it’s better to go the paralegal route.
• Make the ethical case that it’s better to go the lawyer route.