Introduction
Workers have different feelings towards everything within the workplace. The attitudes of the teenage and student employees, especially in the hospitality sector, are of great ethical importance since they determine how these workers treat the clients, how seriously they take their work, and whether they will steal from the business or not (Rogojan 6). This paper explores a case study and will attempt to establish how typical are the attitudes that Sheehy reports. The paper will also show how Sheehy’s description of a new work ethics matches with my own experiences.
How typical are the attitudes that Sheehy reports?
Sheehy raises a number of attitude issues exhibited by his coworkers. Though it sounds like he is surprised about everything, the attitudes expressed by these young and student workers are typical and predictable. Any given population of workers in this age, and maybe profession, would be expected to demonstrate similar behaviors at the workplace (Rogojan 6).
Sheehy notes that his coworkers could not welcome the idea of working for long hours or probably doing hard work (Shaw 181). They want to do the easy tasks and within the least time possible. This is a normal and natural attitude towards work by most young people (Reynolds para 2). They believe that working hard is not being well compensated. As such, they will avoid as much as possible tasks that are deemed hard and will also try to get few tasks allocated to them (Reynolds para 2). This is the reason why Sheehy’s work mates prolong doing simpler tasks.
Again, Sheehy reports that the theft by his coworkers is rampant. This attitude that stealing is right seems well inculcated in the majority of the workers. Most people in the workplace are teenagers and work as junior employees. Like everywhere else, the salaries might not be that attractive (Rogojan 13). If workers don’t feel correctly compensated, they will find another way to compensate themselves. Stealing from companies by young workers to back up their salaries is a global problem, and not unique to the place that Sheehy was working. In fact, this behavior cannot be fully attributed to young age or student workers but all people in almost all business organizations (Rogojan 13).
Customers are the most important people in the setting of any business. Sheehy, however, reports that in the place that he was working the clients were not that properly regarded. This attitude towards customers comes as a surprise to him as the opposite should have been the case. Nevertheless, in a workforce that constitutes majority as students or current young people, such as behavior, though intolerable, can be expected (Reynolds para 6). Modern youths would give hasty and poor services to customers purposely to keep the clients away and in return get free time to engage themselves in social media (Cairncross and Buultjens 5). Therefore, this type of attitude is a common phenomenon being observed in all fields in the entire world.
Sheehy says that managers and supervisors are perceived negatively be workers. In fact, he describes the attitude towards managers as that one with ‘disdain and contempt’ (Shaw 181). The employees feel that their supervisors as just people who unnecessarily get in their way. In the simplest way of thinking, this type of attitude towards the management is not special in anyway (Loughlin and Julian 551). In almost all organizations, a good percentage of the workforce has a negative attitude towards the working management (Cairncross and Buultjens 6). The situation worsens when a young workforce is involved since the employees feel as if they are being despised because of their age.
Does his description of a new work ethic tally with your own experiences?
Sheehy’s describes the new work ethic as frightening. He further explains how frightening it is. The workers have high expectations, have contempt towards customers, steal from the business, and are not concerned with the quality of service or products (Shaw 181). This describes a normal situation in most work stations. Experience in different workplaces and positions have taught me that most of the employees don’t feel correctly compensated and thus they never unleash the full potential towards work. They tend to lower productivity by avoiding some tasks and also by doing them slowly.
Some student workers in a certain place I was working complained that they don’t feel comfortable in the job and preferred returning to school. Others said the job is not good enough for them as they are training in other different and better fields. These match correctly with Sheehy’s experience. I witnessed some workers hiding themselves during working hours and slept. Again, several goods belong to the company would be reported missing and this would make to conclude that someone was stealing from the company. A good number of the workers would rarely complete their work on time, and even when they are behind schedule, I never saw them do something extra to get the work done. The worst experience was seeing workers who have no regard for their bosses, and when caught in the wrong, they would join their hands against the management.
Conclusion
Employees can sometimes have a negative attitude that may hurt both the management as well as the clients. The work ethics described by Sheehy is a behavior being currently experienced in the United States. Unless the situation changes, it may impact negatively on the future competitiveness of the US businesses.
Works Cited
Cairncross, Grant and Buultjens Jeremy. “Generation Y and work in the tourism and hospitality industry: Problem. “What problem, 2007, pp. 1-21.
Loughlin, Catherine, and Julian Barling. “Young Workers’ Work Values, Attitudes, and Behaviours.” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, vol. 74, no. 4, Nov. 2001, pp. 543–558
Reynolds, Justin. How One Person’s Negative Attitude Affects the Whole Work Culture. Google+, 2016, https://www.tinypulse.com/blog/negative-attitudes-affect-organizational-culture. Accessed 17 Jan. 2017.
Rogojan, Paul Titus. Deviant workplace behavior in organizations. Diss. uniwien, 2009.
Shaw, William. Moral Issues in Business. Stamford, CT, United States, Cengage Learning, 2016.
