She Made a Hard Call

Brenda walked down the hallway to the administrative offices, staring at all the pictures on the wall. The governor congratulating the president of the organization. Three staff members onstage with some celebrities, shaking hands. Plaques and media clips raving about what a wonderful service organization this was.

What a crock, Brenda thought, sitting down at her desk. If they only knew. 

“Everybody skims off the top,” her boss had said. “It’s no big deal. It’s a perk we get for being in the service industry. They don’t pay us enough to live. It’s how we get rewarded for all our hard work.”

Brenda had been writing the checks for perks for months now. It was her job. It would be so much easier if I was just a stranger, someone cold they’d brought in, she thought. The problem is, these people who are stealing are my friends.

She tried to look the other way. Today she stared the problem right in the face. A client had pulled her aside, complained about the lack of services he was getting and the quality of the food the program was serving to him.

“I’m sick of this slop, Brenda,” he said. “And I’m hungry all the time. What’s the deal? Why can’t they feed us right here?”

Brenda had hemmed and hawed. Inside she was boiling. The reason the clients weren’t getting fed is because the people at the top were getting fat. Money that was supposed to be going one place was going someplace else. She stared at the phone. If she picked it up and made that call—reported the agency to the powers that be—the program would close. She’d be out of a job—and this was work she had wanted to do for a long time. Her friends would be out of work, too. They might never work in this field again. If she didn’t make the call the agency would continue to do its work in the world, and some of that work was valuable and good.

She wished she could just stay numb, keep looking the other way. But the anger boiling inside her today was too much to deny. The clients were dependent on this program to meet their needs while they were here; they were vulnerable adults.

She hauled out the phone book, looked up the number. Her hands were sweating as she picked up the phone.

“I’d like to talk to someone in the licensing department,” she said. “I work for a social-services program and I have an internal problem to report—one you might want to investigate.”

When she hung up the phone she still felt anxious, guilty, and scared. A lot of unknowns had just come into play—her job, her future, her relationships with her friends. But oddly enough, another feeling ran deeper than those. Peace. For the first time in months she got a good night’s sleep.

She was going to have to live with a lot of problems in her future, but at least she could live with herself.

What is our responsibility? What isn’t? What are our intentions? What’s right? What’s wrong? How involved should we become? Which path do we take? Neither option feels good. But one feels really wrong.

That’s why they’re called hard calls.

From the book: Choices: Taking Control of Your Life and Making It Matter

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