Opportunism
This past summer I worked for an insurance company every day from 9 until 5 o’clock. There was one other intern in my department and together we worked on a cross selling project; in which, we strategized on how to sell personal insurance to key executives in company’s which held commercial insurance with us. Like any other internship I had a lot of down-time. A lot of the smaller projects that were given to the other intern and me only took a few hours. At the beginning of the summer, both of us showed up on time every morning and left when the day ended as explicitly written in our contract. One day at lunch both of us brought up how it would be easy to leave a little earlier than we were supposed to or arrive a little later. Our boss was based in an office an hour away from downtown; therefore, we would meet with him only once a week to discuss our progress on the project. One day an hour into work I had stepped outside to go to my car because I had forgotten my name tag I needed for a meeting, as I stepped outside the other intern was walking in looking like he had just gotten there for the morning. I said hello to him, and proceeded to my car. When I walked back into the office and arrived at the meeting I sat down next to my coworker and he jokingly brought up his being late that morning. He later went on to say, “to be honest I come late and leave early every day.” I was not surprised in the least because I had passed his cubicle multiple times and wondered where he was. It seemed like nobody was saying anything to him, and he continued to do every day for the rest of the summer.
I obviously never said anything to anyone about him leaving, it was really none of my business. He always finished the work we needed to get done, as did I. There were multiple days where I considered leaving; however, I was being paid by the hour and viewed it as stealing from the company if I was not present while being paid. Days and days went by where I would be stuck at my desk for a couple hours, while the other intern left. To pass the time by I would often read news articles, or see if there were any menial tasks I could do to help another employee out.
By the end of our internship, one of my supervisors asked if I would want a position over winter break to get a feel for the Risk Management division of the company. It was a department I expressed interest in early on in my internship. At the final luncheon with all the interns in we all discussed what the next year held for us, being that the majority of us were seniors. One of the girls in the accounting department mentioned that she was offered to work over winter break, and I congratulated her and said I hoped we could potentially work together. After saying this, the intern I worked with looked at me and asked when they offered me this and I said last week, and immediately knew they did not offer him the same. I never found out whether they knew he was leaving early and showing up late, but I do know they took notice in the fact that I took the internship more seriously.
In my situation if I had been opportunistic, it definitely would have taken a lot of boredom out of the job. Also it would have allowed me to sleep in everyday and go home early. Because I did what I promised in my contract, I ended up being rewarded in the end.
I obviously never said anything to anyone about him leaving, it was really none of my business. He always finished the work we needed to get done, as did I. There were multiple days where I considered leaving; however, I was being paid by the hour and viewed it as stealing from the company if I was not present while being paid. Days and days went by where I would be stuck at my desk for a couple hours, while the other intern left. To pass the time by I would often read news articles, or see if there were any menial tasks I could do to help another employee out.
By the end of our internship, one of my supervisors asked if I would want a position over winter break to get a feel for the Risk Management division of the company. It was a department I expressed interest in early on in my internship. At the final luncheon with all the interns in we all discussed what the next year held for us, being that the majority of us were seniors. One of the girls in the accounting department mentioned that she was offered to work over winter break, and I congratulated her and said I hoped we could potentially work together. After saying this, the intern I worked with looked at me and asked when they offered me this and I said last week, and immediately knew they did not offer him the same. I never found out whether they knew he was leaving early and showing up late, but I do know they took notice in the fact that I took the internship more seriously.
In my situation if I had been opportunistic, it definitely would have taken a lot of boredom out of the job. Also it would have allowed me to sleep in everyday and go home early. Because I did what I promised in my contract, I ended up being rewarded in the end.
You gave an interesting story. It raises the question - might the employee be monitored without the employee knowing it? Personally, I'm not crazy about that ideas as a systematic approach to getting employees to avoid shirking. Once they become aware of the monitoring, as they no doubt will eventually, this can create some paranoia. So I favor a more straightforward approach.
ReplyDeleteBack to your story. Did your have to submit a time sheet for your work? Did anyone explain to you why you needed to be there when you are not interacting with clients? Couldn't you do the work from some other location. You might not know this because you added the class late. But because I'm retired I don't have an office on campus and I don't really need one. I'm responding to your post now from my home office. That works perfectly fine for me, but nobody is telling me otherwise.
Another question is whether the interns were occasionally tasked with other work when other people in the office were very busy and the overall level of worked picked up? If so, that would be a reason to want you there. The interns, then would be like extra labor ready to deploy as necessary.
It also sounds like you were unmanaged most of the time, which I find a bit odd. So I wonder if there was somebody at the office where you did work who might have some responsibility for you.
Congratulations on being asked back to work in the winter. It sounds like a good possibility for you.
We used ADP workforce in order to keep track of our time; therefore, everything was on our honor. I definitely see my coworkers frustration with our management. Our time could have definitely been put to better use; however, from my perspective he just did not like working there. There was an opportunity towards the end of the summer to take the day and volunteer our time at an event at a local elementary school. He did not show up, and instead stayed in the office. This made me think at that point he was very checked out of the job, and did not seem to be paying much attention to his emails.
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