Prompt
Your close friend Priya opened a small bakery a year ago, and you work there 20 hours a week for $16 an hour while you finish your degree. She has three other part-time employees. A customer has ordered an $1,800 wedding cake and 200 pastries for Saturday, the biggest order the bakery has ever had. Priya tells you she is two months behind on the bakery's rent and cannot afford to pay anyone for extra hours. She asks you to come in for eight hours on Saturday without pay, saying, "I'd do the same for you. This is a friend thing, not a work thing." She also asks you not to mention it to the other employees. What would you do?
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What this question tests
- Professionalism and integrity
- Communication
- Ethical reasoning
How to approach this question
This MMI station tests whether you can protect a friendship while recognizing that working unpaid, and keeping it secret from coworkers, crosses a professional boundary. Name the tension: your loyalty to Priya and her struggling bakery against fairness to the other employees and to yourself. Say what you'd want to know, such as whether she could pay you later, and think about how your coworkers would feel if they found out. Weigh helping for free, helping on fair terms, and declining kindly. Decide clearly, and explain how you'd talk to Priya about it. When a follow-up exposes the arrangement to a coworker, think about honesty with him and what it means that he refused the same request.
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