A New Work Ethic

A New Work Ethic?

Professor Edward Miller

Business Ethics- BUS309018VA016-1124-001

April 29, 2012

A New Work Ethic?

Describe how typical the attitudes the Sheehy reports appear to be in work environments you have experienced.

There are so many issues that are parallel to my work environment. The biggest issue is that the management appears to have the same, “this is just a job” attitude as the employees. This type of attitude is horrible to have when working in the customer service industry due to the fact that the excellent customer service that should be provided usually is not. When a customer is not happy, they usually spread the word and the business as a whole begins to suffer. Like Sheehy, I have overheard employees talking amongst one another making comment such as, “This job is for the birds” (which means that it is worthless) or “They [management] always want us to do all of the work.” Growing up, a job was always viewed as a place of employment but also as a place to gain experience and knowledge in a particular field of interest, it was a place of respect, honesty, and hard work. On top of it all, a job was a place where one would do his/her due diligence to one day turn that job into a career. Needless to say, that is not the attitude of employees today.

Currently, management is in the process of completing the much needed employee evaluations. This is something that employees have complained about being that we have had a high turnover of upper management and they did not receive their annual evaluation, which could grant raises/ promotions. During the first day of evaluations, many employees received a serious reality check. From their point of view, walking in late, calling off, disrespecting the stand leads, not being in uniform, and providing horrible customer service was all in a day’s work. They were all mistaken because this type of behavior is not to be tolerated in the customer service industry such as ours. The...