Disinterested Third Party
When I took my ATP practical test, the examiner told me that I should falsify my logbook. Build up plenty of time to get a job, and if my conscience bothered me, just not log the same number of hours in the future. He said it was more like "borrowing" the hours. I declined to do that. I've known a number of pilots who have, however, and have flown with, interviewed, evaluated, and seen fired pilots who did falsify their experience. Quite a few of them. The system makes it easy to do. There are several problems with that easy freebie, though, starting with a decline in personal integrity when one lessens one's self, and lowers one's self to a baser ethic. Then there's the legal issue, both fraudulent in the insurance application and outright falsification, which is a violation of the regulation, and signed upon a legal document, a crime. It can be prosecuted criminally, too. The process cheats the person who does it, and it cheats the client who has an underqualified client flying the airplane.
When I was very young, I was in a thrift store with my parents and found a plethora of scout badges for sale. It was a teaching moment, when I queried purchasing them, saving all the time of needing to earn them. Unearned badges, log time, experience, has no value, no meaning, and cheapens not only the log, the airman, the bearer, but all the time that comes thereafter. If an hour in your logbook isn't really an hour in your logbook, then what is it, but a tick mark of ink on a page? Will that tick mark generate systems knowledge, or the judgement to go or not go? Will it help fly the airplane on raw data in the dark of a storm, or help you navigate weather? No. It might put you in a position where you do those things without experience, knowledge, skills, or abilities. It might get you the job, and today, "fake it 'till you make it" seems more common than ever. CEO's, politicians, stars, influencers, and bright-eyed hopefulls lie their way to their goal. It's easy. it's also toxic and wrong. You know it, and though your boss has no bones of encouraging you to do it, he knows it, too.
When I began spraying fields as a kid, my boss gave me a choice: unless I had a thousand hours of ag time, my insurance would be much more expensive. Falsify that time, he said, and the job is yours. Otherwise, I'll hire you, but you must pay the difference in insurance. I'll take it from your pay.
I chose not to falsify my experience, and he took it from my pay. My time over the next thousand hours came slowly. Glacially slowly, with .2 here, .4 there, and every moment of it hard-earned, flying in 40 knot winds under powerlines and 5' off the crop in a hot, unairconditioned loud greenhouse cockpit, working on the airplanes, mixing the chemicals, cleaning the tanks, and so on. I came away educated in a way only honest work could do; perhaps most valuable of all, I knew myself. More important than that, however, I came away stronger in my conviction to uphold my principles. I could find another job, but not another self, not another life, and the lessons reverberate to this day. I fall on them and use them constantly, as do we all, from the choices we have made.
Someone wise once told me to be careful of scars earned in battles in which one should never have fought.
Pick your battles. Sometimes, it's best to walk away.