David Ricardo's Blog

The best example from my work experience that I can think of occurred in my second year as a swim instructor. As I had mentioned in earlier posts, one of my two bosses had become a bit more detached and passive aggressive than she had been in past summers. This of course sparked some conflict. To start all the way at the beginning, this conflict started in the third week of the summer. On that Thursday afternoon, there were a few of us employees helping our boss (R) move. Among us was one guy in particular who had been working at the pool for five years or more (we will call him S). While moving, R was a bit clipped and no nonsense, instead of her usual laid back self. S commented to a few of us and said it was a bit odd. At this point I would say that their personal and work relationship deteriorated a little bit. About two weeks later, we had a special day. At the end of the last class of each two week session, we would allow the children to go down the water slides for fifteen m...

My personal experience with team production with gift exchange is with a common phenomenon, shift swapping. The summer after I had graduated from high school, I was working as a lifeguard at a very unorganized pool. The pool had past problems with employees shift swapping and had technically banned the process. However, they didn't officially regulate this. As long as five guards showed up for every shift, no head guards checked who was supposed to be on duty. So, as long as your substitute showed up for the shift, you were in the clear. A big issue then became that the shift swapping was based solely on a trust system. There was no official schedule change or book of shifts swapped with signatures, like at other places that I had worked. If  the person that you swapped with didn't show up, you had no way to prove the agreement or back it up. As a result you would be written up, placed on probation or fired depending on how many times it happened. A second issue was then that...