Outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc released a list of what it called 2007’s most unbelievable workplace stories. Some highlights:
Workers in Scotland lined up to take classes which encouraged flirting to get ahead in their careers. Class exercises included purring like a kitten and dancing like Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake.
An Iowa woman was fired in January for misuse of company time for keeping a diary about how she avoids work. Some of the entries detailed her efforts to fool management into believing she was hard at work, usually by furiously typing her journal.
A new tactic to shame delinquent policemen in Thailand who commit misdemeanours, such as littering or coming to work late, requires them to stay in the office all day and sport an armband featuring a smiling Hello Kitty surrounded by hearts.
Data breaches
Losses of confidential customer data like the one reported this year by the TJ Maxx and Marshall’s retail chains may be more commonplace than thought.
About 85% of privacy and security professionals for companies in North America acknowledged having at least one reportable loss or exposure of personal information during the past 12 months, according to a recent survey.
Of those, 63% said they have had multiple data breaches in the same period. In fact, the UK government lead the way, losing data of nearly half the British population.
Another strange trends in the West was the opposite of shoplifting. People, instead of stealing, put things in shops that were not part of the inventory.
Next generation ethics
The next generation to enter the workforce may be more likely to cheat and lie than their more senior colleagues, according to a recent survey.
Three-quarters of teenagers believe they are fully prepared to make ethical decisions, yet nearly 40% also believe lying, cheating or violence are necessary to succeed, according to the survey conducted by Junior Achievement Worldwide and Deloitte & Touché USA LLP.
More than half of those teens said their personal desire to succeed is the rationale. There were 23% who said violence toward another person is acceptable on some level.
The number of teens willing to bend the rules has more than doubled since the survey was conducted in 2003, according to Ainar Aijala, chairman of Junior Achievement Worldwide and global managing partner at Deloitte. The survey was conducted online with a sample of 725 teens age 13 to 18.
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