Opportunism

In organizations, opportunity to get ahead is seen as a good thing.  If given the chance, most will not turn down the opportunity to further their career, make more money or simply get ahead of the competition.  But when this desire to get ahead is at the expense of those around you, there is some question on whether or not opportunistic actions are good or bad.

One example of a time when I passed on the chance to act opportunistically at work was when I helped out a coworker in need without expecting anything in return.  I have worked on campus as a bartender and kitchen help at Legends Bar and Grill for the last year.  For the most part, employees are willing to trade shifts or simply pick up another’s shift if there is inconvenient scheduling at work.  This trade tends to be beneficial for both parties.  However, on some occasions, when an employee is in serious need of a shift covered, they will offer financial compensation in the form of between ten and twenty dollars to the person willing to cover their shift.  The money is an incentive for someone to take on additional hours when many of us are so over loaded with school and work already.  The shifts that have a financial attachment tend to occur over the weekend because most people have plans and are less willing to give up their time. 

At our job, any shift change requests go through our Facebook page, and people are able to post responses and additional comments to share their availability.  In the instance that comes to mind, a girl had a family emergency and had to go home for the weekend and needed her shifts covered.  She needed a kitchen shift covered on Saturday night in order to go home and after posting about it, did not receive a response for several days.  I normally am very willing to help coworkers with shifts if they need something covered, but this particular weekend, I had plans for my roommates birthday and had specifically requested the day off in advance.  As the weekend approached, the girl grew more desperate.  Finally, the Friday morning she was supposed to go home, she updated to our group that she was willing to give fifty dollars to whomever would cover her Saturday shift.  This was quite a lot of money and her desperation was obvious.  I felt really bad for the girl, so I messaged her that I would cover her shift and to not worry about the money.  While I could have been opportunistic and taken the extra fifty dollars, I felt that doing so was wrong, and I did not want to take advantage of her family emergency.  I gave up spending the weekend with my friends so that my coworker could take care of what she needed to without getting any additional compensation from her. 

To me, opportunism in the work force is a negative for the most part.  When coworkers take advantage and try to profit off of one another, it is breeding a hostile environment.  This is especially true if it becomes apparent that one person in particular is going out of their way to be opportunistic.  Going back to my job, there was one employee who would only pick up shifts if there was monetary compensation attached.  He would go so far as to ask for more money if the person was only offering a small amount.  After several instances of this, he was called out by the staff and criticized for it.  What he was doing was not wrong from a legal or business standpoint, and management had no issue with his actions.  However, many of our coworkers found his opportunistic advances as taking advantage of someone else’s lack of options.  I would rather see my organization as a whole succeed than to make small gains at the expense of those around me.