Snitches get stitches, but in the world of sibling loyalty, the price of keeping a secret can sometimes cost you your career. She tried to guard her sister’s explosive secret, only to blow up her own life in the process.
It’s a classic ethical nightmare: do you protect the person who was literally in the womb with you, or do you save your own skin when the parental interrogation starts?
This young woman has a twin sister who got kicked out of college after she failed all of her courses. How did she manage that? Well, she didn’t show up to a single class.
Her sister only got kicked out for a year, and there was a period of time during which her sister was invited to appeal the decision. Except…her sister missed the deadline to do that.
Her sister told her about getting kicked out while she was home for Christmas before requesting that she not share the news with their mom and dad.
She promised to keep her sister’s secret, but said she had to hurry up and get a full-time job or enroll in courses online in order to account for all of her free time.
She did give her sister a deadline to tell their mom and dad the truth, which was supposed to be the end of April. In hindsight, she thinks she should have pushed her sister harder to come clean.
“Last month, when I asked about this again, she told me she liked the amount of free time she had now to talk to friends and didn’t want to work full-time,” she explained.
“Over the last four months, our parents have been remarking about [my] sister’s schedule, and asking whether I thought she was going to uni or not. I stayed silent or answered with a shrug when asked.”
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
“Today, they confronted my sister, and everything came crashing down. I also work for my father’s business, and was about to get a promotion. Today, my mum called and told me that he doesn’t feel like he can trust me to do the work anymore.”
On top of the punishment, she’s scared that she’s at risk of losing her job. So, she’s left wondering if she was wrong to not tell her mom and dad the truth sooner, or if she was justified in trying to cover for her sister.
I don’t believe it’s inherently wrong to want to cover for a sibling who messed up royally. Nevertheless, her parents did ask her outright about whether or not she thought her sister was still going to college, and that should have been her opportunity to tell them, especially since her sister has been living the lie for a long time.
If you don’t tell the truth when asked a direct question, you can’t really be trusted, can you? So it makes sense to me that her parents have deemed her untrustworthy, and that’s definitely not a quality her dad wants in an employee, I’m sure.
What do you think?
You can read the original post below.
By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
