By Holly McCarthy *

I guess it’s a question we all must ask ourselves – are we pulling our weight at work or are we pulling the wool over our employers’ eyes? We’re expected to do the job that’s given to us, and more often than not, we think we’re doing the best we can. But what we don’t realize is that we’re often fooling ourselves into believing that we have impeccable work ethics and that we’re not fooling our employers. If you want to know if you’re really pulling your weight at work, ask yourself the following questions:

•    If you work by the hour, do you bill your client even though you’ve wasted the better part of those hours?
•    If your company has more than one branch in the same city, and if you’re supposed to swipe in and swipe out when you arrive at and leave work, do you cut corners and swipe in at one office and out at the other depending on which is closer to you?
•    If you’re allowed to use the Internet during office hours, do you use it for personal reasons, or worse, to hunt for another job?
•    If you’re allowed an hour for lunch, do you leave half an hour early and come back 20 minutes late?
•    If you’re allowed a travel allowance when you’re on company duty, do you exaggerate your expenses and pocket the difference?
•    If you know there’s work to be done, do you still call in sick because you have something better to do?
•    If you are the kind who conserves energy at home by switching off all the lights each time you leave a room and by turning off all electrical appliances when you’re not using them, do you leave the lights in your office and your computer on all night when you’re done for the day?
•    If you’re part of a team, do you sit back and let your teammates handle all the work?
•    Worse, do you take credit for the results even though you know you’ve not contributed as much as you should?
•    If you know your boss is not coming in for the day, do you slack off?
•    Do you spend all day in your office, hanging around the cafeteria, the basketball court, the gym, or anywhere else except your office?

If you’ve answered yes to even one of the above questions, then you need to take another look at your work ethics or lack of them. Ethical behavior as we all know, must come from within; our conscience must dictate what’s right and what’s wrong; and the more we listen to our conscience, the more ethical we become.


* This post was contributed by Holly McCarthy, who writes on the subject of online universities. She invites your feedback at hollymccarthy12 at gmail dot com