Respect Is Earned

In this day and age, we hear a lot of people talking about being disrespected and demanding respect.  I think that is quite humorous because respect is something you earn not something that you are guaranteed.

It's that same warped thinking that has gotten our nation into the mess it's in with our housing market.  If a number of well-meaning idiots hadn't decided that low income individuals arbitrarily deserved a house even if they couldn't afford it and gotten a bill passed forcing banks and other financial institutions into offering loans to people who couldn't pay them back, we wouldn't be facing a lot of what we are in this nation.

I'm not saying that to get into a debate but think about it.  If the media hadn't been selling the premise that everyone should own a home and everyone is supposed to have a car and everyone is supposed to have the latest TV or stereo or computer or whatever for the past 30 years, then people wouldn't be over their heads in debt.

But now I'm getting away from the point I was trying to make.  Respect is something that you earn from hard work and doing a job right, etc.  No one deserves respect if they refuse to earn it.  I don't care what their race is or their money status is or anything else, respect is earned.

Now, everyone deserves to have common, decent respect for being a human being but if someone is going to be sloppy and careless and lazy with their work ethic, then they don't deserve to be respected.  I have a co-worker that I talked about in another post who is sloppy and careless with her work and it costs our company money.  What I'm amazed at is that the president of our company doesn't seem to care.  In fact, he rewards and promotes and gives raises to individuals who behave badly and take advantage of the company but does nothing for those of us who work hard and treat the company fairly.

I've never worked for a company that sits back and lets people take advantage of it and costs it money because of their behavior and does nothing about it.  It's infuriating for those of us who work hard and don't take advantage of the company.  Because of it, several of us who do our jobs are looking for other jobs.  The thing that is really sad is that at the rate these people are going, they are going to ruin this company and it's going to go down the drain.

The company has been in business for over forty years but ever since this new group of leaders took over, it has steadily declined.  They don't discipline the drivers who act improperly so the drivers keep on acting improperly.  I have another co-worker who comes and goes as she pleases and spends hours of time each week on personal business.  One day, out of the blue, she announces that she's going to take her bottles for recycling.  She did this about ten o'clock in the morning and I didn't see her again for about three hours.  All the while, she's being paid $25 an hour by the company.  In May, she took off a week from work without calling or telling anyone and then showed up the next week as if nothing had happened and no one did anything about it.  Prior to that, she had consistently taken off days from work without notifying our boss.  He would get angry about it and yell at me but he never once did anything about it.

So, now, maybe you see why I have such issues with people expecting respect they haven't earned.