What's Happened to Our Work Ethic?

The Experience of Unreturned Phone Calls and Unresponsive Vendors and Colleagues has Become Endemic in our Society.

I'm sure all of you have experienced it. You are at work and have placed a call to another department requesting important information for a report that's due tomorrow. You leave a voice mail message with a department employee and tell him or her the urgency of the needed information.  You wait one hour, then two. Then you begin to panic. You leave a second message, and maybe you try to reach someone else in the department to make sure your contact is in the office. You find out that he or she has been "in and out of the office", but this second person will make sure your original contact gets the message. Another hour goes by, and now it's getting too late to wait. You try other ways and other sources for your information. The person finally calls you back - hours later. By this time, you have somehow obtained most of the information you need. The person apologizes and tells you how busy he or she has been. Yes, she received your message, was having someone work on your project while he or she was at a meeting. In the meantime, he or she neglected to return your call and give you confidence that the information was forthcoming.

This example points to a lack of communication, but it also represents a rather poor work ethic. It illustrated disregard for you and the immediacy of the project. Instead of putting you at ease that the needed information is forthcoming and giving you a time frame, you had to sweat and panic about what to do next to get the information you needed.

This type of experience happens day after day in the workplace of even the most prestigious firms. In addition, experiences of unfinished or careless work, late deliveries, unresponsive vendors, etc., etc. are a common complaint. I worked for over 20 years in a large financial services company. Day after day there were numerous deadlines and, as a division manager, I would often have to rely on information or feedback from various departments. It seemed that during the last few years of this work experience, responsiveness from other staff seemed to deteriorate.