Responsibility/Accountability

[tuckerkeys]

my mom, who works for me in my shop, put a credit card charge through for $28,800.00 and it was supposto be $288.00. it went through ( customer was a real estate agent w/ a veeerrry high limit on her card...) and in turn my store was charged almost $1000.00 in credit card processing fees. She is blaming the COMPUTER! She had 3 different attempts to see what she was doing, and she was rushing & not paying attention. She forgot the decimal point in our credit card processing program & was trying to say it is too small on the computer.....it was a costly mistake. Because of this mistake i am making sure to all of our employees i want them to take ownership of their mistakes, and not to just pass the buck off on someone or something else. and i also did a big thing. i told her she could loose her job or pay for it. she is paying for it ( i know i know i am a big meenie.... but there is a lot more to her actions as she is always messing up just not this big)

We also had a guy spill a $75 can of paint & said " oh well, the lid should have been put on tighter & it should not have been near the end of the table" i would have been happy with an I'm sorry it was my fault, but nope!!! he blamed it on someone & something else...uugghhh!

 

[sweet angel]

Tuckerkeys, totally off topic, but wanted to say "hi, neighbor". I'm from Lacey, work in Manahawkin and was on the beach in Beach Haven and at the lighthouse yesterday.

 

[Michie]

For the record, this is totally separate and apart from Dawn's thread. This is more to do with the attitude I've seen many people in recent years take -- that nothing is their fault. Look at all the frivolous lawsuits. People always have a reason for why something is NOT their fault, yet no one seems to want to own up and take responsibility for it.

Two examples that come to mind:

1. The kid that fails in school and turns around and blames the teachers/school/parents.

2. People that don't get penalized for drunk driving because they claim the breathalyzer was not properly calibrated, the bartender should have KNOWN to stop serving him/her, or any number of other reasons.

Just two quick examples.

I simply don't understand why people are not held accountable and refuse to take responsibility.

This is one thing me and the sisters did talk about and agree on. Financial responsibility. I think the trend of folks being less financially responsible for themselves is growing. I don't know how many adults I know that are still being supported by their parents. I see it in my work, I see it through friends. I see it here.

Also 25 30 years ago, the only folks who could say buy a car was those with good credit. Now days, if you have a job, have 500 bucks to put down, you can buy a late model car or SUV of your choice! Along with high interest, but you get my point. So maybe in a way, society is enabling less responsibilty.

 

[Liberty Belle]

I don't think that it is uncommon or unpopular to expect people to take responsibility for their actions. I also don't think that society as a whole attempts to make excuses. I think we tend to look for reasons why some people make the choices that they do. It doesn't mitigate the circumstances but it does shed some light on the situation. I think its human nature to be curious as why things happen as they do.

I completely agree.

I think usually people are looking for an explanation, not an excuse.

 

[DawnCt1]

i told her she could loose her job or pay for it. she is paying for it ( i know i know i am a big meenie.... but there is a lot more to her actions as she is always messing up just not this big)

We also had a guy spill a $75 can of paint & said " oh well, the lid should have been put on tighter & it should not have been near the end of the table" i would have been happy with an I'm sorry it was my fault, but nope!!! he blamed it on someone & something else...uugghhh!

The credit card company won't waive the fee? If she is that careless I would have fired her but if she were a regular employee can you actually compel them to pay the $1000???

Edited to add, I wouldn't fire my mom, I would put her at a job where she could do "no harm". She is your mom. I would fire another employee however.

 

[Spoodleink]

I do know a lot of people where nothing in there whole life has ever been their fault. One in particular who is the youngest of the group I grew up with always pulls out well I am only 17, 19 , 21 ,23 how was I supposed to know that no one ever taught me to file my taxes, open a bank account, not leave the scene of an accident, read a lease before I sign it.


At my job we have "issues" with our accounting system and alot of people blame thier mistakes on it. Most of them are small mistakes ( not firable offenses). My boss has never batted an eye when I have make a mistake and owned up to it.

In fact at my fisrt job I made a realtivly small mistake did tell anyone and maybe b/c I am just a worrier by nature but I lived in fear that some one would find out my coworker eventually noticed and it was no big deal and luckily had no long term effects. But after that I always own up as soon as I notice something and it is so much easier to go up and be like I did this and I am doing this to fix it or I did this and I am not sure what to do now Or sorry i tired to run an aging with checking if someone else was and froze the system.

 

[tuckerkeys]

Tuckerkeys, totally off topic, but wanted to say "hi, neighbor". I'm from Lacey, work in Manahawkin and was on the beach in Beach Haven and at the lighthouse yesterday.

well hello there! yes saturday was a great day here on the island! we almost pulled the beach chairs out...but didn't. also wanted to take the dogs to the lighthouse, but didn't b/c we usually let them run around & with the amount of people here you would have thought it was an april or may saturday! we even did a spring clean up in the middle of jan! it was amazing! do you go to BH for the beach? i live in ship bottom

 

[tuckerkeys]

The credit card company won't waive the fee? If she is that careless I would have fired her but if she were a regular employee can you actually compel them to pay the $1000???

Edited to add, I wouldn't fire my mom, I would put her at a job where she could do "no harm". She is your mom. I would fire another employee however.

no, believe it or not they WILL NOT waive the fee. took them almost 4 weeks to decide this too. Also went through about 8 supervisors, seems as if noone wanted to make that decision. noone wanted to be held responsible for their actions of giving us a break! we even caught the mistake about 5 minutes after it had been made, and notified the co...oh well..... and although i can not MAKE an employee pay for something i can give them an option to do so, and if they agree, then it's on.

 

[bicker]

noone wanted to be held responsible for their actions of giving us a break!

Keep in mind that all publicly-owned institutions must now demonstrate adequate financial controls. One of the minimum controls required, as specified by law, is establishment and enforcement of authority to take actions which result in money leaving the entity, and that authority must be specifically based on the dollar amount of the transaction. For transactions that are substantially larger than the usual amounts, it is expected that higher levels of management make the decision (since these transactions are the most common source of financial risk). This is a result of the "controls designed to prevent or detect fraud, including who performs the controls and the regulated segregation of duties" provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. It is now effectively not permitted to capriciously empower lower level employees to make such decisions.

You can thank Enron, Tyco and Worldcom for making it that much more difficult to catch a break from a publicly-owned institution.

It isn't clear whether these new laws also put limits on how generous a financial institution can be, with regard to covering for a customer's error. I'd have to check with our SOx experts about that to know for sure.

 

[smartestnumber5]

I completely agree.

I think usually people are looking for an explanation, not an excuse.

I agree as well.

Also, in some cases I think it is highly appropriate to ask society to be accountable for its failings. For example, when we compare teenage pregnancy rates in the U.S. to other developed democracies and find that the U.S. has much higher rates we should hold our society responsible for that. To simply focus on the actions of the individuals who were involved in these pregnancies ignores the quite obvious question of how we can explain such different rates of pregnancy purely in terms of personal responsibility. Are teens in the U.S. just naturally more irresponsible than teens in Europe? Of course not. There must be an explanation for why teens in the U.S. are using birth control less often than teens in other developed democracies and the only reasonable answer must be some difference in our societies. It doesn't follow that any individual can be completely absolved of responsibility like "hey, society made you do it." We can never really know of any particular individual what the prevailing influence on that individual was. But on the larger scale, we can certainly know that differences in society account for differences in teen pregnancy rates, and thus our society needs to own up to its accountability in failing to manage the problem as well as other developed democracies have.