Reputation

Reputation

I feel that in almost every aspect of my life I have developed a very strong reputation, whether the reputation be good or bad, it was very strong. I believe this comes from my personality. I have been known to have a very big personality, and I always make it my point to be heard. I believe that this comes from me being the youngest of three boys in the family; where the older two excelled greatly in sports, and were much larger than me, I had to find my own way to excel, so I became the vocal one who tried to command every room that I stepped in. this way of life led me to have a very strong reputation in many different ways, in some facets many people enjoyed me and my reputation, and in others they did not.

What I want to bring up with my reputation is my time playing lacrosse. I played lacrosse since 7^th grade and for my whole high school career. Sophomore year I was the starting goalie on our JV team, not necessarily from skill, but because nobody in their right mind wanted to play goalie. I had a reputation of the go getter on the team. Not the hardest worker, but a huge team player. This was because I had the hardest position, and I never complained about it, I was doing this for the team. Every opportunity that I could to spend time with my teammates I did this, and it led to a lot of great friendships that I wrote about in a previous post. I ended up being named captain of our team and this led to mixed reviews. I was named captain because I was the kid on the team who knew everyone the best, and who demanded the most from everybody. I knew how to crack everyone up and get them relaxed the night before a game, knew how to get them pumped up before the game, and knew how to address the team after a loss. I was the captain not because of my athletic skill, but because I was a leader mentally. This led to a short term fallout with some of the players on the team because there really was a lot of kids on the team who were much better players and deserved the captain spot over me. Many of the kids that I was named captain over went on to play division 1 lacrosse, and were also great leaders. Though some players didn’t like me for this, other players, even those older than me felt that I was the best leader on the team because I never let anything come in between our team. I wouldn’t say that there was a time that I “cashed in” my reputation, but during the championship game of our end of the year tournament I ended up yelling at one of the defenders when the opposing team got a game winning goal. I say this because It was a lapse of judgement and was a time where I lost my temper. To be fair everyone had kind of lost their temper and there ended up being a fight at the end of this game with the other team. Though I did yell at a team mate I apologized after and me and him are still very good friends to this day.

After everything was settled nobody was really mad, but some players were upset with me and the coach because they believed that they were a better leader, but I believe that I showed that you don’t need to be the best athlete to be the best leader, but you just need to be a good friend who understands what people need.

Principal-Agent

The principal-agent model arises when an agent, which could be an individual, company, or any other party agrees to work for a principal, which could also be an individual, company or other party, for some form of incentives. This agreement in theory works perfectly, but tends to be interrupted by moral hazards or conflicts of interests where the agent works more in favor for themselves than for the principal. The problem of self-interests can lead agents to manipulate the system to benefit themselves more than the principal could be benefitted. This is where the problem of the principal-agent model occurs. Instead of researching an example of this online I have a real life experience where this issue plays a huge role in every day work.

I, like most others am a broke college student. No matter how much money you think you have in life, it all seems to go right out the door once you come to college. To combat this issue, I got a job on campus. The job I found was at a local bar. I started there as a doorman almost two years ago and at first the pay was very bad. Almost to where the job wasn’t worth it at all. I stuck with it and worked a lot so that I finally became a bartender. I hadn’t realized this problem until I had become a bartender. So the pay is not very good for bartenders, but you do make tips. It just so turns out that about 90% of the money you make at the bar is your tip money, not your actual wage. After bartending a few times fellow co-workers told me that if you want to get more tips you have to charge people less. I had never thought about this, but it makes sense. People do not want to buy expensive drinks at the bar, especially broke college kids like me. So this is where the moral dilemma arises; shorting the bars income will increase mine.

I am not a firm believer in doing this because the loss of sales really doesn’t account for the small increase in tips that I receive so I do not really buy into it, though others do. It is a huge conflict of interest though; you are making the bar lose money for your own personal gain. It reminds me of the casino situation that I read about. Card dealers would help customers win hands because winning customers are more likely to tip. This would then turn into the same type of situation that I face at the bar, but on a much bigger scale. Instead of shaving a dollar or two off of a sale of alcohol, they are helping people win large amounts of money from a casino.

I do believe that the principal-agent model is very important in understanding why people do certain things while they work. I would say that some of these things have a lot bigger of an impact than other things, but overall it comes down to an individual’s morals. I believe that shorting the bar that has employed me for almost two years is wrong so I try to keep my sales as honest as they can be, but I know for many people they just want as much money as they can get their hands on. To solve the problem of this happening I think that the bar could pool tips with management so that people are less incentivized to be out for their own good, but I still do not know how much this could solve. I am sure that if there was a better way to do it, we would be doing it.

Group Dynamics

Group Dynamics

When discussing conflict in the workplace, the best example that I can think of that I have been involved with is that of my work as a lifeguard. I started lifeguarding at the age of 15 for a neighborhood pool that was ran by a head manager who was very laid back. The job was as easy as can be, it was kind of a show up whenever and get paid deal. Everything was very lax about it, everyone loved working there and we were all really good friends, it was kind of a madhouse too so we all had fun. Then of course the head manager got fired after that summer because the pool that the neighborhood was paying for was deteriorating quickly. So then they hired a new manager for the next summer who was very much the opposite of the first manager. He was very intense and very strict about work. That did not go over well with the returning staff. A lot of people ended up quitting working there or started working at other pools. I know this may seem very dramatic, but let me remind you that the staff was made up of 15-17-year-old kids, so this seemed pretty normal for everybody.

 Anyway I stayed working at the pool for that summer, and the head manager had made the two 18 year olds who worked at the pool “shift managers.” This was the first time this position had ever been created, and a lot of people got upset by it. This conflict was caused because the two kids who got promoted were friends with the other workers before, and now they were in charge of them. They made the staff do a bunch of stuff that they never wanted to do, or had to do the year before (i.e. cleaning certain places we didn’t want to clean, showing up early etc.). It was tough for the rest of staff to get on board with this because they were against this new load of work at first, and now that their friends were making them do it kind of upset some people. It was tough for the returning staff to accept the new management, and it was hard for the two guys who got promoted to manager to stay friends with the rest of the staff while doing their job. It really put everyone working in a really awkward position because we were a lot of young kids and were facing a lot of stuff at work that we never thought we were going to have to deal with after the previous years of working there.

Even though looking back on it, it was pretty ridiculous for us to be upset with them, we were just kids and we didn’t want to do work that we hadn’t had to do before. By the end of that first summer everyone had realized that this was the way it was going to be, and there was nothing we could do about it. Everyone started to complain less, accept management, and do better work. I think that it just took time for everything to resolve itself. We were kids who believed that we lucked out with the best job in the world, and then felt that we had our carefree lifestyle ripped from our hands. I stayed working at the pool for not only those two years, but a third. For pretty much all of high school I worked there and it was a really good experience. Everyone has their first job, and I’m glad that mine was at that pool.