Most people, when they think about dishonesty at work, confine their remarks to pens, paperclips, and the like that people are prone to pocket. Some of that is unintentional, which is probably why the police don't make a big hullabaloo out of it, but one man recently was so desperate for medical care, he managed to get himself arrested for robbing a bank of a single dollar. There are people who, like myself, also buy things out of their own pockets for work, like onions and yeast and bandaids, and most businesses don't consider it theft when pencils and erasers vanish. It's built in as costs of getting work done.
There is however a very common fraud going on at work. For people who do not work in environments with time cards, it is rather much the rule that people will not police themselves. As long as the work gets done, most people don't really mind, but when things start to go undone or when people get blamed for having done things poorly that only became their responsibility 30 minutes in advance of when it was needed, they tend to take a different tack. Too many people saunter into work whenever it suits them and saunter out whenever they like and require that their employers hold up their part of the contract. Such was the case famously according to some sources for why Megan Fox was cut from the Transformers franchise. Her head was not in the game. Like Luke Skywalker, her mind was never on where she was, what she was doing, aided by the presence of her blackberry which helps her be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Of his feelings for Megan Fox, Director Michael Bay reportedly said:
I'm sorry, Megan. I'm sorry I made you work twelve hours. I'm sorry that I'm making you show up on time.
Consider also that Fox earned potentially upwards of millions for her roles, is it really too much to ask that she actually pretend to be at work when she's at work? She is, after all, an actress.
Not everyone is an actress. Some people think they are just as important as everyone else. When I read a book by Frank Luntz, he mentioned a poll in which over half of the respondants reported themselves as above average intellectually, aesthetically, and other measures of worth. That's quite simply not possible. On average, half of the people are, well, below average, which is what that means. (Hat tip to Jimmy Carter for the dictionary plug.) Most people are not important enough to be irreplaceable.
A few comments on that from my personal experience. Recently, the department chair told someone in her office that "nobody is irreplaceable", which is probably true. At a previous job, a manager asked me please to not miss work again because it took three people to fill in for me in my absentia. You may not be replaceable in a 1:1 exchange, but we can always find Americans willing to pick lettuce for $50/hour.
Most people game the system. At a previous job, the policy was so lax that it took nine months for a guy with whom I worked to make a mistake and get himself terminated. He forgot whether he could be tardy or absent without getting fired, showed up for work, and was escorted out, having missed a total of 21 days in a nine month period and having been tardy 19 times. When you consider that we worked three days per week, this is an impressive number of absences (20% of days scheduled). I'm sorry we made you show up to work on time. He was also a strong annoyance in that he would leave at the official 'end of shift' and not when the work was finished like the rest of us. This shifted his work to us, something that forced some of us eventually to pull two consecutive 18 hour shifts. Remember, I'm a biochemist.
Although it's never been prosecuted to my knowledge, it is no less common statistically for people to work more hours than those for which they are paid. This is the common lot of salaried employees, who are expected to work until the job is done, and for soldiers, who are subject to conditions that prohibit them simply walking home when the whistle sounds. However, it is technically illegal for you to work more hours than that for which you are paid, and it is also dishonest. At some point, people could very well find themselves victims of fraud in the opposite direction. See, as my friend John said, taxpayers have an expectation that their money is being well spent, spent on the best people available, and to accomplish the mission. If it takes longer to finish the legitimate responsibilities of government, we have no problem compensating them further for extra work paid, unless we're politicians trying to cut the defense budget.
Most people who stick around at work don't do it for the pay. Like me, they genuinely enjoy what they do and are willing to take one for the mission. I remember when they first instituted the furlough program, the Department Chair came down once to remind me that I wasn't getting paid overtime so that I couldn't sue for it. As if I'd stoop that low. I am here to make sure the job gets done and as such am here until the work is done. All I ask is that we're fair about it.
Employers use hours worked to determine how many people they actually need. We actually need more people because of the hours we have to cover. Our courses run from 0730 until 0000 hours, which means that we need people to be here all hours of the day, sometimes just to accomodate a few students on a relative scale. We have multiple facilities spread across the valley, meaning we need more support personnel who can be trusted to handle scientific apparatus and chemicals. When people cover for coworkers as a rule or claim hours they don't really need to work, management decisions are falsely manipulated. Such was the case at my last employer. I consistently worked at 130% of normal expectation, which meant they could understaff our crew and still get the work done. I could have just worked at 100% or 95% and still pulled full pay, or even extra overtime, but I'd rather work on my terms and not in crisis mode constantly, so I gave it my all. When they did hire someone, we would have to train them, which cut into my productivity as I was a trainer, and then wait to see if they could actually do the job before we could hire someone else.
Although I have been invited several times to participate in lawsuits for unethical payment by former employers, I have always abstained. My personal work ethic demands of me that I "Dare do all that may become a man (Hamlet, Act V Scene i)". I did everything I could. I knew the wage was the same regardless of whether I did 95% or 150%, and I chose to work at 130% because I could and because it made things easier for everyone else. I have felt that was the honest thing to do. When other people had bad days, I picked up the slack, because that's what a man like me does.
At the time, I had a coworker named Lisa, whose real name is not Lisa. She was almost old enough to be my mother, and since we started at 4AM, she frequently wore out before the shift was over or got hazzled during the stress of the day. However, Lisa always gave us 100% of what she was capable. So, on those days, I would go over and help her out. I didn't care who got the credit. I would rather have someone who always gives me everything she's got than someone who just does enough to get by. I know that there were days when my help kept her above the 95% required, and I hope that management recognized her contribution when I left. It was an honor to know and work with Lisa. I wish I could say the same for everyone at that employer. Honesty about my work too, a bonus for this article!
No comments:
Post a Comment