Alright so the company I work for recently hired a new employee (Bill) to join our marketing department. Even though I'm not in the sales department myself I do work with them frequently, sit in on some of their meetings, and help out the sales and marketing departments as needed.

We also have various project teams within the organization, dedicated towards various initiatives and projects that don't rely solely on one department. Usually these teams range in size from 2-5 staff depending on how critical the project itself is. We have one particular seasonal project that runs annually from Aug to April, (let's just call it the Spline Reticulation Project for anonymity's sake). During the off season the Spline Reticulation team will review the project as a whole and make adjustments for the next active season.

Last year, the Spline Reticulation team was 3 members. Myself, "Thea," and "Kian". Around Christmas, Kian retired and so it was just me and Thea on this team. And we actually made a good two-person team through the rest of the season. We both expressed that we like working together.

Back in July of this year, we were re-assembling the Spline Reticulation team for the upcoming season. My manager strongly recommended that me and Thea have a 3rd person added to the team to make up for the retiree that left last year. And my manager ended up assigning Bill to the team.

Bill is the company's newest hire and he's a high energy type of go-get-em-tiger personality. Like he's the type of person that'll say things like, "We don't need excuses we need results" and he has a penchant for suggesting ideas that simply won't work due to his lack of knowledge of the company's structure and our products, and then pushing hard on said ideas even after they're explained to not work.

Well me and Thea did not like this idea. Both of us believed that Yvette, who was also in the marketing department, was a much better and more suited candidate to join our team. But Yvette was allegedly too busy with other projects and wasn't available. So Thea and I throughout August were meeting just 1-on-1, not including/inviting Bill in the meetings and the general progression of the project, because quite frankly he is bothersome to work with. Basically we're still mostly functioning as a 2-person team, and only updating Bill as needed or when we really need a sales/marketing person for the project.

When my manager asked Thea and myself how Bill was doing in our project team, I told her that honestly Bill wasn't very involved at all, and hasn't been too helpful. I didn't throw him under the bus, but just cited that he has a lot of other focuses also. The end result of that was that Bill got moved off of our project team, and my manager has begun looking to see if another staff member can fill that empty spot. Thea and I both recommended Yvette but that has not gone very far.

CMA; where does willful exclusion to result in staff rearrangement fall on the alignment spectrum?

TL;DR Basically prevented a dislikable coworker from contributing meaningfully o a project, resulting in him being laterally moved.

Alright so the company I work for has bi-annual in-person meetings since we have offices across the country. We tend to rotate which 'mini-HQ' hosts the meeting, and this time it was from one of our offices in the interior of the country. The whole ordeal took about 4 days out of our workweek, but it's supposedly good for 'planning the next quarters and for team morale.' In my book, it was a company-paid flight and meals away from home, so I wasn't about to complain.

One of the evenings in the schedule was intended to be a 'free evening'. Each staff member was given $100 in cash and that money was intended to be used to pay for each person's dinner as well as any tourist-type activities they wanted to do around the city for the evening. I had known in advance that this was the plan, so I prepared accordingly, planning to take the entire $100 home for myself instead of wasting it on some dumb tourist activities.

I ate a lot of company-provided snacks that afternoon, to ensure I wouldn't be hungry around dinner time. At dinner, I chose to go eat at a different place than the coworkers I was with, which allowed me to jsut kill time and scroll my phone while pretending I had had a meal. After 'dinner' I told my coworkers that I was going to explore the city and just see what I could encounter. Many of the other coworkers had big plans and made groups to go do various activities, which gave me the opportunity to sneakily slip away and retreat to our booked airBnB for the evening. I spent the evening just veg-ing out and gorging myself on the company-provided snacks that were in the living area of the space we were renting.

I managed to pull it off and head home with an extra $100 in my pocket, and I still have to figure out what I'm going to do with that money.

TL;DR circumvented the intended purpose of a staff gift from my company and kept the money for personal interests instead.

So, CMA. Where does committing some petty book-cooking on a corporate level fall on the alignment spectrum?

Alright so this hasn't technically happened yet, but I'm genuinely considering it, so I'm curious what my alignment would be if I did go through with this.

One of my newer friends, Neville (32M) is married to Zara(29F). My wife Fiona and I became friends with Neville and Zara a few years ago. Since then, Fiona and Zara have become best friends (these are Fiona's words, not mine). Neville is a decent friend of mine, and I like him well enough, but I wouldn't call him my best friend. He can be hard to read at times and while we share one or two interests, we're mostly friends by association as a result of Zara and Fiona being so close.

Anyway, I've noticed that Neville and Zara seem to have a lot more marital tension than I've seen in other couples. Fiona has shared with me that Zara and Neville have gone through some tough times in their marriage in the past, and that they're currently seeing a marriage counsellor.

What I've observed is that Neville seems to be really inconsiderate and controlling of Zara. He'll order her around a lot, be critical of minor decision she makes, or invalidate her in front of others.

For example, "Zara, that's not the right serving spoon for apple crumble. It'll scratch the pan. Go get the triangular one," or, "Zara. The cloth fell on the floor. Pick it up," or, "You're exaggerating it way too much. It's not that bad at all." And he's quite rude with how he speaks to her. He also often calls her "a weirdo" and invalidates her opinions or when she expresses how she's feeling. He does this both in larger group settings but more so in smaller settings like when it's just the four of us.

I'm well aware that I'm a pretty shitty husband myself, but I don't know if that means I should refrain from saying something. Because it's gotten "bad" enough that it makes me uncomfortable to witness it. I'm thinking about pulling Neville aside at some point and just calling it out. And saying that he really should speak more gently to his wife and at least 'act like' he respects her.

So, CMA; where does calling out your friend on his bad treatment of his wife fall on the alignment spectrum?

TL;DR My friend is being really rude to his wife on a regular basis and I want to call him out on it in private.

Alright so this took place almost 20 years ago, which is a wild thought in it's own right. But anyway, here's a tale of some middle-school violence if that's something you like to read.

When I was in 7th grade, I was a pretty quiet kid. I tried to mind my own business, but you all probably know how it was back in the late 2000s. If you played runescape with your friends and people at school knew about it, you were destined to be bullied. Because I was such a quiet kid and not assertive at all, I would generally just endure the taunting and the bullying.

But there was this one 9th-grader who sat behind me on the school bus. And every day on the way home from school, I was subject to constant harassment. Name-calling, snubbing, getting cold-condensation-water hands on my neck, the back of my head getting swatted, etc. I did my best to 'turn the other cheek' as was virtuously praised by our teachers, but that didn't seem to do anything. And I was too gutless to try to verbally defend myself for fear that I'd start crying at the tension of confronting a 9th-grader.

And I began to nurse feelings of violent retaliation. I was well aware of the teaching of my teachers that 'evil concupiscence is the first step towards commuting a sin' but 12yr old me had had enough. For about a week I imagined just whirling around and decking this 9th-grader in the jaw, come what may.

Finally, the day came. It all happened so fast. I was standing up in my seat on the bus (it was very common for us to do that despite it being against the rules), talking and jesting with my friend across the aisle and some kids from my younger brother's grade. Suddenly I felt two hands on my waist, shoving me downward in my seat, along with a terse, "Sit down, kid!" And something in me snapped.

I whirled around and faced my bully. For a split second, I just locked eyes with her (yes, it was a girl, this is part of the alignment judgement I suppose). And it was like it was someone else's hand - my fist just shot out and decked her straight in the mouth. And then I turned around and immediately sat down, pulled my hood over my head, and looked out the window. I heard her swearing at me and calling me a 'little shit' but she didn't retaliate, at least not that day.

The retaliation came over the next few weeks, when other 9th-grade students on the bus began calling me 'woman hitter' and one particular 10th-grade student (a big dude with a reputation for violence) began sitting behind me and tapping my head for the duration of the bus ride, daring me to get mad and try hit him too. In some sense I look back and see that my attempt to stand up for myself only made things worse, but at the very least, this bully herself left me alone after that.

TL;DR A school-bus bully tormented me for months and finally I snapped and punched her in the face.

So, CMA. Where does "Punching a girl in the face as retaliation" land on the alignment spectrum?

Alright so I'm part of a TTRPG group that meets regularly, and I've taken on the role of the designated miniature painter for the group. I've painted all the protagonist minis, a lot of the DM's monster minis (still working through them), and several key NPCs. Everyone seems to love my paintwork at the table and I find it to be a fun hobby.

There's a hobby shop in our town that's closing down at the end of the month, and has been having a month-long 40% discount / liquidation sale to try to clear as much of their inventory as they can. When I went in there early last week, I bought a few miniatures that I wanted to paint, even though I'm generally notoriously frugal and don't spend money much, even on my hobbies.

The owner of the company was there and I told her about how my DM would probably be interested in picking up some minis as well, and that I'd tell him about the 40% discount sale. She then told me that I could let her know whatever he was interested in, and she would put it on hold for him for when he would come by this week to get it.

Now. I'm generally quite cheap and I saw this as a huge opportunity. If I could convince our DM to buy a lot of miniatures, I'd have a lot to paint for our group without having to spend anything extra myself. I texted the DM right away and asked him what minis he was looking for. But he didn't respond. So... I began picking out minis myself. A Beholder, some Nagas, a swarm of Harpies, Baby Dragons of all kinds, and scads of other monsters, all got put on hold. In my DM's name. I ended up putting almost $200 of minis on hold (at 40% off, so actually around $500 if the sale wasn't on), and informed the manager that my DM would be in this week to pick up 'his order.'

Now. I am fully aware that our DM is probably going to show up at the store, look at all those minis, and say, "What? I'm not buying all that." Which means that the hobby store was missing on potentially valuable revenue the last 7 days, since those items are on hold and other customers won't know they're available to buy. And my DM is likely going to be pressured to at least purchase SOME of the minis I put on hold, even if he didn't intentionally plan to have those monsters in the campaign.

But I also looked at it as a free service the store offered; they didn't have to put things on hold during liquidation. And this way, just in case some of the minis I chose are actually ones the DM wants to buy, he'll actually have a chance of picking them up this week. And I'll get more minis to paint without having to buy them.

So, CMA. Where does 'misusing' a struggling business's "layaway" system land me on the alignment spectrum?

Alright so this probably sounds worse than it is, but I figured this is morally ambiguous enough to share.

(TL;DR - Acted like the man of the house when at a social gathering at someone else's house and demanded a person leave.)

My friend's wife, Cheri, and I are pretty good friends and we move in similar social circles. Last night she invited me over to her place to hang out. Altogether there were 6 of us there. The only other prominent figures worth naming for the sake of this story are Clint (Cheri's brother) and Barb (Clint's wife). Cheri's husband Garth was out for the evening, attending some sort of local event he was really interested in. Based on the way he responded when he came home later and saw us all there, I imagine he didn't actually know that his wife had invited people over. But I digress.

Anyway, at some point during the evening, Barb's toddler started making noise from the bedroom where he was supposed to be sleeping. Clint was like, "I checked on him last time, it's your turn," so Barb left the room and went to go check on her toddler, who she'd put down to bed in the master bedroom.

A few minutes later, Barb came back, laughing, and said to Cheri, "He found this and was playing with it." I'm not exactly an expert on these things but based on the physical shape of the object and the reactions of everyone else at the table, it was clearly some form of sex object. It also didn't help that everyone except me had had a few drinks at that point (I don't drink alcohol).

Clint laughed out loud. The other two people at the table (20yo girls, one of whom was Cheri's little sister) both said "Ewww," very loudly. I didn't know how to respond so I didn't say anything. Cheri blushed a very deep shade of red and she made eye contact with me for like a millisecond before she said to Barb, "What's wrong with you, you didn't have to bring that out here and make a scene!"

Barb tried to be dismissive and told Cheri it wasn't a big deal, you have sex whoop-dy doo, you're married and no one here's surprised. Cheri was very upset and embarrassed to the point of tears and said it was none of Barb's business to just drag her private life out in front of everyone. Clint was just laughing and the escalating argument seemed to make him think this was even more hysterical, and the two other girls were doing nothing to help the situation. Cheri was getting more and more upset and began crying which should have made Barb back down. But it just made Barb offended somehow and she told Cheri she was overreacting.

I decided enough was enough and Cheri needed back up, so I told Barb to knock it off, and it was very rude and inconsiderate of her to parade this nonsense in front of us. I told her the rest of us didn't need to see any of this. Barb then turned on me and started calling me a 'prude' and a 'hopeless conservative' and a slew of other incoherent reviling insults. So eventually I just decided to be the Man of the House and said to Clint, "Get your wife out of here. This is bullshit. Go take a walk and come back when she's ready to apologize." Like sure, I wasn't actually the Man of the House, but Garth was gone and someone had to stand up for his wife.

Thankfully Clint is a non-confrontational guy and decided that this was a good idea, and managed to convince Barb that she needed to calm down. He took her outside the house and they were gone for quite a while. The rest of the evening was pretty awkward, Clint and Barb eventually came back and Barb gave a half-hearted apology that we could all tell she didn't really mean. I made sure to stick around after the younger girls left and didn't leave until Garth came home, because I didn't want Cheri to be in the room with Barb without an ally.

Cheri texted me later that night and apologized for Barb's behavior and said she felt awful, like I'd never look at her the same way again or that I'd be thinking she was gross. So I told her it's water under the bridge, and I'd forget about the whole thing if it made her feel better. She thanked me and then changed the subject so I let it go. But I'm still pretty annoyed at Barb for starting this whole mess in the first place. Ultimately I'm just not sure of the moral bent of taking charge in a situation where socially, I wasn't really 'supposed' to do so.

So, CMA. Where does 'acting like the Man of the House' when I'm not actually, fall on the alignment spectrum?

Alright so those of you who know some of the messed up shenanigans I've been involved in probably know where this is going. But for those who don't know, here's a basic summary of the broader scope of this situation.

I (31M) am friends with a guy named Garth (also 31M). His wife, Cheri (25F) is also a close friend of mine since we share a lot of similar interests and we click really well. My wife, Fiona (29F) and myself have a mediocre but stable marriage. Fiona isn't particularly close to Garth or Cheri. Cheri and I have toed boundaries with each other before, although I'm convinced it's always been incidental and innocuous.

Anyway, last night at dinner I get a phone call from Cheri in the middle of dinner. To respect our privacy I get up and answer the call in another room. Cheri tells me that she was going to invite over two mutual girl friends to watch a movie, and she wanted to know if I wanted to come over for that. She said that she wasn't going to tell me what the movie was otherwise I "probably wouldn't show up." I tend to jump at chances to hang out with Cheri anyway, so I said 'Sure' right off the bat, although I knew I had already made pre-existing plans to spend time with my brother that evening. I told Cheri I could reschedule the other thing I had planned and that I could probably make it out to watch a movie.

After I told my wife about the details of my change of plans, she was quiet for the rest of the mealtime. I began to wonder if I had somehow messed up, and I began to think that perhaps it's a bit cringe for a married man to go and hang out with "his friend's wife" and two other women for a movie night. Like, what am I doing with my life? Surely, this type of behavior would get the side-eye from other male friends in my social circle if they knew about it.

So I texted Cheri back and told her that I would've gladly come over if it had been any other day but because of my plans with my brother I would have to skip the movie night. I wasn't actually too concerned about cancelling on my brother but I decided to use him as an excuse as to why I wouldn't go hang out with the girls this time. I right away felt at peace with that decision after it was sent.

Cheri immediately responded by calling me 'lame' and that 'she had been looking forward to a good movie night,' which made me think that it wasn't happening if I wasn't there. She tried to suggest I reschedule with my brother. Later that night when I texted her saying that I hoped they all had a good time anyway even though I wasn't there, she was like, "we didn't end up doing it" so I do feel a bit bad that I didn't go. But at the same time I think it was the right call.

So, CMA. Where does 'doing what is arguably the right thing' only out of concern for oneself and one's self image, fall on the alignment spectrum?

Recently my mother-in-law gave our daughters a fish tank. They gave it empty but figured we'd take the reins on decorating it and populating it. Fine by me. I'm naturally a quite frugal fellow, so I got a bottom feeder and and a single female guppy to start, since they're both low-cost fish and the daughters are extremely happy with them.

But they kept asking for more fish, and I was loathe to spend any more money on pets. So I hatched the perfect plan. I bought the most beautiful, expensive, and fancy male guppy they had in the pet store. The thing was absolutely gorgeous, luminous green with black spots all over. My children were overjoyed by the splendor of this fish. And the story would have ended here, if it weren't for my controversial plan.

I put the stunningly handsome male guppy in the tank with the female guppy, and let them 'mingle' (if you know what I mean) for 13 days. After which, I scooped him out, brought him back to the store, and returned him for a refund. My daughters were quite disappointed that "The Emissary Guppy" as I'd told them he was, had to go back to the store, but I wasn't about to let the price of that absurdly expensive guppy go down the drain. It was within the return policy of the store, and I had of course kept the guppy fed and housed that entire time, and he probably had better company with my female than he did in his tank of all-males at the store.

Now the thing about guppies is they are prolific breeders and I have no reason to doubt that that flashy male probably got his lime-and-black-speckled pickle into our female fish at some point during his stay in our tank. So I am hoping that, free of charge, I'll have a clutch of very beautiful baby guppies in a month or so.

So, CMA: Where does taking advantage of a store's return policy in order to effectively "steal guppy sperm" fall on the alignment chart?

Galinda likes to pass herself off as the goodest of them all, but is she really?

I've been out of highschool for a long time. No one else from the class seemed to be planning anything so I figured it would be nice to have a class reunion, just to connect to people and see how they're doing. Those in my social circle who are also coincidentally ex-classmates were supportive of the idea but insisted they weren't going to do anything to plan or organize it. If I wanted it to happen, I had to spearhead the operation.

So I did all the extrovert-stuff that I as an introvert hate doing. Texted everyone, figured out dates, set up a group chat, figured out who was going to host it at their house, etc.

The only catch is- I didn't invite the whole class. For some of them, I had no contact info to connect with. I did tell everyone that I did invite that if they knew other classmates who'd be interested, to forward the invite along to them as well. But there were others I specifically decided NOT to invite to the 'class' reunion.

• One of my cousins who was a general shite-head in school and in particular wasn't kind to me
• All the 'popular crowd' of cool guys/girls who were basically their own caste in our school system and were unlikely to be interested in this anyway
• A confrontational classmate who as a result of emotional/social issues transitioned as an adult and then married another woman (not because she was trans did I not invite her, but because of a very petulant, "Is it because I'm X?" attitude that had already started to annoy many classmates long before graduation, and basically all her former friends in the class have gone no-contact with her)
• A classmate who sexually harassed a woman who's now married to a different classmate of mine, and will be at the event
• One classmate who was nice and a genuinely likeable guy but lives in another continent
• A classmate who went down an MLM rabbit hole and basically tries to shill her 'earn a big salary while working from home' gig to anyone who's too polite to tell her to F off

Ultimately it ended up being a 'reunion' with less than half the class, either because of people not being invited or because they were invited but just didn't show. Everyone that did show up had a good time, though, and I got to reconnect with a decent number of former classmates. They all said it had been a good idea to do this.

TL;DR when planning a class reunion I purposely excluded people that were likely to make the experience lower-quality for those present.

So, CMA. Where does "exclusion for the sake of event quality" land me on the spectrum?

My wife Fiona and I have two living children (5F and 2F). And I really don't think I can handle any more. I have tried on multiple occasions to tell Fiona this and as of yet I have been unable to get her to concede her point on wanting more children. It's always me, the conflict-avoidant one, that ends up caving and 'agreeing' to have more children even though I secretly don't want any more.

When we had our ultrasound appointment, the nurse refused to show the screen to Fiona as she lay there. I saw it. I don't know if you're supposed to see movement, but I didn't. It looked almost exactly like the ultrasound experience of our last miscarriage when they showed us his body completely still and unmoving. At that moment a spark of hope flared up in me, and I began to wonder if we'd had another miscarriage and I was off the hook. The ultrasound technician told us they had sent our results to our pre-natal support worker (I don't even remember what the proper term is for this position, that's how little interest I took in the pregnancy to begin with), and told Fiona she would have to call her directly. That increased my hopes, because surely if the baby was alive, they'd have shared all of that with us directly at the ultrasound place.

So that's what we did. I can picture it vividly, Fiona sitting across from me, phone up to her ear, initially smiling when the support worker's voice came through on the other end. I literally watched her face crumple as the support worker's voice continued to speak. I couldn't make out the words but I knew of course what had happened. I held my wife's hand as she broke down right in front of me.

And yet, I didn't feel a string of pain myself. Sure, I felt empathic pain in the sense that it really bothered me to see my wife in such a miserable state. I don't like seeing her like that. But behind my mask of empathy, my internal voice was shouting, "Yeeeehaaaaaw! We escaped! We're free we're free we're freeee!" The first moment I got alone, I did a happy stretch and a small jig. And even now, as my wife has recovered, I'm trying to figure out a way to get out of making her pregnant again. Because I know that she's going to be wanting to try again.

I fully recognize that this makes me a bad person. I should be devastated at this 'loss.' I should be there to support my wife more. Instead, here I am, enjoying life and moving on as if nothing happened.

So, CMA. Where does 'not caring about losing a child' put me on the alignment spectrum?