Related to the it’s-not-my-job syndrome that I wrote about last week is the I’m-just-doing-my-job syndrome. I’m sure we’ve all encountered this phenomenon with varying degrees of frustration, but in its worst manifestation, this syndrome demonstrates a striking disengagement with a moral compass and an inability to make ethical decisions that take courage.
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Seeing a story online has inspired this piece, as it really highlighted a problem that seems to be global in its pandemic.
A woman down on her luck had been seen shoplifting a loaf of bread by a shop assistant. The shop assistant knew that shoplifting is illegal and that the shop has procedures and policies in place that required escalation to management. The shop assistant felt torn because he believed that the woman genuinely needed that loaf of bread and couldn’t afford the $1.80 it cost to buy it, but he felt that he had to follow shop policy – he was just doing his job, right? So he reported her to management. The store manager came down from her office and talked to the shop assistant and then to the woman involved, and while she also believed that the woman genuinely needed that loaf of bread, store policy demanded that she call the police for all shoplifting instances. She was just doing her job, right? So she called the police. The police arrived and interviewed the shop assistant, the store manager, and the woman. They understood that the woman was trying to feed her hungry family and genuinely didn’t have enough money for the bread, but the law is the law, right? They are just doing their job. They arrested the woman and handed the bread back to the store manager.
I’m. Just. Doing. My. Job.
Each person in this story had a decision to make. Each person used the excuse of ‘just doing their job’ as a cop out, an excuse to avoid responsibility when they could have done something to help another; and it’s a story that is replayed over and over in our society in various forms and across various scenarios.
I’m-just-doing-my-job syndrome is an excuse for moral bankruptcy; we justify our unethical decisions through standing behind a wall of policy and ‘professional’ rules that separate us from our very humanity. We are applying the Nuremburg Defence to the way we do our jobs and we think that this allows us to clear our conscience easily with the white wash of ‘I was following orders’. Just doing our job blinkers us to the impact that we have on other people.
I have been heartened to see so many stories lately of police officers in the US being put in this situation and instead of arresting the person involved, they saw past the crime, realising it was symptomatic of a greater issue, and responded by attempting to address the root cause, and buying them groceries. The law isn’t always black and white and nor should company policy be.
When we are saying ‘I’m just doing my job’ what we are really saying is ‘I can’t be bothered’ or ‘I’m afraid of what will happen to me’ - all too often management doesn’t trust employees to be able to make independent judgments and as a result, people become afraid of losing their job if they speak up. We have to step up and our managers have to let us. Doing the right thing isn’t always easy, but following your own principles and marching to the tick of your own moral compass can help business stay in touch with the needs of the very people it is trying to serve. And you might just make a difference to someone.
Zoë Wundenberg, www.impressability.com.au.
