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Case Studies
A friendship too far
Sally worked in the Sales Department of an airline. New to the company and under great pressure, she found it difficult to sell air tickets, especially during the low seasons. Sally’s good friend, Pauline, worked for a travel agency and always persuaded her customers to buy air tickets from Sally’s company.
One day, Sally received a warning letter regarding her poor sales results. She was so upset that she went to Pauline for comfort. During the meeting, Pauline received a phone call from an insurance company which requested 50 air tickets for a corporate trip to attend a convention in Europe. Pauline knew that this would be a good opportunity to help Sally. She therefore marked up other airlines’ prices in order to sell the air tickets of Sally’s company. Based upon the inaccurate information provided by Pauline, the client subsequently chose Sally’s airline.
Case Analysis
By deceiving her client with inaccurate information, Pauline breached the trust that her company, and her client placed upon her. As an employee of the travel agent, Pauline should have exercised her duty diligently and used her discretion in a fair and transparent manner. Worse still, Pauline might also commit fraud under Section 16A of the Theft Ordinance by overstating the prices offered by other airlines when submitting the quotations to the clients.
Pauline got herself involved in a conflict of interest situation. She gave her personal relationship a higher priority than work integrity. The act of aiding the sales of Sally’s airline tickets by recklessly marking up the prices of others was not only unfair to other airlines, but also placed the credibility of the Pauline’s company at stake. It may also attract complaints from the airlines and clients if they discovered the truth.