employment - How to avoid helping someone sin?

Are there any tips anyone would care to provide to help one avoid (or get out of) a workplace situation in which one has been asked to assist someone do something that violates Halachah?

Examples that come up in the workplace:

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  Assisting with setting up non-Kosher food for a gathering, where some attendee(s) may be Jewish but not keep Kosher.

  
  


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  Assisting a disabled, Jewish individual get her non-Kosher lunch out of her hard to reach backpack. (This inspired the question, actually.)

  
  



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  Helping Jewish colleagues (or customers) prepare for business trips that involve work and/or travel on Shabbath and Yom Tov.

  
  

Answer

The first thing I would do in that situation is to try to provide the halachic options. For example, in setting up the lunch, I would order in some kosher food and set up a separate table for it, making sure it's well-labelled. This might be enough to entice the people who don't keep kosher to eat the kosher food, because they didn't have to make special arrangements. (If you're not already confident in your observance or aspirations of observance, it can be very hard to make that request for accommodation. But if the food's right there in front of you...) For the travel arrangements, I would first present itineraries that don't involve travel on Shabbat/Yom Tov and see if they're acceptable. There's not much you can do if the timing of the meeting/conference/whatever itself violates halacha, unfortunately, but in that case you're not the one placing the stumbling-block.

(I was once sent to a summer conference that started on a Sunday morning. At that company employees proposed itineraries for approval. My submission of a flight on Friday afternoon raised eyebrows, but there were no Saturday-night flights that would get me there in time. I pointed out that the extra two hotel nights were less expensive than the difference in airfares (Saturday stay-over being a big deal at the time) and they agreed. I went to Chabad for Shabbat meals. I mention this to illustrate that even if candidate travel arrangements seem like they would be rejected by the corporate powers that be, it's worth asking. For persuading the employee who'll be doing the travel, you'll probably need to point out some other reasons that spending extra time at the destination is attractive; nobody wants to just sit in a hotel room for an extra day.)