June 20, 2008

What I learned from the videos in my company’s ethics training class this morning

1. If you are white, you are ignorant and/or a bad person. You will try to force others to act unethically and/or illegally because your directives come from a colleague who belongs to the same country club as you.

2. If you are Asian or Indian, you always try to act with integrity, but are often suppressed by your white manager and forced to do the wrong thing. You argue with stilted and poorly scripted speech. “I am not sure if I am comfortable with such a decision, and I would like to express my concerns. I do not think this action is in line with company policy.”

3. If you are black or Hispanic, you don’t seem to work in the office – at least, you were never shown in any live action office scenes. However, you will magically appear for the still photos at the end of each video that show everyone coming together to do the right thing.

Those lessons learned, I’m now off to the company-sponsored afternoon booze cruise! Oh, the irony of attending that event right after ethics training.

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13 thoughts on “What I learned from the videos in my company’s ethics training class this morning”

  1. The only ethics video I’ve ever watched was one for an internship I did back in college. And sure enough, it involved a white manager who wanted to experiment with “slave days” with her ethnic subordinates.

    Classy.

    Hope your booze cruise was as good as mine–it was a perfect week for it here!

  2. laura —sounds like an interesting class –oh, I yearn to be in my working 20s again -that was a fun time for me. RunDangerously forwarded me your comment about taking a train to the July Mahopac Putnam County classic running race –I will look into it and let you know. It’s quite a long way (alittle over an hour) but must have a train nearby -someone could pick you up. I know that you could take a train to the New canaan 4 on the 4th!! I will get back to you.

  3. Reminds me of a scene from “The Office”. If some guy named Jim professes his love for the secretary to the boss, get out of there quickly!

    And feel free to post the ‘ruining the marathon’ article. Everyone should enjoy that!

  4. Two things.
    1) Would love to see a booze cruise ethics video. This time around though, the Indian is so drunk, he hasn’t even realized that’s he’s 3/4 of the way through a juicy cheeseburger.
    2) I’ve heard somewhere that when you get an email being asked to watch an ethics video on the web, it’s usually because someone (probably an ex-employee) is suing your company. Umm…let’s see…I think I’ve signed and watched 3 of the same videos this year thus far……

  5. Emmy, I had no idea how far Putnam County was! It sounds like I might be better off skipping that and then catching up to all of you another time (maybe if you come down to NY for a race?)

    Alex – reasoning behind my ethics course was less about lawsuits and more that I joined the company last July and was supposed to take the course within a year of my hiring date, so I finally got around to it!

    All – The booze cruise was definitely a little less than ethical! Nothing inappropriate per se, but there was enough boozing that there was surely potential.

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