The problem with "It's not cheating. It's how things work."

Cheating could be the way things work. If it doesn't feel right, it might be wrong. It also might be that your background (culture, experiences, etc.) have conditioned you to feel not right by attaching punishments to it. It makes sense to spend some time thinking about why it doesn't feel right.

If you thought about it and you understood why it shouldn't feel right, then it doesn't matter that "it's how things work". At various points in time things that are wrong could gain some ground and become norms. Most people participate in them and dislike them at the same time. Bribing is the norm and is how things work in some places.


Often, that is not the only way of making things happen. We often can find alternative ways. If there was none, we might want to/have to be the agent of change, or go somewhere else, or do something else. None of these are easy, but we might deserve feeling good.