Am I doing the right thing by going behind my brothers back?

[Anonymous]

My brother owns a gutter hanging business and I help him sometimes. I was helping him yesterday. We put a gutter up and we had a helper holding it. That's like a metal arm you screw into the facia board to hold up the gutter. Well something came up and we had to take the gutter back down. It was below a deck so my brother had to take out the few screws that he had already put in. He was unscrewing them from the deck and couldn't see them. I was standing on the deck so he told me to tell him when he his close to the screws. We both forgot that a screw was holding in the helper. When he unscrewed it the whole gutter fell to the ground.

Later we saw that the gutter left a gash on the side of the house. It's made out of stucco so it's really weak. My brother was like "that's what they get for buying a house made of stucco". I said "should we let the owners know?". He said "im gonna put a shit load if caulking in it and paint it and if It still looks bad then I will tell them".

Anyways, the real estate agent was inside. I've been feeling really guilty so i just called her. I got her answer machine but I said what happend and that my brother didn't want to tell the owners. Then I aksed if it would be possible for her to give me the number to the owners then I said to call me back if you can. Before that I called my brother and asked him one last time to tell the owners. Ge got kinda mad and said that i need to mind my own business and let him run his business. I said that if the owners find out then they could really ruin your business. He said that he doesn't care because it would give him an excuse to stop running the business and then move away. As I was typing this I got a call back from the realtor and she gave me the owners number. I called the owner and told her what happend and offered to pay for it. Her husband is coming tommarow and we are going to meet to look at the damage and discuss it. If my brother finds out, he will be furious.

[slatyb]

You are doing the right thing. Sooner or later your brother is going to be out of business. He's going to get a bad reputation and then will have very few customers. Sounds like you should be running it.