Inside the Box

Now honestly (no pun intended), who needs an ethics class? Who is going to actually pay attention to the things they teach you in an ethics class? Who is most likely to ignore the ethics class and do something unethical? I think you can see where I'm going with this.

I'm taking an online course from my employer right now. They call it "Global Business Practices", but it's ethics. The reason for the corporate push is obvious. There have been numerous ethical breaches at this company in the past year, including three major ones here at my facility. We're talking about the kind of thing where people embezle funds or lie about performance figures in order to inflate their sizable bonus checks. So it's not surprising that the corporate leaders want to do something about it. My question is: "Do they really think that this 45 minute interactive online training session with a 10 question quiz at the end is really going to change the behavior of someone willing to steal thousands of dollars from their employer?"

This thing is a joke. It talks about pride in the corporate brand, and trust between our company and our customers. It talks about "the mirror test" where you are asked to look at yourself in the mirror and decide if what you are doing is right or not. Hmmmm, I'm thinking that the mid to high level management who have been fired in the last 9 months were very well aware that they were doing something wrong. This "effort" to prevent further incidents of ethical misconduct is like pissing on a forest fire. Of course they are doing other things, such as surprise audits and audits of the existing audits and auditors, etc. Those things, the concrete actions to catch and prevent the misconduct, are great. This little ethics class is just a waste of time and money. The cost of having someone prepare the class was a waste, and the cost of having every employee take an hour out of their day to complete it is an even bigger waste.

It's like gun control laws. When you try to get handguns off the streets by requiring extra permits to own them, who are you taking guns away from? How many gang members do you think go out and get a permit for the guns they carry? At best, I think this ethics class is going to make people who are breaking the rules more careful about how they do it. 

Edit: THIS IS JUST TOO RICH!
After I posted this article I took a quick look to make sure it posted correctly. LiveJournal inserts a banner ad at the top of free accounts like mine. It must use some kind of advertising bot that reads my posts and picks out keywords because the ads are always related to my posts in some way. Last week I posted about lottery winning and today I mention my employer and ethics. The ad bot combined those ideas and produced this little gem of an ad on the banner:


That's just too sweet and the one next to it read:

Okay, so you win the Power Ball Jackpot with 7 co-workers in an office pool. You each are due to receive about 12 million dollars after tax in a lump sum payment. So, since you know you're a winner at 2:00 AM Sunday morning, do you go to work for more than an hour on Monday? Of course not! Right?! WELL MAYBE, if you are two of the women in question. Apparently the office has 11 employees and three of them didn't pitch in for the ticket. Can you imagine being one of those three? What a depressing thought that would be. Anyway, at least two of the winners have said that they plan to continue working at the Sheriff's Tax Office. They didn't say how long but I guess that's one hell of a fun place to be. No matter how fun that office might be, I'll bet there are places that are better. I'm thinking "small island in the Bahamas with some really cute girl", but perhaps I'm just crazy.

You know, I'm trying to do a pro and con in my mind. I just can't think of any pro side for actually continuing to work at that low-paying job at the tax office. For heaven's sake, if you're going to put 8 hours a day into something, why not make it something more fun than taxes? At least the husband of one of these dingbats was smart enough to quit his job as a Sheriff's Deputy already. Hell, if you really want to do something productive for yourself, 12 million dollars will go a long way for college tuition. You could do as many or as few classes as you want, in any major or none at all. You don't even need a degree do you? You could take semesters off to see different parts of the world. You could change colleges and take classes all over the world if you wanted.

I think there should be some kind of license required before people can even buy a Power Ball ticket. You shouldn't be able to get your hands on that kind of money if you're a complete and utter moron. That's the only way I can think to describe someone who is still standing around like a dummy in some county tax office right at this very moment when they just won 12 million dollars over the weekend.

Yeah, I'm sure you've seen the U-haul trucks where they have great big pictures on the side now. There's always a state and then some trivial item related to that state.

I was just outside and saw one from Hawaii where the picture was a great big yellow spider called Theridion grallator otherwise known as the "happy face spider”. Here’s a picture of one, but the one on the U-haul truck was yellow.

I was just thinking how awesome it would be if I was born with a big smiley face right on my backside, just like that spider. Of course I'd need to add the phrase "Have a nice day" because it just wouldn't be complete otherwise.

On a side note: Have you ever noticed that vending machines usually say "Have a nice day" on the little display right after they steal your money?

I hate these chain letter things, so why not make my first LJ entry a chain letter.

For he first 5 people who leave a comment, I will:

1. Tell you why I friended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, a word etc.
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
6. Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
7. In return, you must post this in your LJ.

Lol, my brother found out about my dislike of chain letters years ago, and he's sent me every chain letter he can find since then. Heck, I think he even makes some of them up himself. What is it about these survey things that just makes people want to fill them out? You know the ones, where it asks you like 50 questions about yourself and says to send it back to the person who sent it to you if you are their friend. I guess I don't have any friends because I haven't ever sent one of those back. Well, actually I did add someone to my LJ friend list and they are the person I got this chain letter from. I'm interested if they will actually respond like the thing says. Call it a social experiment if you want, or maybe just call it being really bored at work. 

 
Actually I like the concept of having people you think you know fill out a questionair about themselves. I just don't like the little bit about being told that you're supposed to spam 5 or 10 of your friends with a copy of the darn thing. That rates right up there with the "warning" e-mails that ask you to "forward this important warning to everyone you know". However most of those are hoaxes, like the one about talking on the cell phone while pumping gas. I don't know how many times I've had to point my mom to one of the sites where you can find out if what you just read in your email is true. Truth or Fiction is a good place to look up all those urban legends you hear. What's really surprising isn't that so many of them are false, rather which ones are true.

Oh well, that's my deep thought for the day. Just a couple more hours of work, then the drive home and perhaps some time to blow the living daylights out of someone online.