A New Work Ethic
Seok Gil Hong
Business Ethics - Business 309
Professor Mahari Belay
April 29, 2012

Abstract
This case study was about the evidenced work ethic of young people who are working in a fast food restaurant. A human resource manager, James Sheehy, goes undercover to work in the restaurant in order to observe the organizational culture and environment of the restaurant. What is discovered is that the employees have little regard or respect for the work, the employer, the customers or the product. The employees create an atmosphere that is evident of bullying and lacks an appropriate work ethic, but have little ownership of their own bad behavior. This report will answer the five questions posed in the assignment.

Describe how typical the attitudes that Sheehy reports appear to be in work environments you have experienced. The typical attitudes that Sheehy identified were disrespectful and poor in nature. The employees had a very poor attitude about the work and one another. The employees did not seem to realistically care about their attitudes or their performance. They showed great disrespect for the work place, the business, the customers and their employer. This is very similar to the attitudes that I have seen in some of the places that I have worked. I once worked in a dollar store that employed a lot of high school students and this article exemplified their behavior very well. The employees felt that this was not a real job and they did not appreciate the opportunity to have the job and had no desire to do the right thing and be a good employee. They were typically late to work, talked or texted on their cell phones a lot, stole items from the store and had not issues with others knowing that they were stealing. They actually encouraged other to steal as well so that they would not feel bad about the wrong that they were doing. I would say that this is a very typical work environment where young people work. Explain the implications of the work ethic Sheehy describes for the future of American business. The employees coined many phrases that became relevant to their poor behavior and set the stage for their attitude as it relates to the work ethic both in their current employment as well as future employment. Terms such as “baiting the man” and “scamming” are evidence of the work culture being created and ran by the employees to create a work place and environment that is detrimental to the American business. When the employees begin to create a work environment and culture that is inclusive of new terminology, it will have an ability to take on a life of its own such as much of the social networking has done. American business employers should get a better handle on the type of work environment that they will allow and ensure that such a new culture in the work place does not become dominant and prevent a focus on customer service and providing a good product.
Explain whether it is more reasonable to expect workers, especially in a capitalist society, to be more devoted to their jobs, more concerned with quality and customer service, than Sheehy’s coworkers were. In a Capitalist society, the major portion of production and distribution is in private businesses and operates to generate a profit (Shaw, p. 132). It is therefore expected that workers would be less devoted to their jobs and not do everything they can do to help in increasing the profit of the business. Where the business is most concerned with profit maximization, the employee might perceive this to mean that the business is less concerned with their individual needs and issues and would therefore be less inclined to care about the profit of the business if they do not benefit from that profit. In a socialist society, the concern would shift to the quality of the product and the satisfaction of the customer making the employee more inclined to be devoted to their jobs.
Explain the reasoning behind employee theft. The employee theft in this article was not out of necessity but seemed to be more a product of the work environment, bullying and pressure placed on the employees to fit into the culture created. The employees were described as coming from upper and middle income families who were working to make extra spending money and not as a necessity of life. The employee theft was a way of the employees being defiant to the employer and expressing their lack of respect and appreciation for the opportunity to have a job. The employees did not perceive the fast food job as a “real” job such as sitting behind a desk. The employees did not see that they benefited from the business and therefore did nothing to protect or respect the business.
Explain ways the culture of our capitalists society encourages attitudes like those Sheehy describes. The four features of capitalism, the company, profit, competition, and private property all reference what is in the best interest of the owner of the company and pays little attention to the social needs of the employees. Shaw, (p.138) states that Americans encourage individual competition, praise capitalism, promote the acquisition of material goods and worship wealth. It is this same attitude that explains the actions of the employees that Sheehy describes in this case. The Capitalists society encourages these bad behaviors and attitudes because it seems to suggest that greed fuels the need to make a profit in a business. Everyone looks out for themselves and this allows for the disrespectful attitudes to prevail that were evident in the case study.
In conclusion, the issue of capitalism cannot be solely blamed for the attitudes of the employees, but the poor work environment is a combination of many aspects including poor management oversight and poor screening of employees. But the capitalist attitude of maximizing profit seems to allow for this poor work ethic. When people can be dead in a parking lot for several days and employee theft accounts for fifty percent of revenue loss, says that there is a real problem in the ethics of employment that perceives a trample over anybody attitude is the road to success and should be addressed.

Reference
Shaw, W. H. (2010). Business ethics (7th ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage.