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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>shower you with coffee and donuts to much friendlier offers to get sales.

If I was working a cushy admin job, I'd need way more bribery than $5 worth of coffee and doughnuts to intentionally select a worse vendor, especially if the decision would negatively impact my colleagues and get me flak.

>Why is it so hard to imagine people who work in education would have flexible ethics for personal gain?

Because if you read the other comments, there are perfectly reasonable explanations that don't involve graft. Jumping to "bribe" every time there's bad behavior is just lazy thinking and means you don't actually figure out what the root of the problem is.

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>Because if you read the other comments, there are perfectly reasonable explanations that don't involve graft. Jumping to "bribe" every time there's bad behavior is just lazy thinking and means you don't actually figure out what the root of the problem is.

Right. I'm sure, in spite of this and the decades of overwhelming evidence, this was all just a silly coincidence, and they can lower food prices now.

Edit: I'm shitlimited to five posts per X number of hours, so I'm going to respond here: the evidence is in TFA, thanks.

>in spite of this and the decades of overwhelming evidence

Where's all this "overwhelming evidence"? So far the only that's presented is "my university is pepsi only so there must be something shady going on" and "vendors buy me coffee so there must be administrators corrupting themselves and risking their 6 figure jobs for $5 worth of inducements"

edit:

>Edit: I'm shitlimited to five posts per X number of hours, so I'm going to respond here: the evidence is in TFA, thanks.

Searches for "bribe" and "kickbacks" don't turn anything up. If you're talking about the unsealed FTC complaint, that's anti-competitive behavior, but not the "kickbacks" that OP was talking about (ie. some administrator abusing their position of trust to personally enrich themselves). Both are bad, but they're not remotely comparable. For one, in the case of kickbacks, the organization and its members are harmed (through worse contracts), whereas for whatever walmart and pepsi agreed to, both benefited.

That’s you.

But a lot of people are poorly paid and free coffee is nice.

It might not be enough to select a worse vendor but if two are equal it’s easy to pick the one with the cute sales representative who knows how you like your coffee.

Then there is the leadership who plays golf together and use the company card to buy gifts (booze) for the deciders.

It’s not bribery it’s just subtle influence;)

And it’s everywhere, it’s the same at the various higher education colleges I worked at.

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