The Demise of the Work Ethic By Sam Vaknin, Author of “Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited” Whatever happened to the work ethic? Where is the pride in the immaculate quality of one’s labor and produce? Both dead in the water. A series of earth-shattering social, economic, and technological trends converged to render their jobs loathsome to many – a tedious nuisance best avoided. 1. Job security is a thing of the past. Itinerancy in various McJobs reduces the incentive to invest time, effort, and resources into a position that may not be yours next week. Brutal layoffs and downsizing traumatized the workforce and produced in the typical workplace a culture of obsequiousness, blind obeisance, the suppression of independent thought and speech, and avoidance of initiative and innovation. Many offices and shop floors now resemble prisons. 2. Outsourcing and offshoring of back office (and, more recently, customer relations and research and development) functions sharply and adversely effected the quality of services from helpdesks to airline ticketing and from insurance claims processing to remote maintenance. Cultural mismatches between the (typically Western) client base and the offshore service department (usually in a developing country where labor is cheap and plenty) only exacerbated the breakdown of trust between customer and provider or supplier. 3. The populace in developed countries are addicted to leisure time. Most people regard their jobs as a necessary evil, best avoided whenever possible. Hence phenomena like the permanent temp – employees who prefer a succession of temporary assignments to holding a proper job. The media and the arts contribute to this perception of work as a drag – or a potentially dangerous addiction (when they portray raging and abusive workaholics). 4. The other side of this dismal coin is workaholism – the addiction to work. Far from valuing it, these addicts resent their dependence. The job performance of the typical workaholic leaves a lot to be desired. Workaholics are fatigued, suffer from ancillary addictions, and short attention spans. They frequently abuse substances, are narcissistic and destructively competitive (being driven, they are incapable of team work). 5. The depersonalization of manufacturing – the intermediated divorce between the artisan/worker and his client – contributed a lot to the indifference and alienation of the common industrial worker, the veritable “anonymous cog in the machine”. Not only was the link between worker and product broken – but the bond between artisan and client was severed as well. Few employees know their customers or patrons first hand. It is hard to empathize with and care about a statistic, a buyer whom you have never met and never likely to encounter. It is easy in such circumstances to feel immune to the consequences of one’s negligence and apathy at work. It is impossible to be proud of what you do and to be committed to your work – if you never set eyes on either the final product or the customer! Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece, “Modern Times” captured this estrangement brilliantly. 6. Many former employees of mega-corporations abandon the rat race and establish their own businesses – small and home enterprises. Undercapitalized, understaffed, and outperformed by the competition, these fledging and amateurish outfits usually spew out shoddy products and lamentable services – only to expire within the first year of business. 7. Despite decades of advanced notice, globalization caught most firms the world over by utter surprise. Ill-prepared and fearful of the onslaught of foreign competition, companies big and small grapple with logistical nightmares, supply chain calamities, culture shocks and conflicts, and rapacious competitors. Mere survival (and opportunistic managerial plunder) replaced client satisfaction as the prime value. 8. The decline of the professional guilds on the one hand and the trade unions on the other hand greatly reduced worker self-discipline, pride, and peer-regulated quality control. Quality is monitored by third parties or compromised by being subjected to Procrustean financial constraints and concerns. The investigation of malpractice and its punishment are now at the hand of vast and ill-informed bureaucracies, either corporate or governmental. Once malpractice is exposed and admitted to, the availability of malpractice insurance renders most sanctions unnecessary or toothless. Corporations prefer to bury mishaps and malfeasance rather than cope with and rectify them. 9. The quality of one’s work, and of services and products one consumed, used to be guaranteed. One’s personal idiosyncrasies, eccentricities, and problems were left at home. Work was sacred and one’s sense of self-worth depended on the satisfaction of one’s clients. You simply didn’t let your personal life affect the standards of your output. This strict and useful separation vanished with the rise of the malignant-narcissistic variant of individualism. It led to the emergence of idiosyncratic and fragmented standards of quality. No one knows what to expect, when, and from whom. Transacting business has become a form of psychological warfare. The customer has to rely on the goodwill of suppliers, manufacturers, and service providers – and often finds himself at their whim and mercy. “The client is always right” has gone the way of the dodo. “It’s my (the supplier’s or provider’s) way or the highway” rules supreme. This uncertainty is further exacerbated by the pandemic eruption of mental health disorders – 15% of the population are severely pathologized according to the latest studies. Antisocial behaviors – from outright crime to pernicious passive-aggressive sabotage – once rare in the workplace, are now abundant. The ethos of teamwork, tempered collectivism, and collaboration for the greater good is now derided or decried. Conflict on all levels has replaced negotiated compromise and has become the prevailing narrative. Litigiousness, vigilante justice, use of force, and “getting away with it” are now extolled. Yet, conflicts lead to the misallocation of economic resources. They are non-productive and not conducive to sustaining good relations between producer or provider and consumer. 10. Moral relativism is the mirror image of rampant individualism. Social cohesion and discipline diminished, ideologies and religions crumbled, and anomic states substituted for societal order. The implicit contracts between manufacturer or service provider and customer and between employee and employer were shredded and replaced with ad-hoc negotiated operational checklists. Social decoherence is further enhanced by the anonymization and depersonalization of the modern chain of production (see point 5 above). Nowadays, people facilely and callously abrogate their responsibilities towards their families, communities, and nations. The mushrooming rate of divorce, the decline in personal thrift, the skyrocketing number of personal bankruptcies, and the ubiquity of venality and corruption both corporate and political are examples of such dissipation. No one seems to care about anything. Why should the client or employer expect a different treatment? As Weber observed largely correctly, the Protestant work ethic underlies the rise of modern capitalism. Calvinism regarded work as a form of worship and success as proof of divine approval. Protestants of all creeds valued time – God’s-given gift – and sought to maximize its benefits. But the Puritan and Non-conformist empathic values of a Commonwealth wherein everyone is equal before God and therefore deserves to be treated well and with respect were abandoned along the way. Even the infusion of Jewish values – charity, community, industriousness, the idea of progress and self-betterment, learning, and pragmatism – in the late 19th century failed to stop the erosion in communality and the rise of malignant, short-sighted narcissism, the anathema of the work ethic. 11. The disintegration of the educational systems of the West made it difficult for employers to find qualified and motivated personnel. Courtesy, competence, ambition, personal responsibility, the ability to see the bigger picture (synoptic view), interpersonal aptitude, analytic and synthetic skills, not to mention numeracy, literacy, access to technology, and the sense of belonging which they foster – are all products of proper schooling. 12. Irrational beliefs, pseudo-sciences, and the occult rushed in to profitably fill the vacuum left by the crumbling education systems. These wasteful preoccupations encourage in their followers an overpowering sense of fatalistic determinism and hinder their ability to exercise judgment and initiative. The discourse of commerce and finance relies on unmitigated rationality and is, in essence, contractual. Irrationality is detrimental to the successful and happy exchange of goods and services. 13. Employers place no premium on work ethic. Workers don’t get paid more or differently if they are more conscientious, or more efficient, or more friendly. In an interlinked, globalized world, customers are fungible. There are so many billions of potential clients that customer loyalty has been rendered irrelevant. Marketing, showmanship, and narcissistic bluster are far better appreciated by workplaces because they serve to attract clientele to be bilked and then discarded or ignored. http://www.sunofindia.com/the-demise-of-the-work-ethic/

Wadani, what's up with the aggression. chill dee. naga daa ciyarta sxb. LOL.....i don't even know who reer guleed are? i just made that bit up. LOOL:p what's up dee. you cool? what's been happening? you coming through this year to SL?

Wadani;920232 wrote: loooool. Waar kaasi nabadoon maaha, wuxu ka mid yahay darbi jiifyada ugu caansan Hargaysa. 14% of the homeless in H-town are from reer guleed. they are the sultans of the all street roamers dee. LOOOOOOOOOOL.

oba hiloowlow;920224 wrote: waayahee gartey. Dee ina adeerow summerka baan biixi doona haduu alle ka dhigo inshallah, hargeysana waan tagayaa halkaaso aan kula shaahi doona Nabadoonki Jesus moses ee Nabadoon Alfoow xaaji Bolondhy Imam Oba, you're impending arrival is eagerly awaited. LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL. inaadeerow, nearer the time of your trip, be sure to let me know, so i can send you a PM with things i need here. LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL.

i went to see this guy called Hassan Arab earlier this afternoon. Hassan Arab is a xamar-cad-cad guy who works at Digital. Digital is a shop specialising in mobile phones, electronics and stuff. at the back of the shop, i was ushered to his small workstation. i've been looking for this guy for months. his expertise's are really sought after. as you guys already know, my expensive android phone has gone missing. i went through my stuff earlier this morning and managed to locate an almost brand new Blackberry LOL. i took the locked BB to Hassan and he managed to unlock it. excellent. Hassan is a legend walahi. we struck up an excellent conversation in his workstation. he informed me of his thriving business and how, despite, it been illegal almost everywhere else in the world, unlocking new iphones, BBs and android phones was perfectly legal and above board in SL. awesome guy. . LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

QansaxMeygaag;920190 wrote: Well look where trust got my relative? I wish we could turn back the clock just some 5 years, but... i'll be sure to ask for HIV+ clearance certificate. they do this stuff in Uganda, South Africa, Lesotho and Botswana. imagine, the number of jobs that could be created. speaking of job creation, i was at this NGO, the other day and there is a position called FGM Officer. i'd love to see the job description of such a position. LOOOOOOOOOOOL.

S.P, are you going to reveal the remaining 2 steps? also i want a public apology for the threats you made against Alpha (posted on this thread). thanks. Al.

QansaxMeygaag;920176 wrote: You all forgot one major thing from the list: TAKE HIV TEST!!! And be safe...and healthy.... LOL what about trust? trust is an important value. you have to trust your future wifey LOL!

QansaxMeygaag;920170 wrote: ^ There is some viral video about Harlem Shakes or something like that? Like Gangnam style? What's that all about AB-oow... you know the internet, you see something and BANG its gone viral. however, in many ways, its a form of resistance against the corporatisation of the internet of big firms whose 'here'-one-i-made-earlier nonsense CANNOT compete with virals. you can't watch a quality music video clip without VEVO....... you get all these sponsored video sites, recommendations, and advertising all tailored to your needs (based on your viewing traffic). the internet is developing new ways and techniques to get to know ''us'' walahi. we're NO longer safe online. i'm worried. free choice is NOT available online. anymore. i keep getting this sponsored sabahonline.com advert on every page of every site. do you guys get that? can we share our experiences of online fears and concerns?

there i was listening to some positive conscious music when this song came on.................................i almost died. catchy though. LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL.

it currently feels like being stuck in a lift with someone you don't like, in this thread. :(:( where are my friends...... Obaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatoow Qansaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasaaaaaaaaax Coooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooofle Apooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo come and beat this fool S.Pooow up. he's blackmailing me. he knows who i am in real life and he's imposed a 5 step reform plan on this thread. but so far, he's only revealed 3. he's basically saying, unless, i embrace these 5 steps fully, he will EXPOSE me. :(:( 1. Step 1- Break the cult of personality of this one member cult! 2. Step 2: Chose a distinguishable Avatar, one that connotes strength, change, and humility in contrast to its predecessor, to be the face of this new regime. 3. Step 3: Show the world Alpha's weakness- exposure 4.? NOT REVELED 5. ? NOT REVELED ---- this S.P is vicious animal walahi. he probably knows Alpha in the real world. what will i do when he EXPOSE's my online exploits to real people?....... OMG, i'm scared. i will report him to ADMIN too.

Wadani;920154 wrote: Alpha, I may be single but I consider myself a marriage guru of sorts. This whole notion of a person having to live a particular reality to speak on it is ridiculous. Does one need to have a criminal record to study and speak on criminology? experience! experience! experience!

Wadani, are you married? NO! i thought so..... marka please refrain from polluting this valuable thread with your BS...... i've also refrained from commenting, in the hope, that i could gain valuable knowledge as a budding guurdoon. i hope you understand my concerns wadani? we're still cool.

S.P, you're a pathetic fool. i'm getting a little bored of the waiting dee. you either reveal the last remaining steps or i'm not interested in this silly game of yours. its simple. walahi, if these remaining steps, are not revealed by the end of tonight's trolls session, i'm NOT willing to play ball. ma fahantahay S.P-ooow? your choice. my terms. simples.... LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

SomaliPhilosopher;920132 wrote: Man white people are so cheap! I did not have my printing id card,so I asked this guy to print me a page for me. One page costs 10 cents ~ 2000 Somali shillings!! The guy said okay but asked to be compensated back for his 10 cents. Western culture.............................................. Tis Tis................... $1 = 7000SLSH £1 = $1.53 so.....£1= (7000SLSH x 1.53) = 10700SLSH so if $0.10 is 700SLSH £0.10 = 1070SLSH NOT 2000SLSH! YOU LIAR!

SomaliPhilosopher;920132 wrote: Man white people are so cheap! I did not have my printing id card,so I asked this guy to print me a page for me. One page costs 10 cents ~ 2000 Somali shillings!! The guy said okay but asked to be compensated back for his 10 cents. Western culture.............................................. Tis Tis................... LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL@S.P, you're doing a good job in imitating me. well done. i'm waiting for your last two steps. thanks in advance.

Khayr, where have you been? its been ages. you were a super cool guy. LOL. you always made me laugh. you even give me some of the best advice ever. i remember all. LOL:p my youtube days are firmly behind me. i've relocated to SL. been here for 3 years now. life is good sxb. hope all is well with you. p.s - i NEVER post on this trolls thread. but when i saw your name, on here, i felt obliged to say 'hi'............i've got my own trolls thread. join me on there once in a while...i've got so much to tell you.

hi Khayr, its me Maximus Powers aka Marx.......in case you didn't know already...LOL:D

my friend tagged me in facebook picture. in this particular pic, i wasn't looking my very best. in fact, i looked terrible by my usual facebook standards. i quickly liked it and also commented on the picture. luckily, i've removed it from my timeline, so my friends can't see it. since, it was unloaded yesterday, its been liked 14 times. LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL.

SS, stop coping and pasting other people's work.

QansaxMeygaag;919976 wrote: Kkk. AB you Cheshire Cat #2! If you want to know how I sound, just listen to Cali Dhaanto loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooolll LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL Qansax, i listened to the dhaanto vid clip. Ali Dhaanto has a terrible voice.

Che -Guevara;919944 wrote: Reread what you wrote and tell me if there are any flaws there? LOL@Che, Madax Sare there appears to be NO flaws. perhaps, you could point these out?

Alpha Blondy;919926 wrote: oh by the way...its y ' all. its american. i'm out y'all...... LOOOOOOOOOOL