Ask A Manager: refusing to work for a customer for moral reasons,

[minoanmiss]

[Be warned, the the main discussion of the post is s about #3, a letter about a coworker with gastric issues. At least people are being pretty good about labeling their responses. Beyond the ... details... it is fast descending into a fight between proponents and opponents of ableism. Thhs is letter #1] about the ethics of refusing service.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/07/refusing-to-work-for-a-customer-for-moral-reasons-a-horrendous-bathroom-problem-and-more.html

How can I refuse to work for a customer I have moral objections to?

As a field technician, how do you refuse, professionally, to do work for a customer that you have deep moral objections to?

I work for a company that provides essential building services (think fire alarm, plumbing, HVAC, electrical) and believe that everyone deserves to have a safe, healthy, and comfortable work environment, which I work hard to maintain. Whoever you are, if you have a problem, I’ll do whatever, wherever, to try to fix it. I will always be polite and professional, but I refuse to support, let’s say, customers that kidnap others off the street without due process, or their detention facilities, or logistical support, etc.

It hasn’t come up yet, but it might, and I won’t know until I’m dispatched. I might not even know until I walk in the door. Is this something I should bring up proactively or wait until it happens? What’s the best way to deal with it if I suddenly find myself the very last place I want to be?

In some jobs, you’d be able to talk to your manager ahead of time and say you’re not comfortable serving those clients and ask if there’s a way to ensure you’re not sent to them. In others, that would be a no-go. So it’s going to depend on what your company culture is like, your relationship with your manager, and how much political capital you have there. They might say, “We’ll do our best but we can’t guarantee it; if you’re the one available then, you’ll have to do it.” They also might say, “You can’t pick and choose your assignments that way at all.”

So you might need to decide how firm a stance you’re willing to take — or, more to the point, what consequences you’re willing to accept for that stance. Are you willing to lose your job over it? If so, that gives you a lot of freedom to simply refuse, knowing that you’ve thought through the potential repercussions and are willing to accept whatever they might be. If you’re not willing to lose your job over it and they send you to one of those customers, you don’t have much room to maneuver, unfortunately.

Comments

[ioplokon]

Or go and do as bad a job as you can w/o getting caught. :3

[dissectionist]

Doing a poor job can bite you in the ass because if it fails again, many companies will send the same tech tech as before (because they’re assumed to already have some familiarity with those specific machines). So it might just end up putting you back in the same place again.

I used to be in the trades and occasionally had to deal with misogynist shitlords. When that happened, I’d still have to go do it, but I assigned a silent PST - the Pain and Suffering Tax - that rose with every comment they made, every second they spent watching like a hawk at my elbow because they didn’t trust the ability of someone in an AFAB body, etc. They ended up paying a lot more than the average person for the same repair, and they never knew. But the higher price probably also meant that they’d be more likely to call another company the next time, and then they’re not my problem anymore.

[ioplokon]

You're right, but is it too much to hope they're stuck with really annoying and persistent water hammer issues or something?

[dissectionist]

Oh, they deserve any misery anyone can put their way. :)

[melannen]

LW if you really want to not have to do this (and if you want you not doing this to make a difference) you need to work for a company that doesn't take those people on as clients. That might mean job-hunting until you find one. It might mean doing what you can to pressure your current company not to - whether that's consistently making management aware of how uncomfortable you are doing it short of refusing, or it's working together with a larger group of employees or a union to work together on pressuring them, or making it as unpleasant as possible for them via any little sabotages, delays, bureaucracies or up charges you can get away with. But individually refusing isn't really going to do much except make you feel better (and honestly, refusing to fix the a/c at the detention center isn't really helping the detainees either.)

[redbird]

It might make sense to refuse the assignment during the construction phase, to hopefully delay the project. But once those facilities are open, as you say, the people making the decisions don't care if the conditions in the detention center are horrible, including that they don't care if ICE employees are also stuck in overcrowded, poorly ventilated conditions without running water.