Workplace

The Glenwood Gardens Incident: A Duty To Rescue, Policy Or Not

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments
"Here at Glenwood Gardens, our residents understand that our crack staff will allow them to die on the floor without lifting a finger."

“Here at Glenwood Gardens, our residents understand that our crack staff will allow them to die on the floor without us lifting a finger.”

Once again, we consider the ethical duties of someone placed by fate and circumstance in a position to give life-saving service…and who refuses to do so.

Lorraine Bayless,  87 year-old resident of Glenwood Gardens, a Bakersfield, California senior living facility, collapsed on the dining room floor, not breathing, her life obviously in danger.  A Glenwood Gardens staff member who identified herself as a nurse called 911, and this exchange ensued…

911 Dispatcher: “This woman’s not breathing enough. She’s gonna die if we don’t get this started. Do you understand?”

Nurse: “I understand. I am a nurse. But I cannot have our other citizens, who don’t know CPR, do it … ”

Dispatcher: “Is there anyone that works there that’s willing to do it?”

Nurse: “We can’t do that.”

Dispatcher: “Are we just gonna let this lady die?”

Nurse: “Well that’s why we’re calling 911.”

Dispatcher: “Is there anyone that’s willing to help this lady and not let her die?”

Nurse: “Um, not at this time.”

The 87-year-old was declared dead at the hospital. Continue reading →

Coming To A Ballot Box Near You: “The Naked Senator Principle”?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

 

Go Ashley!

Go Ashley!

Ashley Judd, the accomplished Hollywood actress-feminist (and the non-singing sister in the singing Judd family), is seriously contemplating a run for the Kentucky Senate as a Democrat against Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. There is a potential problem, however, implies the conservative “Daily Caller.” Judd will become the first serious contender for high national office who has appeared on screen numerous times in various degrees of nudity. The blog’s entertainment editor has done her research with no less an authority than MrSkin.com, and reports that Judd went topless for 1996′s “Normal Life” and went topless and bottomless in 1999′s “Double Jeopardy.” Meanwhile, in both 1996′s “Norma Jean and Marilyn” and 1999′s “Eye of the Beholder,” Judd went full frontal while also baring her comely tush. Ashley had a lesbian sex scene in 2002′s Oscar-nominated “Frida,” and “Mr. Skin”  categorized nine other scenes as “sexy,” and if you can’t trust him on such matters, whom can you trust?

We have learned that former porn stars can’t be middle school teachers or beauty queens, that art teachers can’t be seen painting pictures with their butts (even with paper bags over their heads) and that “the Naked Teacher Principle” decrees that those we entrust with the the shaping of young minds cannot be trusted to do the job if their naughty bits are just a mouse click away. Doesn’t it follow that there is a “Naked Senator Principle”? Surely internet nudity that was previously available at the Multiplex is a disqualification for Congress. Isn’t it? Shouldn’t it be? Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Judge Shecky’s Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments
"Here come de judge!"

“Here come de judge!”

Vince A. Sicari is a municipal judge in South Hackensack, N.J. who moonlights as a stand-up comic, and a fairly successful one at that, named Vince August.

He is now sending his lawyer to argue before the New Jersey Supreme Court that he should be allowed to continue his night and weekend job, overturning a 2008 ethics ruling that for a judge to do stand-up creates  “an appearance of bias, partiality or impropriety or otherwise negatively affect the dignity of the judiciary,” in violation of the Judicial Conduct Code. The issue is complicated by the fact that municipal judges almost have to moonlight as something—they earn only $13,000 a year. Sicari argues that his comedian gigs generate the bulk of his income, and that the two careers are separate. He says doesn’t make jokes about his cases or lawyers, nor sensitive issues involving race and gender, and on the bench he is as serious as, well, a judge.

Thus, your Ethics Quiz of the Day gives you an opportunity to judge “Judge Shecky”:

Is it ethical for a judge to moonlight as a stand-up comic? Continue reading →

When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Unethical, As A School Board Ponders The Profits of Child Labor

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

child laborWe learn about how seriously our institutions take their ethics when money gets scarce. States suddenly decided that ol’ devil gambling wasn’t so bad after all, once they realized that lots and lots of poor, desperate people without a lot of mathematical skills would fork over billions they needed to buy food with or save to move out of the ghetto in the hope of becoming a tycoon. I’m sure as soon as states realize that their legislators don’t have the guts to make the wealthy and powerful pay for lousy schools, more and more of them will get into the drug dealing business, like Colorado, and let the lives, families and businesses destroyed by the inevitable results of legal pot and cocaine become collateral damage.

Somewhere in between those irresponsible and cynical policy decisions way come ideas like this one, from the Prince George’s County Board of Education (in Maryland.) There is a new proposed policy in the perpetually corrupt Washington D.C. neighbor to make all work products created by teachers or students the intellectual property of the County, not the individual who created it: Continue reading →

Easiest Ethics Question Of The Month

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments
" Dear Ellie: The firm seems a little shady to me, but I need the experience. Should I take the offer?"

” Dear Ellie: The firm seems a little shady to me, but I need the experience. Should I take the offer?”

Over at Above the Law, Ellie Mystal posts a request for advice from a desperate job-seeking lawyer, and polls readers for their response. The lawyer has an offer from a local attorney she says has a reputation for being unethical and untrustworthy. He has filed for bankruptcy once; he is being investigated by the local bar and the government, and former employees say he’s atrocious to work for. The inexperienced lawyer asks,

“Is this really bad for an entry-level lawyer to work for an (arguably) bad lawyer? Is it an absolute NO? Which one is more important: get some experience or working at a right/good firm? To put it another way, which one is worse: having no experience or working at a bad firm? I keep searching job postings and there is no opening for entry-level. Everyone looks for experienced lawyers. So I get the impression that no experience is the worst.

“I don’t know what to do with this offer. Feels not right to accept this offer but cannot just forgo. So give me some advice — should I accept his offer?”

Well, let me th—NOOOOOOOO!!!! Absolutely NOT! Never in a million years! NEVER!

And yet, almost 20% of Above the Law’s mostly lawyer readers voted for the choice reading, “Yes. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

That is disturbing. Continue reading →

My Spidey Sense Is Tingling: When Skipping The Tip IS Theft

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Things are stranger than ever, it seems, in Times Square.

Chelsea? Is that really you?

Chelsea? Is that really you?

Philip Williams, 35, is one of many individuals who makes a living of sorts in Manhattan’s famed pop-culture and commerce jungle by dressing up as a colorful character to amuse tourists. In Williams’ case, it’s Spiderman. He is currently charged with assault and harassment for punching a woman who asked him to pose for a photo with her kids, then after getting her picture, refused to pay him the customary tip when he asked for some money.

“Sorry, I don’t have any,” said she. “You’re crap!” said Spidey, and socked her. Williams claimed in court that his punch was in self-defense, because, he claims, the woman threw a snowball at him. This is disputed. 

Williams’ arrest came when police intervened to stop the assaulted woman’s husband from squishing Spiderman, which he was endeavoring to do with a packpack. Initially, the woman had fingered another Times Square Spiderman as her assailant, but the husband was paying better attention, and knew which one to pound on.

I love this city! Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Chelsea Welch (The Applebee’s Train Wreck, Part Deux)

/ Jack Marshall / 53 Comments
Chelsea Welch 2

Chelsea Welch: Hire at your own risk. You have been warned. By Chelsea, in fact…

I really, really didn’t want to revisit the tale about the cheap pastor, the self-righteous waitress, and Applebee’s. The comments on the original post here were illuminating, not in a good way, and were profoundly discouraging. The fact that so many people are incapable of getting past their biases against any business that has to enforce basic common sense policies on their employees is depressing; the fact that they embrace wholeheartedly the idea that a minor instance of poor judgment and conduct warrants permanent vilification on the web is alarming; and the widespread rejection of the principles of the Golden Rule is scary.

Unfortunately, Chelsea Welch, the fired waitress whom I once had some sympathy for despite the fact that her firing was 100% justified, has apparently seen fit to publish a letter, although there is no way to tell that it is really hers—the way this whole scenario has gone, it probably was written by the pastor who started the whole mess to make Chelsea look bad. If that was the objective, the pastor was wrong again, for a ridiculous percentage of the commenters think the letter is perfectly reasonable, meaning, of course, that they have the ethical sensibilities of 5th graders. The cruel reader who brought this to my attention actually read the comments on one site and tallied them: 1538 supporting Chelsea, only 20 that didn’t.

<Sigh!>

Nonetheless, Chelsea Welch reveals herself as an A-1 prime ethics dunce, the kind of person who will blunder along through life behaving unethically, causing little and large harms and discomforts to those she encounters, always thinking she is in the right, because she doesn’t have the foggiest notion of how one goes about determining what  right is.

Her letter is a classic of rationalization. Some highlights (the entire letter is at the end)… Continue reading →

Mutual Destruction At Applebee’s: An Uncharitable Pastor and a Vengeful Waitress Do Each Other In

/ Jack Marshall / 353 Comments

1aloisreceipt

The Combatants!

  • Alois Bell, a pastor at Truth in the World Deliverance Ministries Church. Uncharitable, vengeful, arrogant and cheap, she complained about an autotip of 18% added to her Applebee’s check that was triggered by the size of her group. The bill was small, but the group was large. Crossing out the tip amount and replacing it with nada, she scrawled, insufferably, on the bill, “I give 10% to God, why do you get 18?”, thus stiffing the waiter whom the party later said had rendered impeccable service. She also scrawled “pastor” by the bill amount, thus presuming a clergy discount that didn’t (and shouldn’t) exist. After a waitress colleague of the un-tipped waiter posted the bill on Reddit to inspire some well-earned web-shaming, Bell complained to Applebee’s management, successfully getting the waitress fired.

Verdict: Contemptible jerk. She abused her position to claim a discount that she wasn’t entitled to, and punished an innocent server by withholding a fair tip. [This may not be so; see UPDATE at the end] Then she set out to take vengeance on the young woman for exposing her despicable conduct. So much for showing the other cheek. Bell’s conduct was as far from the teachings of Christianity as one can get, at least at an Applebee’s.

  • Chelsea Welch, the now ex-Applebee’s waitress. She posted the obnoxious bill and scrawled comments online, whereupon the pastor was identified by her handwriting, and perhaps her jerkish personality.

Verdict:  Unethical conduct, though provoked. Her colleague was wronged by the cheap pastor, but she forgot she wasn’t free to do as an Applebee’s employee what she might choose to do as a private individual. Applebee’s can’t have its customers worrying about whether real or perceived slights to restaurant staff will land them on various websites to be mocked and vilified. Her actions were irresponsible and a violation of her duties as an employee, even though her anger was certainly justified. And her method of retribution was excessive and unethical too. Continue reading →

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Today is Jackie Robinson’s birthday. He would be 94, but he lived only slightly more than half that long. He was one of our greatest ethics heroes, and I’d like to honor Mr. Robinson by reblogging a post from April 16 of last year.

Jack Marshall's avatarEthics Alarms

Yesterday, the media, history buffs and Kate Winslet fans were obsessed with remembering the Titanic, sometimes even with proper reverence to the 1500 men, women and children who lost their lives in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912. A strong argument could be made, however, that the most significant event that occurred on April 15 took place in 1947, in Brooklyn, New York. For that was the day that Jackie Robinson ran out to his position at first base as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and became the first African- American to play baseball in the Major Leagues since the earliest years of the game.

With that act, and his epic heroism for the rest of the season, Robinson changed baseball, sports, American society and history. It was a cultural watershed in a nation that had been virtually apartheid since the end of the Civil War, a catalytic…

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Bad Management As A Virtue: Cory Booker’s Message To Idiots

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments
The Mayor of Newark has a strange job description...

The Mayor of Newark has an overly broad job description…

I came close to giving Newark Mayor Cory Booker the “Incompetent Elected Official of the Month ” designation for his well-publicized stunt of rescuing a freezing puppy from the cold. I decided it would be unfair. An executive who wastes his or her time doing the jobs of others is indeed incompetent, not to mention inefficient, wasteful, and dumb, but that’s really not what Booker was doing. What he was doing was shamelessly sucking up to dim-bulb voters who are impressed with silly PR maneuvers like this rather than actual job performance.

To a moderately intelligent, informed citizen of Newark, a mayor interrupting his day to do what the city pays animal control workers a fraction of what he earns to do more responsibly would be an indictment of that mayor’s priorities, time-management skills, and judgment. To an idiot, it means that the mayor is a real swell guy who loves animals and is running willy-nilly all over the city, leaping tall building in a single bound—a hero! Booker has apparently made the calculation that Newark has more idiots than moderately intelligent, informed citizens, so his conduct was an insult as well. Or maybe he’s right.

The public’s grasp of what their elected leaders actually do is tenuous enough without elected officials like Booker intentionally adding to their ignorance. To be fair, he is an activist, hands-on leader who has engaged in genuine and appropriate acts of generosity, kindness and bravery. He should not, however, be rescuing kittens from trees or dogs from the cold, rushing to answer 911 calls or cleaning the streets. The taxpayers are already paying people to do those things. His job is to be mayor, and Newark needs one, full-time. If he has so much time on his hands that he’s doing the jobs of other city employees, then he’s neglecting his own responsibilities.

BAD mayor! BAD!

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Sources: News One, Time