[bananabiscuit]

In every company I have worked so far, for the very large majority of decisions I've seen everyone try to act very ethically and morally. However, every once in a while, a temptation to make a greedy decision comes up, and what I see during the discussions of these kinds of decisions, where everyone already knows they want to make the choice that would be harmful to the customer, is that the usual detailed discussion of pros and cons that normally happens is reduced, and everyone implicitly somehow knows to focus on only talking about just the pros, both for the company and the customer. Sometimes cons for the company are mentioned, and it feels very performative, as if just to give the appearance of balance. At times when I or some other individual speaks up about the obvious harm to the customer, usually ignorance is feigned, people pretend not to understand the harm, or they counter with all the "pro-customer" points that have already been said so far.

It's never an overt thing like how you portrayed it, but it happens every single time when the perceived payoff is too enticing to pass up.