For the wrong reasons

I've always turned in vacation day requests via email or calendar invites to my boss.  He's approved all three that I've taken this year, but it seemed to be a fairly informal process. Well, my boss is "no longer with the organization", and I've now found out that we have an office absence database used to submit vacation and personal day requests.

As it turns out, I didn't even have a profile in the database, and all three of the vacation days I've taken this year have been undocumented.  Today, I called the administrator of the database and asked to have a profile created, as I have a new boss and just found out about this system.  To my surprise (well, not really), none of the vacation days I've taken were listed in the system.  So, I looked through my calendar, found the days I had taken, and entered them in the past.

I know what you're thinking, "Wow, how honest; what integrity he has!"  And I wish I could say that you're right, but the truth is you're not.

Internally, I thought, "I could probably have these three extra vacation days, and nobody would know the difference."  Instead of thinking, "I need to do the right thing here," I thought, "Is there any way that people could find out?"  The more I thought about it, I realized that the dates were on my calendar, my peers' calendars, and my former boss's calendar.  And I knew that it was possible for someone to find out, and I could get in trouble if I went through with it.

So I emailed my new boss, told her I would be submitting the past dates, and I entered them into the system.  I did the right thing, but I did it for the wrong reasons; in fact, I probably tooted my own righteousness horn to my new boss, even though I considered the alternative option.  My desire is to be a person of integrity, but instead of doing the right thing because it's the right thing, I did it out of fear of punishment.   As it stands, my integrity goes as far as the potential risk outweighs the potential benefit.

It is my prayer to leave my selfishness beside and always do the right thing regardless of the circumstances.  This time:  Major fail.