The Ethics of Sales

I promise this will be my last post about cell phones I swear, but I find it absolutely mind boggling how crazy people are getting over the iPhone 5. One of my friends who was the owner of an iPhone 4, was so eager about the new release of the iPhone 5 that he actually waited in line the night before so he could purchase the new phone as soon as the clock hit midnight. Now I have been to midnight showings for movies and I have even went to a store at midnight to purchase a new movie or album, but I will never understand being that obsessed with a new phone that’s coming out, especially if I already owned the most recent model of it.

When I was in the store picking out my new phone, my parents and I were talking to the salesmen and I asked him about the iPhone 5 and if a lot of people had been in the store getting it. He said that there had initially been a pretty big rush to get the new phone but the most astonishing thing the he told us was about a mother that came in with her 7 year- old son, in hopes of purchasing him the new phone.

 

As my parents and I stared at the salesman in disbelief, he described to us his mixed feelings in making the sale. He said that the salesman in him was telling him to just take the money and move on, but there was a part of him that wanted to advise the mother to use her money elsewhere. None of us could even understand why a 7-year-old would need a phone, let alone the iPhone 5. But I guess sometimes when you’re in sales, you have to figure out where that moral line is and whether or not you’re willing to cross it.