My conflict.

I'm struggling. Due to simple economics (and fate's bitch-slap) I have had to accept a job doing something that, while on its face it doesn't offend my reasoned ethical veganism, in practice, I will be confronted daily with situations that I find deeply troubling.

It's a curious state of affairs that I'm in here; however, practicality calls and therefore I must, for the moment anyway, accept my current lot. Unfortunately, after only a single day, I found myself in a pitiful state as I watched a once living, feeling, experiencing creature being defiled. The suffering and pain occurs long before I get involved in the process, however, I'm the peddler-with-a-smile. Today I happened to be able to force a smile but I was truly disturbed.

I said to myself: "I need this job. I'm not directly inflicting the harm - doing the wrong - and therefore I shall proceed." However, justifications aside, perfectly reasonable as they may be, I cannot seem to square what I believe to be a circle. And it has only been a single fucking day.

I strive to be a deeply principled individual and yet my actions here, my job indeed, runs directly counter to the end I believe ought to be realized: a vegan world in which my employer would be out of business, unless he drastically changed everything.

Most people won't understand my conflict or get why I am making such a case for it anyways. "Just do it," they may say, "You're not actually killing anyone." These people have a point up to a point. They're correct in that I am not killing or harming anyone, with one massive caveat: I am directly supporting the underlying flawed assumptions that serve to justify the unethical paradigm of animals-as-property. My profit from it says, "I agree."  

Through my actions I lend support to our prejudice against animals; "Yes," I say, "I will happily get you some baby cow so that you may get your bloody satisfaction." True, I am not actually doing the killing. However, through my explicit support for the terrible results, indeed, my support must be explicit lest I fail to perform my duties, I feel that I may be actually pushing back against the movement in which I am actively involved. 

How can that be moral I wonder? If I were working in a store that primarily sold fur, for example, I would be similarly disturbed. I can't imagine how I wouldn't be. It's like selling pornography when you believe it harms women and perpetuates sexism. I'm seriously conflicted.

Get a new job, I know. But what should I do until then? This isn't irrational I assure you (I know some are thinking that). If you accept the premise that unnecessary suffering is a call for our moral intervention if we have the capacity, being disturbed, as I currently am, follows. It's demanded actually. 

"I take it seriously!" is my answer to dismissing my concern with "Just get over it." However, I understand, I exist in a non-vegan world. We make concessions every day. So it goes. But I think this is different for some reason. At the very least, I'm legitimately troubled here.