Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right
Had a fellow call my office and tell me he wanted our firm to handle negotiations with some of the big companies in the vinyl siding industry. I figured he had some new product that he wanted to sell or license,
But no, when he came in he disclosed that he had discovered a defect in the vinyl siding and actually wanted us to demand a large sum of money from these companies or else he was going to disclose this defect to the news.
Turns out he was a day laborer who had just recently been assigned to a construction project and “discovered” that you can cut vinyl house siding with a sharp knife (which is the way it is actually cut on-site to be installed).
The siding is supposed to be installed over a plywood backing, but his boss had told him to skip putting up the backing panels to save money. He felt that homeowners were in danger because, without the wood backing, criminals could use this knowledge to enter people’s houses,
And he felt it was his solemn duty to report this to the public. That is, unless the vinyl siding companies were to cough up a bunch of cash…
Basically his employer was scamming customers and he felt that justified his extortion of the manufacturers and wanted us to legitimize his efforts to extort money from this industry.
It was a little uncomfortable to point out that, in fact he and his boss were the criminals, and that he really didn’t have a case. Story credit: Reddit / [deleted]