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Got a respectable job yet?

I was brought up, perhaps like many of you, being told that I should aspire to a ‘respectable’ job when I grew up (I suspect I’m still waiting to do both of these things, but never mind.. on with the blog..) I remember being told that a job in management with a firm like Marks & Spencer was about as good as it got; failing that there were decent jobs with companies like the Westminster Bank, or the Imperial Chemical Industries. As we all know companies, brands and industries come and go, and these ones have merger, metamorphosed and moved on.

However, the thing that has got me thinking, following on from yesterday’s blog about counterfeit goods from China, was about how ‘respectable’ was our business? I mean we see their besuited spokes people on our TVs rattling on about what good corporate citizens they are and how they contribute to our society. We are asked to believe that the supermarkets giants are really concerned about the well-being of the average housewife. These businesses wield huge power, and in many ways they control this country. It is interesting to conjecture whether a cabal of global super-companies like Microsoft, Nike, and Coke etc wield more real power than a government.

But if you think about it, and I realise this is a very complex question (and I certainly don’t purport to have the answers!), just what are these companies doing with their power? We have:-

  • Supermarkets paying farmers 22p for a cauliflower that costs them 41p, and selling it to us for £1.49. They are apparently paying less than cost for pork and we risk losing the capacity to rear our own pigs, thus forcing us to import from god knows where! They reject shipments of goods as ‘no longer required’, don’t pay for them and don’t return them either!
  • Banks complain about fraud, but fail to introduce measures they know will combat it. Give credit cards to people regardless of whether they can afford them and then repossess their homes when this policy leads to its predictable conclusion
  • Financial institutions come up with ever more clever ways of lending money that people can’t afford and then run to goverment for bail outs when the bubble bursts.
  • Large companies buy companies just to strip their pension funds and instead of the surplus money going to the pensioners who needed it, it goes to pay for more corporate perks and bonuses for the boys!
  • Pharma companies introduce ‘medicines’ such as anti-depressants, when they know that the agony of coming off them is worse than the disease. They price medicines that can save lives at prices that people simply can not afford; yes I know they have to recover R&D costs, but they are more interested in protecting their bottom lines than saving lives.
  • Insurance companies tell us when we phone them for a quote that they will share information to prevent fraudulent claims, but deliberately sell policies which seem to cover people’s needs but they know are full of ‘fine print’ that will mean that most are not protected. If you ‘rearrange the facts’ to get the money you think you are entitled to you are committing fraud… but is what they do any different?
  • Car companies fail to recall cars with known dangerous faults because the cost of the recall is more than the cost of the claims!
  • Drink companies deliberately design and market alcoholic drinks to be like ‘soda pop’ so that youngsters can easily segue from cans of coke to the ‘real thing’! No sane government would dream of allowing such a dangerous drug a alcohol into general circulation these days, but they are happy to profit from the revenues it generates for them.

You get the idea and no doubt have many better examples, but is this the behaviour of ‘respectable companies’? According to the Oxford dictionary “respectable” means :-

respectable

• adjective
1 regarded by society as being proper, correct, and good. 2 of some merit or importance. 3 adequate or acceptable in number, size, or amount.

Do you think they qualify? I have no doubt we all feed off them one way or another, but if each of us has just a tiny bit of power, and a teeny bit of influence over these corporations, is this what we want from them, or should we demand more? More from them, and perhaps more from us too?

I look forward to your thoughts, and continue my personal search for ‘respectable employment’

“Virtue has never been as respectable as money” Mark Twain
“Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.” Mark Twain
“If you can build a business up big enough, it’s respectable.” Will Rodgers

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 09:36 and is filed under General, Values & Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

9 Responses to “Got a respectable job yet?”

  1. joar_v says:
    5 March , 2008 at 12:00

    This is also about corporate governance. Did you know that all public companies are required by law to maximise profits for their shareholders? This means they are actually required by law to be greedy! This is why I would think twice about taking a company public. There is more to life than money.

  2. SarahArrow says:
    5 March , 2008 at 12:20

    Hi Richard, this blog touched a chord with me, for different reasons.

    My Eco Warrior is the youngest of four children, The eldest is a project manager for BAE, the second one worked in Financial services but is now a piano teacher, the third one is the Simon Pegg character in Shaun of the Dead, only he works for a furniture retail outlet.

    Kev has his own company and employs people, yet his family tell people he is unemployed! is it not respectable to have your own business????

    Is it an age thing? do older members of the family still think of certain jobs and industries as respectable? or does it apply to all generations?

    If I now longer worked for Kev, then my first port of call for employment would be BITC, a very worthwhile enterprise (and the snob factor wink being able to say I work for Prince Charles wink )

    Sarah

  3. SarahArrow says:
    5 March , 2008 at 12:23

    “Did you know that all public companies are required by law to maximise profits for their shareholders? This means they are actually required by law to be greedy!”

    I didn’t know that, that’s quite disparaging really. Companies should make a profit but not to the detriment of their customers health, wealth and emotional well-being!

    Sarah

  4. fay_o says:
    5 March , 2008 at 12:24

    Those in high places and richly clothed have, as they always have, twisted our perceptions, our morals and our perception of good and bad in order to suit themselves.

    We are merely the flotsam and jetsam of their extravagance and we are so very expendable.

    Where are the heroes who would stand up for truth and right and justice, where are the dragon slayers of old. Those bright young men who rose from poverty and suffering to save others from tyranny ?

    Nothing changes.

    f

  5. richardderwentcooke says:
    5 March , 2008 at 12:25

    Sarah,
    I think that there is a generational element to this. Business itself, and the whole world of work has changed radically during my own business ‘lifetime’. I have huge respect for anyone who has the capability and they bravery to run their own business.

    My children have a very different view again, and I am telling them, “Follow your hearts”, because you will make more money and be more successful in every way doing something you love. It is a very competitive world, and it is much easier to be good at something that you have a passion for. I wait with interest to seethe path they choose. The only one ‘en route’ at present is the middle one, who has just enrolled in a course to become a complimentary health practitioner. We are big into this, and never knew that it mattered to her, but she popped up the other day and told us it really was.

  6. richardderwentcooke says:
    5 March , 2008 at 12:26

    Fay

    What a rallying call Fay!!

    I might be age-debarred from aspiring to your role of “right young men” but I like to think I am waving a flag or too!!

  7. SallyB says:
    6 March , 2008 at 09:03

    Richard, I couldn’t agree more with your blog, as a corporate ‘refugee’ myself.

    I’m not sure if it’s ‘respectable’, but this recent Guardian story is quite relevant, I think

    I think the John Lewis Partnership and Waitrose seem to be respectable places to work, and it’s encouraging to see that they are doing well at the moment.

    I might have been a bit of a dragon-slayer once. When I left my ‘big corporate’, someone wrote on my farewell card ‘who is going to keep the senior management on their toes with killer interesting questions now?’

  8. richardderwentcooke says:
    6 March , 2008 at 09:10

    Sally, Thank you for the link and I too am a big Waitrose fan. I think there is a movement towards the ‘Light’, and I suspect there are many others here who are part of that flow.

  9. richardderwentcooke says:
    10 March , 2008 at 10:54

    Joar
    It is the view of the Board about HOW this is done. Long or Short term profit? I wrote a piece recently about Eco Leadership; here is a snippet
    “• Eco-Leadership: This is about sharing the leadership within the business; it is about values and relationships rather than a quick buck. Focus on community of interest between the staff, the customers and the greater society and you have something sustainable as no one is being exploited, everyone’s needs are being met.”

    This approach would still be legal and would do a lot more good for a lot more people long term including the shareholders. Businesses know these days they must consider their stake holders, but the trouble is too many of them see us as STEAK holders… just food!

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