I have been having some very complicated ethical questions about my job. It's nothing that is going to make me quit, or even make a fuss (and believe me, I will make a fuss at the drop of a hat) but it is thought provoking. I was in a meeting yesterday about creating some lesson plans for kids that would be used in schools to promote our videos, and I started talking about how many impressions are we going to get, and what kind of response rates we could expect. And one of my coworkers, who is perhaps living in a dream world, said "well, it's not like we're just doing this 100% to sell product". And we all looked at him like he was insane, and my boss said "well, we're doing it 99.8% to sell product." And I thought, what a chump.

So here is my question...who is the bigger asshole? Is it me for knowingly trying to sell crap to kids in the classroom, which is obviously an inappropriate venue for advertising, or is it this guy for creating a little fantasy in his head where he is actually doing some kind of public service by trying to sell them shit?

Another question...we are creating lesson plans which possibly could be useful to teachers, and which won't appear in the classroom unless the teacher does deem them somehow useful, and which just incidentally suggest that purchasing some of our genuinely educational videos could be a good thing to do. Is there a real moral difference between that and advertising junk food on the egregious Channel One?

Last question for now...I'm obviously not going to quit my job over this. Would I quit if I were asked to make a junk food ad for Channel One? Where would I draw the line? Where should I?