What Comes First: Your Work or Values?
This recent news story was clearly designed to appeal to sentimentality. Nonetheless, you’ll likely forgive the journalist’s approach. The protagonist: Debbie Shank, a brain-injured woman whose 18-year-old son was killed while on duty in Iraq. She asks about his whereabouts only to be reminded that he’s dead. She cries each time like it’s the first time she’s hearing the news.
The antagonist: Wal-Mart.
Shank was awarded $417,000 after legal expenses from the trucking company responsible for the crash that left her brain-injured. She was an employee of Wal-Mart and was covered by their health insurance. Wal-Mart paid out $470,000 for her medical expenses. Wal-Mart sued to recoup the money, and a court decided that Wal-Mart was only entitled to the $417,000 in Shank’s trust. Wal-Mart got their money back.
Shank, who can’t work and lives in a nursing home at 52, has also exhausted all judicial resources. Her family has fallen apart and suffers financially.
Can you imagine being the spokesperson for Wal-Mart who had to defend their actions? Here’s what he had to say:
Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley, who called Debbie Shank’s case “unbelievably sad,” replied in a statement: “Wal-Mart’s plan is bound by very specific rules. … We wish it could be more flexible in Mrs. Shank’s case since her circumstances are clearly extraordinary, but this is done out of fairness to all associates who contribute to, and benefit from, the plan.”
I don’t believe in hell, but just in case there is one, Simley may have just added a few more bricks to his house in hades. After all, it’s only fair that all people who inflict suffering be sent to hell. You just can’t make exceptions as you go along.
If I were ever so hard up for cash that I had to work at Wal-Mart and found out about this story, I’d quit on the spot. I’d sooner become a street hooker.
Am I being harsh?
Assuming that you now find Wal-Mart more evil than ever before, this is an extreme example of when your job infringes on your values. But we’re living in tough times. It’s hard to keep your job, or even find a job.
If you found out your company was involved in a story making horrible press, would you still work for the company? What would it take to make you quit? When do you put your values aside?
I would probably feel like I was working for the mafia… One thing you learn from the movies is that you shouldn’t align yourself with the bad guys (even if you’re bad too) because they’ll double-cross you in a heartbeat. Same with bad companies. If they don’t value their employees and you’re an employee…even if you’re a manager…you know not to bother.
If I was the PR person who was told to go give that statement, they’d have my resignation on the spot.
I’ve spent most of the last 5 years as a temp, which means I’ve often found myself in gigs where my values were definately not in step with the Company.
I did spend six months in one place where I was just *miserable*. The company treated everyone (customers, employees, temps) horribly. That gig taught me the hard way to stand up for my rights as a worker and that for someone with my skill set it’s really, really easy to call the temp agency and get a new gig.
A friend of mine recently had a much smaller choice to make, but he made the right one
Larry, your friend had a tough decision on his hands. I’ve worked in litigation long enough to see that good people often get caught in bad decisions just so they can survive and feed a family.
Sticking up for the right thing to do comes with consequences, but like I’ve seen time and again, when a company gets in trouble for greedy actions, they’ll drag down everyone they can with them. Kudos to your friend.
CNN Anderson Cooper 360 is doing a story tonight at 10 p.m. EST about the Shank case. You can learn more and take action by going to:
http://action.walmartwatch.com/debbieshank
To those who are saying that Wal-Mart is just following a common policy, I want to point out that Wal-Mart funds their own health care plan so this is just another case of them not wanting to put more money into covering the health care of their workers.
This would be the exact same thing for any insurance plan. They have a DUTY to recover the money. It just wouldn’t be news if it wasn’t Wal-Mart.
The thing that is missing from the story is the life insurance money from the son killed in Iraq. That could be up to a million dollars–but who knows who the beneficiary is. That, I am guessing, is what the real fight is. Of course, the news left that out.
I once worked in a physician’s office who was under the auspices of the state hospital program.
He decided he was going to go into private practice and wanted to take all the patient records, office supplies, etc and move them during a weekend. He also wanted me to help with this move and work for him when he went into private practice.
I notified the departmental head, then resigned. There would have been no point in trying to work for him after that- and no other job in the department was available for me at the time. Basically, I quit after doing the right thing.
In reply to dogatemyfinances- I work in insurance. Sure, we have the right to recover money, but we make case by case decisions. We often don’t recover for a variety of reasons- the cost to recover being greater than the money to be recouped, the likelihood of success being minimal, or the bad press from trying to recoup being far more damaging to the company’s image than the money we would recover.
So I don’t think Wal-Mart HAD to get their money back. I think they are greedy bastards who took advantage of a helpless woman. I also think any company would have wound up in the press for this blatant disregard for common decency. Luckily, I work for a company that values it’s employees and it’s customers as much as it’s image because it knows those things go hand in hand.