Topic ClosedGo | New | Find | Notify | Tools |
Certified All Positions |
Who you are and what you do when no one else is looking, is the quality of the fiber from which you are made. I do mean no one. Not even your god, if you have one. To be frank, in my humble opinion, if you'll only do the right thing because the penalty is eternal damnation or somesuch, I don't trust you. This is about work ethic, but also life ethic, and Personal Responsibility. What I'm marinating in right now, besides generally being an asshole as discussed in a previous thread, is trying to build a business, but also transcend that if I can. I've been doing home construction and renovation for more years than my namesake here, but my work ethic or ethos has remained a constant. The world has changed, as it does, and the decades long disdain for the trades is deeply felt. My company has been trying for far too long to find skilled and motivated people. It's not "millenials," though I do think there is something to that, no, it is the now baked in idea that the trades are for a second class. Well. I think that something is missing from many occupations that are not manual labor. Integrity. Personal integrity, accountability, and respect. The idea that a trusted reputation is built brick by brick, and what is right is more important than pride, because what is right is what builds reputation and by that a brand. At my old company, one instance sticks in my mind. I arrived onsite monday morning ahead of everyone else. As I'm want to do as the lead. In coarse of opening the home, I find beer cans. Such a thing had never happened for my entire employ. Such a thing meant one of our employees with access had left these. What I could deduce and what I could prove were of course separate, but it was so unprecedented that it went out company wide. What if the homeowner found them first? What does that say? Cigarette butts are also an affront. Who cares if you smoke, but if you throw them on the ground at the home of a $2,000 repair or $2,000,000 build, you're being deeply disrespectful and can damage the future of your company. As we age, we find distance from young people, a large part of this is natural, I've observed it now from both sides. I feel like there is something more now, something corrosive, because I don't see the younger generations stepping up in the trades, and the folks at various companies I know including the one I work for bear this out. It is of deep concern. Amidst all the alleged concern people seem to have for their social persona, I'm not certain that they view personal responsibility or integrity with sufficient import. I often wonder if I come through. Mike Rowe is better at this. If I were to look in my crystal ball, I'd say that the trade jobs will actually surge as code automation eliminates office jobs. Robots are not just building cars, they are now just made of code. Well, they'll have to make a very advanced robot to do a variety of blue collar jobs, and so while those jobs have been volatile historically, they just might be a core part of manpower, just like old times. For my part, I'm not exactly old but I'm not exactly young, and if I can I'll move beyond climbing on roofs in the winter or in dirt crawlspaces in the summer. We shall see. Hopefully, it means nothing more than that I would no longer be able to give home improvement advice. Arc. ______________________________ "Like a bitter weed, I'm a bad seed"- Johnny Cash "I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel." - Pee Wee Herman Rode hard, put away wet. RIP JHM "You're a junkyard dog." - Lupe Flores. RIP | ||
|
Mark1Mod0Squid |
I hear what you are saying. I don't know if this fits, but I once heard it something along the lines of: you are born with your integrity 100% intact, as you go through life you will trade off bits and pieces of it that you can never get back. Somehow the idea is to learn that as early as possible so that you get to a point where you are no longer trading your integrity off. Paraphrase-ish. You only have your integrity once in a given situation. Compromise it, and you don't get it back. If we are paying attention and learning, the older and wiser we get, the less we are compromising and the more we are accomplishing. Not sure if adds anything to or supports your thoughts, but I am at a point where I would rather not do something than compromise any more of my integrity. _____________________________________________ Never use more than three words to say "I don't know" | |||
|
| Certified All Positions |
You're wrong. I won't guess at the underpinnings, but you're wrong about where integrity comes from and how it is affected by an individuals actions. The idea that we are all born with 100% integrity is pure nonsense, if you've ever met anyone under 20, much less under 5. Larval humans are reckless jerks. Not because they are bad, but in part because they are innocent, naive, self centered, and know nothing of the world. Integrity is a matter of learning respect for oneself, respect for others, and how actions can leave a permanent record on the world. You might think an ideologue is morally pure or upstanding, but a craftsman is all that without the subjective. Integrity must be earned, and built. It is fragile, but can be rebuilt if damaged. It's not a Hymen. When one damages ones reputation or integrity, it is worth asking what willful act caused the damage, and this will give measure to the necessary repair. Some acts do cause irreparable damage.. this is of course a mixture of the ever sliding scale of sociopolitical culture. So, no, I don't think my son has 100% integrity. He doesn't have any. He's 5. If we go by your standard, every time he has a tantrum he's burning integrity he can never recover. At this rate, how do we have any credible adults? What we're talking about right now is connected to this push to put feelings at the fore, to conflate "offense" with injury, the elimination of personal responsibility and the permissive poison of emotional "safe space." Responsibility and integrity actually require acts towards others. Personal integrity simply can't exist in a vacuum. I leave to others whether the immortal soul exists and whether it is innocent or blank at birth, whether it can and is permanently stained or degraded with no recourse. Such is debatable, whereas the history of acts, writings, recordings, constructions, these things demonstrably exist, and are only subject to a debate as to their value or righteousness, less their occurrence in the past. Unless we're talking about the moon landing, JFK assassination, etc. etc.... Arc. ______________________________ "Like a bitter weed, I'm a bad seed"- Johnny Cash "I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel." - Pee Wee Herman Rode hard, put away wet. RIP JHM "You're a junkyard dog." - Lupe Flores. RIP | |||
|
| Member |
You are correct. Integrity is earned, just like respect. We are born with a tabula rasa. See my philosophy course paid off. I believe Locke first spoke of the theory. Will revisit this isssue in the am. | |||
|
Oriental Redneck |
Respect is earned. You don't automatically get respect. You have to earn it. You have to prove to folks that you deserve their respect. Integrity is learned. You have to learn what's right and what's wrong. You're not born knowing what's right and what's wrong. It has to be taught. Q | |||
|
| Avoiding slam fires  |
After I retired from a job of twenty years I put together a company of remodeling business. Stuck with that and the low end employees. Roofers are the worst.Homeowners are the next as at the end of job they want to welsh on last payments Then I got lucky and got into smaller commercial remodeling. I stayed with that for about six more years and it was great. Money on time and I hired subs , nicer more skilled people. Health went down and I got tired of just paying uncle way too much,really did not need the stress so I just quit and just do my hobbies. | |||
|
| If you see me running try to keep up  |
I was trying to figure out what you meant by this, it seems as if something was left out but I think I get your point. I couldn’t care less whether you or anyone else trusts me considering my values are based on Christianity and my God. But there’s a big difference in someone doing the right thing due to negative consequences and doing the right thing out of obedience to their God. One is a willingness and the other is out of self preservation and selfishness. The man who thinks he serves no god actually does but that god is himself. | |||
|
| Member |
You shook hands and made a deal. You are honest in dealing with others and yourself. You cannot purchase integrity. All must be learned. Once you have lost integrity it is gone forever. Trust is the same. After Katrina, there were many who volunteered and helped others. Q is a human example of one who has integrity and one you can trust. I know that from his posts on the forum. He would never cheat me. In the classifieds it is a different story as to whom you might be dealing with. You earn integrity from your dealings with other. JMHO | |||
|
Member |
I'm a Baby Boomer. I work my butt off. Now we have shift workers--work the shift nothing more. Comment on performance--HR doesn't approve. Work is work. If the outcome is the same for work done--great. If you do someone else's work because they did not complete the work-BS. Work Ethic requires Integrity which creates Respect. | |||
|
Member |
Years ago when I was the service manager of a fire protection company back in New Jersey part of my job not only doing sprinkler inspections was also to install kitchen fire protection systems. I also did a lot of sales work for my part of the business I was responsible for. I lived by what my word was worth and used to say "Do the job you said you were going to do, for the price you said you were going to do it for, in the amount of time you said it would take." I would show up early on job sites and work till the job was done no mater how long it took. Most of my work only took a day but there were a lot of long days. "Do what you have to do to get the job done" I notice when I moved to Florida in 1999 there seemed to not be as much of a rush to get things done. I would make an appointment with a contractor to get a price to have some work done and they would not only not show up but would never call. I would call them the next day to find out what happened and get some BS excuse. "my cat had puppies my dog kittens" I had this happen multiple times. When I did finally talk to contractors back then and asked about the attitude the response I got was "no one is in a hurry to get anything done" I could not understand how anyone stayed in business back then. The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State NRA Life Member | |||
|
| Certified All Positions |
Who said anything about Christianity? Your god could be Odin for all I care. Doing something because you believe Odin is watching, or due to your fealty to Odin, means you're behaving that way because he's watching. If Odin takes a smoke break, dies, or simply doesn't exist, and this removes your ethical and/or moral constraints, you lack sufficient integrity. The "you" here isn't you, it's a generic placeholder for a person. Over the years in working with young people I've noticed a continued erosion of solid work ethic. Of course there are exceptions and thank goodness. But overall Millennial attitude coupled with the leftist bent of so many things today means something more corrosive is going on than just the typical sort of intergenerational "These darn kids with their hair and their clothes" kind of thing. It's a combination of helicopter parenting, and what I'd call the "Amazon Effect" where you get everything now, as well as how "Social Media" has twisted peoples images of others and themselves. Arc. ______________________________ "Like a bitter weed, I'm a bad seed"- Johnny Cash "I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel." - Pee Wee Herman Rode hard, put away wet. RIP JHM "You're a junkyard dog." - Lupe Flores. RIP | |||
|
Altitude Minimum |
ARC, in regard to the cigarette butts; I was working in my yard one day and a lady (at least my age, 64)turned the corner, stopped and threw a butt out her window. She then turned into her driveway 2 houses down the street. I picked up the butt and walked over to her as she was unloading her groceries and said “here, you dropped this” and handed it to her. She replied “oh, thanks”. | |||
|
Exceptional Circumstances |
I agree with this. I also agree that there are a lot of people who don't realize how important doing the right thing is and the consequences of taking the easy way out. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ | |||
|
| Member |
Integrity is what you do when no one is looking. | |||
|
| Certified All Positions |
Cigarette butts are the worst. What other trash is both an indicator of disregard and a potential wildfire. In the case of home construction, it says "I don't care about your property, or my work." Arc. ______________________________ "Like a bitter weed, I'm a bad seed"- Johnny Cash "I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel." - Pee Wee Herman Rode hard, put away wet. RIP JHM "You're a junkyard dog." - Lupe Flores. RIP | |||
|
Member |
This ties to a discussion I've had with others, probably a hundred times now. My observation is this: "Historically, every generation works hard to make it such that the next generation doesn't have to work as yard. Think of the work your grandparents did. They did it to make life better/easier on their kids. You do it for yours, too. It's what's supposed to happen. However: at some point, life gets so easy on that next generation that those kids have no stinking idea of the labor and sacrifice their ancestors put forth. Eventually, we breed a nation of wusses: kids who can't think on their own, can't solve problems on their own, don't have any idea how to survive outside their current (relatively) pampered existence. They don't have to work hard, if at all, and are clueless about how to." Why don't successive generations give a crap about hard work or integrity or so many other qualities respected by previous generations? Because they don't have to. It's been done for them, and they've gotten used to it being done for them. Eventually, our nation will pay the price for that. God bless America. | |||
|
| Mark1Mod0Squid |
No, I am not. No part of my reply was stated as fact because integrity has no definitive measurement. Rather I would suggest we can both be right in that "I know it when I see it" applies. Otherwise it's just tilting at parables in my opinion. _____________________________________________ Never use more than three words to say "I don't know" | |||
|
| Member |
I appreciate everything you said here and agree 100% I also understand that a lot of people these days just won't get it. I think that the greatest travesty today is in our education system and what they are doing to our young people. They are churning out a lot of ignorant, self-centered, indolent fools. I think we need a lot more shop and vo-tech classes where people actually have to work with their hands and actually make something or do work they can be proud of. We will move our country back going forwards when our younger generations admire someones work ethic more than their internet snark......... Remember, this is all supposed to be for fun................... | |||
|
| Conveniently located directly above the center of the Earth  |
nominated as 'Quote of the Year'  **************~~~~~~~~~~ "I've been on this rock too long to bother with these liars any more." ~SIGforum advisor~ "When the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of change, then change will come."~~sigmonkey | |||
|
Equal Opportunity Mocker |
With every bit of due respect, I disagree strongly with this general sentiment. It is one that was disseminated among my entire family in my youth: that because we were a family of modest means, strictly blue around our collar, we were somehow morally superior to the businessmen across town, in their nicer homes and their white collar jobs. Surely they screwed someone over (almost always the "little man") on their way to the top. Just because I no longer make a living doing "manual" labor does not mean that I don't recall what it's like. Nor does it mean that I forgot all the guys who were strictly blue collar that I knew who were as sorry as the day is long. The ones who whined about being held down by the system, then would turn down offered overtime or extra responsibilities because that wasn't what they wanted. The ones who you could reliably count on to call out sick around holidays after they got that bonus check. I would counter that integrity, accountability, respect, initiative... all of that stuff a man (or woman) either has, or he doesn't. You can't buy any of those things with all the money in the world, and you don't necessarily trade those things in by default if you somehow acquire money on your way through life. ________________________________________________ "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving." -Dr. Adrian Rogers | |||
|
| Powered by Social Strata | Page 1 2 3 |
 | Please Wait. Your request is being processed... |
Topic Closed© SIGforum 2024