Manager requests for spying at promotion fair

I just wonder how other people would react on this.

My manager asked my team/project leader to let us say spy during a promotion fair. The project leader is a temporary force. Let us say we are company A, the project leader gets his salary from company B, but for a rather long period, about 2 years, A hires him from B. In Dutch it is called detachering. My manager has asked him to go to the stand of company C, which is our competitor, and look and ask about their machine pretending being a customer. He says, you can say you do not work for a competitor, since you do not work for us, we just hire you. Both have no moral objections, I do have them. I must say I am even annoyed by the eager shown by my project leader to do this. They are even proud of what they are doing they think they are clever. Company C does not know the guy by face, since he is not a long term permanent contract employee.

My opinion? They both make me sick. I feel uncomfortable working for a project leader who does this, so happily even. If he pulls tricks like this to other people, he might do similar things to me. Also I just don't want to work for a company that has a manager with this low moral standards.

Do you think I am right, or do you think I am too sensitive?

Jan de Boer wrote:
Do you think I am right, or do you think I am too sensitive?

I wouldn't say you are wrong or too sensitive, however, I will say that your manager is probably not going to yield anything. Trade shows are about the initial contact, your manager is unlikely to get anymore information than what is available on the internet, except in nice glossy form.

Henry

Yes, I think you are over-senstive. Trying to get information out of the competition is fairly normal I would say. Inferring from that "he might do similar things to me" is rather far-fetched IMO. And I agree that at a trade show it's unlikely to yield anything useful.

Tim Moores wrote:Yes, I think you are over-senstive. Trying to get information out of the competition is fairly normal I would say. Inferring from that "he might do similar things to me" is rather far-fetched IMO. And I agree that at a trade show it's unlikely to yield anything useful.

Whether or not he gets something useful is not the issue. Nor is just looking at what the competition shows. The fact that they lie, have pleasure in it, and ask me to do if I don't know them if I see them at that stand is. I've also looked at their stand, but I am not going to lie about my identity.

An addition: It would be far fetched if this was the only thing. It's more 'another drop in the bucket'. That is from a dutch phrase: 'That was drop that let the bucket overrun'. It means something like he is doing more of these things in a pattern that makes me dislike him.

You never guessed, the problem resolved itself, the guy his contract got terminated. Apparently there were more people who thought he was being rather negative. And I got a yearly review that was the best I ever had. I did not expect that, but I am happy I did not apply for another job.