Comments on: What’s Wrong and Not Wrong About the BP CEO’s Yachting Weekend

By: Jack Marshall

Jack Marshall — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 03:18:40 +0000

Thanks…your kind words came at a good time. I needed some. If you are just spam, I may kill myself.

By: Montenegro

Montenegro — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 03:14:58 +0000

I was lucky to find your ethicsalarms.com web site. You definitely can write and teach and inspire. Keep writing – I’ll keep reading.

By: Jack Marshall

Jack Marshall — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:42:56 +0000

You do recall that the “earned his pay” statement was referring to his week prior to the race, right?
Hayward is accountable for the spill—I have no idea if he was responsible for it; I doubt it, frankly. Lower level managers didn’t follow procedures. It’s on his watch, and it’s his job. But you’ll have to show me how he personally was necessarily either greedy or careless. Maybe he was, but it’s not been demonstrated…unless your position is that oil executives are by definition greedy.

By: the daily sloth

the daily sloth — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:19:00 +0000

If I put so much greed and carelessness in my work that I DESTROY the life of MILLIONS for DECADES and then go for a public relationship job to protect my interests, no, I don’t earn my pay. Even if I understand what a mess my greed and carelessness made and work like hell to try to fix everything, I don’t earn my pay. In the petroleum industry, you earn your pay when you make sure to do everything you can to protect the environment from which you extract oil. In Alberta, communities near the tar sands facilities are dying of cancer because of the nasty chemicals produced by the oil extraction. Fishes out there are found with tumors as big as an apple. Did these oil guys earn their pay?

By: Steven Mark Pilling

Steven Mark Pilling — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:25:38 +0000

Dear Jack: If I was fortunate enough to have a yacht, I’d far sooner hire Hayward to pilot it than Abby Sunderland. At least he knows how to do THAT right. Abby’s adolescent judgement in nautical matters leaves much to be desired. And, as a matter of principle, I wouldn’t buy that boat from her old man! I’d sooner pick up a war surplus minesweeper. John Wayne did!

By: Jack Marshall

Jack Marshall — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:15:54 +0000

Answer me this: do you only earn your pay when you make good decisions? Most corporate execs do the work they are compensated for, the best they can. You may disagree with the pay scale, but that’s irrelevant. Some baseball players earn 200,000 a day for showing up and being available to play. And they earn their pay.That was the deal.

Do you really think Tony Hayward didn’t earn his pay allowing himself to be hypocritically condemned by a lot of compromised pols trying to distract from the fact that they worked to weaken oil regulations and accepted big pol lobbying money? To have his face and name be the lazy symbol for the media of his company and his most incompetent employees? Really? Of course he earned his pay

By: the daily sloth

the daily sloth — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 22:57:34 +0000

“He earned his pay.” Wow. Really?

By: Glenn Logan

Glenn Logan — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 21:22:00 +0000

When a CEO represents an unpopular industry and goes out and indulges in Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous-like excess, I say it is less about an ethical violation than abject stupidity.

It isn’t that he doesn’t have the right to spend his money as he sees fit. It is his money, after all. But if I went out and embarrassed my company with excesses, and I worked for a publicly-traded entity like BP, I expect the stockholders would remonstrate with me about the importance of maintaining my public image as it reflects on the company.

Likewise, if I went out as a CEO of a major corporation, purchased a cheap desk and kept a shabby office, it would be exactly the same problem in reverse. Image is important, but the right image is never excess.

By: Jack Marshall

Jack Marshall — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 17:04:05 +0000

I hate losing posts. It happens to me all the time, though I have put comments here from other computers and browsers (including Google Chrome) and have never had a problem.

By: Tim LeVier

Tim LeVier — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:49:53 +0000

Every time I post (not just here) I have to submit it, then hit the back button, and submit it again. That’s with Google Chrome. If I use Internet Explorer, the post is simply lost, so I always copy it before I submit, and if it fails I just paste it and submit it again.

The only upside I can see to his “yacht” activity is that if nothing else, it shows that he is a fan (personally) of ocean activities.

The whole situation with the leak and BP is interesting to me because of the criticism of BP by “activists”…. and I think I’ve got a good analogy.

You board a commercial flight from NY to LA and once the pilot gets the plane in the air, he comes over the intercom and tells you that he didn’t do his inspection, but if he had, he would have known that the landing gear would fall off the plane after take off. Well, the landing gear has fallen off the plane since you are now in the air and everyone is mad. So the question is, do you shoot the pilot immediately? Or does it make sense to keep the pilot around to attempt an emergency landing?

Why is everyone so hell bent on issuing punishment before the extent of the crime is known?