I'm watching Telemarketers and it's reminding me of shady jobs I've had in the past.
I worked for Rent-a-Center doing collections. It's a place that preys on the poorest people in America, getting them to pay extortionate interest on rent to own furniture, appliances and electronics. We had customers who would end up paying thousands of dollars on a couch that wasn't even new when they got it. Even worse was people who would hit hard times and get their stuff repoed and end up with nothing to show for thousands of dollars in payments.
My job was to learn when these customers got paid, or when they got their disability or welfare check and hound them over the phone or in person. If they didn't pay, I'd be sent out to knock on their doors. If that failed I'd be sent to repo it.
It was a soul crushing job. I've had shit jobs, but I'd never had a job that made me feel like I was doing harm to people before. Some of my coworkers would deal with this by demonizing the customers, acting like they were all deadbeats who deserved to get fleeced. Others would blame the customers, saying shit like, 'Anyone stupid enough to buy here was going to get ripped off by someone, and it might as well be us'.
I couldn't do that, so I started getting fucked up at work like Pat Pespis. I started pretending to do my job, dialing the number and then hitting the flash button and faking the calls. I'd get sent on a repo and my coworker and I would go out to eat or to the mall and pretend they wouldn't answer the door. I expected my collection stats would fall low enough that I'd eventually be fired, but they barely moved at all. It turned out that hounding people to pay a bill wasn't actually doing much.
Like someone else said in the thread, every job I've had (I've been working for over 20 years) has had its share of negative moral implications.
During the second Iraq war I was unemployed and needing work bad. My relationship was suffering and we needed money bad. Minimum wage was $5.15/hr at the time and my friend told me of a job that was hiring on a temporary basis for over $19/hr, more than three times what I had ever earned. The job involved dressing up as an "Arab civilian" and assisting as a performer during mock battles on a military base testing sensors to be applied on the battlefield. There was even opportunity to time and a half over time for shifts over 8 hours. It was a ton of hurry up and wait and I don't remember doing much of anything but standing around. I still feel awful about it.
Now I have a union job working in a sort of Library, and I wish I could say it was much better. But there is racism, classism, soul destroying needless consumption on an annual basis to justify budgets, etc etc. I could go on about restaurants and grocery stores and landscaping and construction and housing but dear god let me tell you they all have a way of weighing on your moral compunctions. I get sad when I think about how this is gonna be it forever until it gets worse and breaks, but the breaking gives me hope.