Friday, September 19, 2014

To act opportunistically or not?

I currently work at a campus bar and when I started last year as a door we had to walk around the bar clean cups from tables, watch emergency exits, stop fights, etc. The worst part of the job began at 2 am when the bar closed because we had to clean essentially the whole bar including bathrooms while the bartenders cleaned the bar. This job is essentially seniority based which means guys begin as doormen then move up. Some help is given to those that have fraternity brothers as managers and so forth. So an example of acting opportunistically at my job would have to be managers advancing their fraternity brothers quicker than others. It happens a fair amount so that seems to be a good example of them acting opportunistically since they have the ability to do so. No one is to blame, they take advantage of the opportunity they’re given which in my mind is smart. It isn’t morally right since other kids in a lot of cases work at the job longer and don’t get promoted as fast which is pretty bad for those workers.



Another point I wanted to touch on was the cleanups. So the newest door always had to clean the girl’s bathroom, the second newest had to clean the guy’s bathroom and all the other doors had to clean the bar area and tables and all the remaining parts of the bar minus the actual bar because the bartenders cleaned that. Since we would hire new doors every semester, there are some ‘senior doormen’ who really don’t have to clean. You can throw out some trash here and there and talk to the head door and essentially get away with not cleaning for the most part. That would be acting opportunistically since you knew the newly hired doors would clean up pretty much anything. So last spring I was a “senior doorman” to say the least but I chose not to slack and clean little to nothing. I mean I easily could have since I was pretty cool with all the head doors, but I just chose to clean and even helped some new hires with the bathrooms from time to time. I don’t know exactly why I didn’t act opportunistically; I don’t think it was because I was thinking ethically or whatnot. I think I just wanted to leave as soon as possible because we had to all wait to leave until it was clean. I think that’s why I didn’t act opportunistically and chose to help the new hires instead of chill and not do very much. 

1 comment:

  1. There is an expression, "there is no accounting for taste," which always give the out in explaining behavior by - that person just has different preferences. So there is not much to respond to if you take preferences as the uncaused cause.

    In your story, the issue you might have discussed further is how the other senior doors behaved. Did they help with the clean up, or did they just take leisure while the newer hires did the work? Then you'd also like to get at what their preferences were like. Did they also want to leave as soon as possible? That sounds like a typical preference to me, not an outlier.

    If the finding were that the other senior doors did want to leave as soon as possible but nonetheless didn't participate in clean up, then your behavior makes for a little puzzle that needs further explanation. In contrast, if the other doors didn't care so much about what time they left, then while you were different from them in your preference, perhaps your behavior is not such a good example of refraining from opportunism, because you seemed to be maximizing your own preference under the circumstances.

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