Up, Down and All Around

To cross or not to cross

Today I had the unpleasant experience of being asked to lie for a friend.

It all started several months ago. A friend (and I use the term loosely) had sent me something he had written, and asked me to write a glowing review for it. Out of courtesy, I looked at his work and felt it wasn't particularly great. If it had not been sent to me by someone I know personally, I would probably have thrown it into the dustbin after the first three or four pages. Granted, if you took the trouble to read the whole thing, you will find some meat in it. Unfortunately, what little meat there was had been garbled so badly that I didn't know how I could possibly endorse his work, much less write a glowing review. I had even been tempted to offer editing it, but by the time he had given me a copy, it had already been too late.

It took me a couple of days to figure out how to respond to that request, but I finally decided that I could at least highlight the good points, while downplaying or not mentioning the bad points. I rationalized to myself that everything will be okay as long as I stay factual, even if I wasn't totally forthcoming with all the facts. It was a compromise that wouldn't cause me to lose any sleep at night. And after all, it was a favor. If favors were so easy to grant, they wouldn't mean anything, right?

So anyway, I wrote the factual review and carefully checked each word to make sure it wasn't misleading. Then I promptly put that whole incident out of my mind...

Until today.

Because today, I received an urgent message from my friend (after not hearing from him since I submitted my review). He says that someone else has written a malicious and terrible review of his work, and he wants my help to discredit the guy who wrote the bad review.

Feeling a bit uneasy, I went to read the review... and you know what? I couldn't do what my friend was asking me to do. I couldn't discredit the guy. Because as I was reading the bad review, I couldn't help but agree with all the points that the reviewer had raised. It was all too true, and I couldn't bring myself to discredit someone who had the guts to write the very points that I had not dared to verbalize for fear of hurting my friend's feelings.

So here I am, somewhat at a loss as to how to break the news to my friend. I'm sure he will be offended when he learns that I won't be doing as he has asked. No doubt he will question my friendship, and I wouldn't really blame him if he did. I am already dreading the inevitable guilt trip that he will be laying on me.

Having said that, I can't help but feel that we each have lines that we cannot, in clear conscience, bring ourselves to cross. He may feel that I'm being a bad friend by refusing to cross this particular line. But I can't help but feel that he's the one who is being a bad friend by asking me to cross the line in the first place.

Tags: Organizations, Editing, Relationships

Posted by CF at 9:20 PM