Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Breakroom! As far as weeks go this has been pretty decent work week to be honest! Our big update was put into effect pretty smoothly, all thanks to some solid teamwork. Even better, our home remodeling is slowly coming to a conclusion in the first room so that is pretty exciting as every day the room looks more and more impressive. Plus we completed our taxes and yet again we are getting a small return. The key is to keep an eye on your taxes during the year, and it helps to actually speak to your tax advisor about your W-4 because I have no idea how someone can update their taxes and go an entire year without seeing that taxes are not deducting. Learn some personal responsibility everyone, you made a mistake and now you must accept the consequences.
This is a great segue into what happened around the office this week!
First a foremost, the most exciting news is the fact that we have another engagement in the office! You will recall last week that during our final weigh in, Jim showed up from a client meeting all happy despite the fact that he was drenched from the rain. Turns out he had met Pam midway to New York and he proposed in the rain at a gas station. It sounds like Jim originally chose to not tell anyone but Pam insisted they should include everyone on the celebration. I think Jim was accurate in his decision to hold off letting people know. Most people were not super enthused, Oscar assumed they already were, and overall no one seems too interested. Except for Michael, that is, who actually tackles Jim to the ground when he hears the news.
Aside from that exciting news, the agenda for today is the topic of business ethics. Holly Flax, our new human resources representative, is tasked with conducting the company’s ethics seminar to ensure we are familiar with the policies. Lucky for us, it gets to start with a quiz to basically measure how familiar we are with the company’s practices. These quizzes are pretty common with larger companies and are actually designed so it is very hard to fail them as you would usually need to totally agree or disagree with a provided statement.
This really shouldn’t be a difficult day because the training is literally read out from a binder. But most offices do not have Michael Scott to help them. Michael insists that Holly had some showmanship, and he even helps her with the introduction by doing singing and dancing to the song Let’s Get Physical by Oliva Newton-John except they have changed the lyrics to “Let’s get ethical.” I have seen these types of things occur before where human resources likes to get people excited with a song and dance routine to make it exciting. I am going to be honest and say that they remind me of being back in grade school and have people come and do little musical skits about the dangers of alcohol or sex. Did not like them then, do not like them now, just simply do the presentation in a timely manner and be on your way. Provide a free lunch and I can assure you, that will get the attention of people more than your little dance.
And Holly does try to get right to the point of her training by reading from the binder and walking through the company’s expectations. She talks about how it would be totally wrong to take personal phone calls while on the clock. In addition to this, spending half an hour at the water cooler is another example of what is known as time theft. Rather than working, you are talking or goofing around with coworkers when you are not on your break. In the business world, this is truly nothing surprising because of course the company does not want you to be doing anything aside from working. I was actually surprised that people like Kelly were so shocked by this because those policies exist everywhere. This goes for Holly’s other piece about not stealing office supplies from the office because it is taking from the company. In all reality, we should have simply listened to her, nodded our heads, signed the forms, and went about taking pencils home or slacking off like every other employee in the country does. But this was all a bit too boring for Michael.
He felt we should be having an actual discussion, similar to Oscar who pointed out that true ethics is a philosophical debate while this is just the company’s anti-shoplifting policy. So it can be considered true that there is a difference between business ethics and philosophical ethics. Holly was just trying to give us a very simplified version of what business ethics is, because there are other aspects to the topic. Some examples might be ethic business practices, is our business model in line with the site values or goals that we have in place. Perhaps the company is trying to put an emphasis on environmental sustainability, are all of our practices currently in line with that goal? Maybe there is concern over the fact that some companies have misleading advertisements or social media interactions, are we sure our marketing is being held to ethical standards? At the end of the day, business ethics really is about setting a certain standard of honesty and trust between the company, consumers, and employees.
Since Michael wanted to get to a more serious conversation, he decided to open up the floor to let everyone admit to unethical actions they have made at work. He has promised immunity in exchange for being honest. As Holly mentions later, when it comes to the work place there is really no such thing as immunity or “off the record” so if your boss promises to be honest in exchange for immunity, do not trust it. Even if they are not trying to trick you and they simply do not understand the concept, or have watched Survivor too many times, immunity isn’t legit.
But we do get some pretty shocking confessions. Michael admitted that when he discovered Youtube, he did nothing for like a good solid month. Oscar admitted that he does a long lunch on occasion; that is nothing compared to Kelly who stated that she will download pirated music to her work computer. Just a tip to everyone, your work computer can absolutely be used as evidence against you, so certainly do not use it for anything that you don’t want to be caught with. Angela, shockingly, admitted to calling the INS on Oscar to ensure he was a legal citizen. Not quite sure why she chose to admit this to everyone, or why she really thought it was important. And then Meredith chose to drop the biggest bombshell of them all. For the last six years, she has been sleeping with rep from Hammermill in exchange for discounts on supplies, and coupons to Outback Steakhouse. Needless to say, this marked the end of the training seminar as Holly and Michael quickly tried to deal with the issue.
Michael recognizes this situation is bad and is hoping to let this whole thing slide, while Holly is utterly appalled and believes Meredith needs to be held accountable. The two of them actually head out for dinner to discuss the situation; personally I believe Michael was hoping he could distract Holly to prompt her to drop it. But it doesn’t work and Holly does move forward with submitting the report to her superior at corporate.
While this is all happening, Jim decided to use the entire day to try to catch Dwight wasting time at work. So positive that he never wastes even a second, Dwight is ready to prove to Jim that he would never be caught wasting time. And this goes on all day with Jim monitoring Dwight every second, stopwatch in hand. Dwight goes so far as to do things like sneeze without blinking and urinate in a soda can at his desk, just to prove that he will not be caught. It is worth noting that Jim basically did nothing all day, just to prove that Dwight wasted time at work.
As for Meredith? Turns out that Holly’s leader, Kendal, agreed with Michael that we should let it slide. He sees it as a “morally grey area” and the fact that this was resulting in discounts for the company means it is actually a good thing. While I get that, if this sort of news were to be caught in a news article it would be devastating for the reputation of the entire company. While this might not be anywhere near as bad as a government official accidentally adding a reporter to a social media outlet where they are discussing military actions, it is still pretty bad. I lose a lot of respect for the corporate office here, and personally I feel like this is some pretty shady stuff going on. I think the fact that Ryan was able to go so long with his fraud before he was caught really makes you wonder who is monitoring the actions of the senior leadership. I believe the answer would be, no one.
That being said, I would still consider Meredith is more ethical than Ryan is because she is at least not just in it for herself. She even used some of those coupons to bring is a whole lunch for everybody courtesy of Outback Steakhouse, so that is good enough for me.
So was everyone able to learn a little bit about business ethics this week? Yes, we usually hear about ethics in the workplace when it comes to making sure we are doing our jobs an not stealing, but technically it does go beyond that but how this impacts us is largely driven by our role in the company. Does anyone here have a great example of business ethics that they have encountered at work? Feel free to share in the comments and let us know!
With that I hope you all have a great weekend, and I’ll be sure to see you around the Breakroom.
