I think it’s always good when your employer has your back. Sometimes the higher ups will question why a certain employee did what she or he. I think the best bosses will always back you in up in the best way.
Maybe that’s what was happening here. Southwest was backing up the guy who told the young lady to change.
I don’t know why Southwest didn’t just issue an apology. This incident alone will always be one of the stories the public thinks about when they fly Southwest. Every time a Southwest employee makes a joke over the speaker phone on the plane, people will ask, “Are they really like that?” People want to believe that Southwest is the fun, come as you are airline. The airline really wouldn’t have lost anything fiscally had they made an apology so I don’t know what the big fuss was about. I love this airline, but from the PR perspective, I give them a thumbs down in this case.
Cheerleading Story.
Politics apparently doesn’t just work in Washington or Austin. It works in the hearts of high school teenagers also.
I’d like to believe that the truth always comes out and that defamation of character is only temporary until that time comes.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
I was in Taiwan visiting my family. A close friend of mine is a vice-president in his family’s company. After work one day I met up with my friend, and he brought along one of his business associates from the mainland.
We made the initial small talk and then I proceeded to ask the business associate about his corporation’s practices. He told me his company was heavily vertically integrated. Where the discussion became slightly heated is when he told me about the factory his corporation’s products were manufactured in. In fact, he didn’t even use the term “factory,” he referred to it as “the sweat shop.”
That’s really what it was. He described the conditions to me as unfortunate but necessary to even be considered as a competitor in the market.
I thought surely this is not practiced in America. When I got back to the states I did some digging around. I pulled an article, which I’ve saved to this day, about Nike Corp and their “sweat shops.”
Just like this pig iron Nike did not directly own the factory but contracted out with a manager in China who did. The article described how the factory only hired young females to work. The young women had to pay rent to the factory to have a place to stay in the dormitory, and pay checks were rarely given.
I’m from Austin. I grew up only knowing the “mom and pop” and was raised by the city to know that the Devil and Wal-Mart were the same thing.
If all of our corporations in America were to pull out and spend the dollars to be ethical, would our economy tank? I ask myself, “Are we to in to even consider getting out? Even if we wanted to?”
Maybe this be the first step. Corporate America will be Corporate America, but we are the individuals working in the matrix of it. Maybe we take the responsibility to look at a company’s business practices and say “yay” or “nay” if they give us a job offer.
We say no to the companies that do not practice business ethics all the way down and be vocal about it. We create a different business cultural climate where people want to do the right thing.
Even in the case of the Dallas Cowboys. Do the people deserve to know? One of my public relations profs said, “Unless you are asked to do something illegal, suck it up and do your job as a pr practitioner.” What can you comfortably go to sleep to at the end of the night?
We made the initial small talk and then I proceeded to ask the business associate about his corporation’s practices. He told me his company was heavily vertically integrated. Where the discussion became slightly heated is when he told me about the factory his corporation’s products were manufactured in. In fact, he didn’t even use the term “factory,” he referred to it as “the sweat shop.”
That’s really what it was. He described the conditions to me as unfortunate but necessary to even be considered as a competitor in the market.
I thought surely this is not practiced in America. When I got back to the states I did some digging around. I pulled an article, which I’ve saved to this day, about Nike Corp and their “sweat shops.”
Just like this pig iron Nike did not directly own the factory but contracted out with a manager in China who did. The article described how the factory only hired young females to work. The young women had to pay rent to the factory to have a place to stay in the dormitory, and pay checks were rarely given.
I’m from Austin. I grew up only knowing the “mom and pop” and was raised by the city to know that the Devil and Wal-Mart were the same thing.
If all of our corporations in America were to pull out and spend the dollars to be ethical, would our economy tank? I ask myself, “Are we to in to even consider getting out? Even if we wanted to?”
Maybe this be the first step. Corporate America will be Corporate America, but we are the individuals working in the matrix of it. Maybe we take the responsibility to look at a company’s business practices and say “yay” or “nay” if they give us a job offer.
We say no to the companies that do not practice business ethics all the way down and be vocal about it. We create a different business cultural climate where people want to do the right thing.
Even in the case of the Dallas Cowboys. Do the people deserve to know? One of my public relations profs said, “Unless you are asked to do something illegal, suck it up and do your job as a pr practitioner.” What can you comfortably go to sleep to at the end of the night?
Monday, September 10, 2007
Do People Matter?
After diving into the chapters of Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism, I’m not sure if I’m even qualified to give an answer to such a multidimensional question, “Does everybody matter?”
I’ll take a stab at it anyways. After all, I’m almost a college graduate.
The “paul-ness” in me would like to say, “Yes. All people do matter.” Maybe the reality of this answer should be adjusted and say, “Most people do matter.”
I agree with Appiah; how we define our answers to this question weighs heavily on the cultural factors of our society.
We see all sorts of vehicles when we drive to work. And in the course of the subliminal thoughts of our minds, we might ask ourselves, “Is the middle-aged woman, wearing the black Luis Vuitton business suit, zipping by in her Lexus SC someone who matters? Perhaps we say, “I don’t know” and continue driving, but then we stop at a red light and see a homeless person holding up a sign: “Anything will help. God bless you.” Is the homeless person someone who matters? Would the woman driving the nice car equally matter as much if she was placed in a village in north China?
I feel that American culture directly measures who matters to status and degree of responsibility, and that does not necessarily equal out to what “should” matter. All of these metrics change when you move to another culture.
When the scope of the question shifts to people in corporate America’s supply chain, the scope of the answer does as well.
The response to the earlier question is more hierarchical in its structure. In the second question, the response becomes more circular.
Is the vice president for marketing more important than the vice president for business to business relations? Is the vice president for marketing more important than the lower management in charge of making sure the products are shipped out on time? The company’s survival depends on all pieces of the circle to function. Every person within a corporate supply change matters.
If there was a third question asked maybe it would be, “Do the jobs of the people working within a corporate American supply chain matter individually in terms of an American society as a whole?”
I’ll take a stab at it anyways. After all, I’m almost a college graduate.
The “paul-ness” in me would like to say, “Yes. All people do matter.” Maybe the reality of this answer should be adjusted and say, “Most people do matter.”
I agree with Appiah; how we define our answers to this question weighs heavily on the cultural factors of our society.
We see all sorts of vehicles when we drive to work. And in the course of the subliminal thoughts of our minds, we might ask ourselves, “Is the middle-aged woman, wearing the black Luis Vuitton business suit, zipping by in her Lexus SC someone who matters? Perhaps we say, “I don’t know” and continue driving, but then we stop at a red light and see a homeless person holding up a sign: “Anything will help. God bless you.” Is the homeless person someone who matters? Would the woman driving the nice car equally matter as much if she was placed in a village in north China?
I feel that American culture directly measures who matters to status and degree of responsibility, and that does not necessarily equal out to what “should” matter. All of these metrics change when you move to another culture.
When the scope of the question shifts to people in corporate America’s supply chain, the scope of the answer does as well.
The response to the earlier question is more hierarchical in its structure. In the second question, the response becomes more circular.
Is the vice president for marketing more important than the vice president for business to business relations? Is the vice president for marketing more important than the lower management in charge of making sure the products are shipped out on time? The company’s survival depends on all pieces of the circle to function. Every person within a corporate supply change matters.
If there was a third question asked maybe it would be, “Do the jobs of the people working within a corporate American supply chain matter individually in terms of an American society as a whole?”
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