Ethics

Nancy Bonds

BUSN 467-501

January 22, 2008

Core Value Exercise

Over my lifetime, there have been countless instances where my values and morals have had to come into play. You never know your own values until they are tested. The workplace is a common environment for dishonesty to come through, especially in the business world. This past semester I had a situation at work that truly made me see what my core values in life and work are. Even though I was not faced with an ethical dilemma, I realized how important hard work and honesty really is.

For the past 1 Ð'Ð... years I have worked through the Boys & Girl Club of the Brazos Valley for an after school program at a middle school. Last August, the program received a new site coordinator for the program. Even though I had been passed up for the job, I looked forward to the new coordinator’s entrance into the program. My personal responsibility within the program is to plan and teach for a cooking class. My overall responsibilities include, with the help of other workers, to watch 20-50 middle school students, help them with homework, distribute snacks, and break them up into activity groups. All of the planning and organizing of the entire program is up to the site coordinator at that location. As the semester began, I saw my new boss had no clue as to what he was doing. I started off just giving suggestions from my past year of experience, which was not given much consideration at first. As the weeks went by, I noticed many things going wrong. Activities were not planned out, ingredients for my cooking class were not correct, workers were not getting paid, and overall the program was not as productive as it could be.

I first gave him advice and helped him plan out most activities for the remainder of the semester. But overtime, another worker and I were forced to plan and organize all aspects of the program because our boss seemed to not be taking care of anything. He would make numerous promises to the kids that he continually broke. We confronted him time and again on individual issues, but all we heard back were excuses. It became so bad overtime that we finally set him down and had it out. I asked him repeatedly why things were not getting done and explaining the importance of this program to the children. Finally he admitted that he just got frustrated and flat out stopped doing all work for the program. The program was in jeopardy of being billed over $500 for snacks he had not been reporting to the district, and overall the program was suffering. I was so angry out how I, my co-workers, and most importantly the children had been treated. My co-worker and I immediately set up a meeting with the director for the program, who was very upset about the happening, but also had been suspicious of the same issues. Convincing me he would be fired, the director went on to “relocate” our site coordinator, but in turn received somewhat of a promotion. From these two happenings, I was completely stressed and distraught. It never crossed my mind that a boss of mine would simply not do work and then go on to be unpunished as well.

Even though I was not forced to make an ethical decision either way, I found how ethical situations effect everyone you work with. This situation dealt mainly with dishonesty and lack of hard work. I was lied to on numerous occasions about plans, meetings, reports, and many other things.