Selfishness Prohibiting Our Core Values

In each of the three articles there is a common theme, and that is that as children humans are good. In the first article it depicts our natural tendency to share, the second article shows that children like when things are fair, and the third article portrays children as empathetic and caring. Looking deeper at the article "The Power of Altruism", David Brooks talks about how institutions are built around selfishness, and that those selfish arrangements block our natural tendencies of being good. I agree with brooks, every corporate institution I have been involved with has been focused on manipulating ways that prove beneficial to the company in the long run. 

For this reason, I will be talking about a company that did not harness my natural longing to do good. Over the past summer I was an intern at Enterprise, there are some good connections with the readings and my experience that I want to talk about. My job was essentially to check people into the cars they were renting, and with that I was trying to sell them on coverages/upgrades/toll passes. Each month I made Enterprise close to $30,000 on top of what these customers reserved, by selling those previously mentioned items. With that amount I was the top selling intern, and positioned myself each month to win $300 as a bonus for my success. This means that a multi-billion dollar company only rewards 1% to it's best sales person. Looking at this further, 99% of the money I was able to bring in was given to people who are making a significant amount more then I was, like managers and all of the higher ups. If this wasn't frustrating enough, Enterprise is a very customer service based company, which is a good thing usually. However, in order to actually receive that $300 bonus the customer service score at our branch would have to be above corporate average. This score was calculated by surveying 100 random customers, if the customer was completely satisfied it would raise the score but if they were anything but that it would go against it. With that said, at the end of the internship I was only paid out on one of three bonus I should have received. 

The gift exchange mentioned above clearly shows the selfishness that exists in corporate institutions. In the first article, Haidt talks about how children have the natural tendency to share when there is collaboration. At Enterprise, there was clear collaboration, if not for me doing my job and selling customers products the higher ups would not be making any money. We both are doing very different jobs, but we both are pulling on a very intricate string that when pulled releases lots of money. Instead of sharing the money, the vast majority of it is kept and not dispersed evenly. I do think that most if not all companies act selfish, and it is the selfish systems that we are surrounded by that make us become selfish at heart. We become the very ones who will be put in a situation where we are pulling on an intricate string with someone else, but instead of sharing the wealth that is released we will choose to keep as much of it as we can, and it will be a significant amount more then someone who is doing a job nearly as important. 

Risk

I want to first talk about the decisions that I made my freshman/sophomore years. I chose to become an Economics major, largely because I did not get into the Business school. I figured that Economics offered a broad set of tools similar to what Business had to offer. Now, an Economics major definitely is very broad which is good, but it doesn’t really teach one particular skill that a recruiter might be looking for. So for this reason I think that settling for Economics definitely increased my income risk going forward. Sophomore year I went to my first career fair and landed an internship with Enterprise, which was pitched to me by the recruiter as a position where I would learn about all aspects of business, but in reality it was entirely all sales. With that said, I excelled at the position and was the top intern on the sales matrix, and I genuinely found a passion for sales. I am the type of person who likes to meet new people and talk, I never wanted a job where I would be stuck in a cubicle working with numbers all day.

Next I want to go into my junior year, my current year. Knowing that I wanted to pursue a future in sales I decided to target a Communications minor, I figured this would help me stand out with regards to other students aspiring for sales careers. With my second career fair looming I wanted to have a plan this time around, I had a more prepared pitch that sold myself as someone that their company should take a chance on. With this plan, I saw a lot more success from almost all of the companies I targeted. I received interviews which eventually led to offers. This coming summer I will be working for Textron as a Territory Manager Intern, and I hope that this internship leads to a full time position because it is quite lucrative. If I do as good as I expect it would set me up to land a full time job that makes on average $75,000 with commission bonuses. I chose to work at Textron over various other companies, like Pepsi, Arthur J. Gallagher, and Otis. I chose Textron because I believe they are the strongest company; they manufacture products that cross a diverse platform of businesses. Working for a company like Textron will allow me to mitigate future risk and hopefully will open the door for even better opportunities down the road. I also considered Pepsi but their products are not as impactful as what Textron has to offer, I predicted the risk that each company offered in terms of commission percentages on sales and Textron offered a much better opportunity.

Next, I want to take a look at the Economics of some of my choices thus far. At Enterprise I had immense success, and my managers noticed this. Seeing this success, they sent me an offer to come back again the following summer. After some consideration I decided to decline the offer and try to obtain a better position at the career fair. I did so because the opportunity cost was too high in my opinion, I saw my talent fitting in with a better company that could offer a higher salary to me. If I took that Enterprise offer, I would have essentially been throwing the Textron opportunity away, an opportunity that is way more lucrative and an opportunity that opens the door for so much more. In regards to choosing Economics, I was forced to settle because I was declined from the Business school. This increased my future income risk because Economics majors are less sought after. I was forced into a situation where I wasn’t allowed to learn what I had envisioned on learning, and it definitely pushed me back a bit. However, it didn’t derail the train, it actually has only pushed me further. Ever since my rejection I have pushed myself to find internships and prove that I will still be a success even without the major I had envisioned. Adding a communications minor allowed me to diversify my knowledge, which helped me avoid risk. A lot of the lessons I was taught in my communications classes I applied directly into the career fair, and that career fair is where I landed my internship this summer. Choosing to diversify my coursework is one of the major reasons I have reduced a lot of my future income risk.

Lastly, I do have an older brother who went to UIUC as well. He is four years older than me and was a communications major. He needed an extra semester to graduate because he miss-managed his course work. When he began looking for a job he struggled at first, it took him a fair amount of time before he landed a job at Cars.com. He did not manage the situation well out of school though, he needed more time to graduate and he struggled to find a job, but I took note of this. I thought about why this was the case for him and really made an effort to make sure it didn’t happen to me. This is why I go to my counselor regularly and also why I keep trying so hard to find internships. The counselor allows me to make sure I’m on the right path to graduating on time and getting internships should allow me to find a job much easier out of college. My brothers struggles made a huge impact on how I have been handling my collegiate career, having his guidance has been a huge reason for my success.

Reflection Post

After looking through all of my prior posts I saw some common aspects in each one. The most noticeable to me was that each post has to due with organizations that I am/ have been a part of. They all are asking me to look at particular experiences I have had in different organizations and relate what those experiences to topics in the class. I have talked about my basketball team, internship, fraternity, and school all with specific details. In each post it seems like I am deconstructing the elements of these organizations to get a grasp of what makes them run so smoothly. I hadn't noticed how related all the posts are to each other until I did this reflection. I like how they all are about personal experiences, it makes me more interested in what we are learning in class. It also makes what we are learning easier to understand, the fact that I can relate everything to personal experiences really clears up most of the confusions I run into.

Looking back at my first post I can see an evolution in my writing style. To first note the most obvious changes, I started to separate my writing and I started to put the title in the correct position. These small changes make my posts look much more appealing to the eye, and help the reader enjoy them more. On top of those visual changes, the material I am writing today is much more analytical then it was at first. I am thinking of different angles and approaches and trying to talk about my experiences in much more detail. I have realized that in order for you to fully understand the organization I was a part of I can't be vague, I have to deconstruct it in as many ways as possible, allowing for you to have a much clearer picture of exactly what I am trying to portray to you. With the changes in style and the changes in the material I am writing, I can certainly say that my posts have been getting better each and every week.

When it comes to prompts, I want to first say that I have really enjoyed all of the ones you have provided thus far. Something that I would like to see would be a compare and contrast type prompt. For instance, maybe prose something where we have to compare an organization we are a part of on campus to organizations at different universities. It would give us a broader scope of knowledge on organizations rather than just what we are a part of. It would also allow us to see how different demographics play into the way organizations are put together and run. What I have seen in organizations in my life is very subjective to where I have grown up, and with that in mind I think it would be beneficial and interesting to dive into organizations that are located not so close to home. Another prompt idea is to have us talk to one of are parents and write about their job's structure. I think this would enlighten us on how a big time company works, since I expect most of our parents have solid and reliable jobs at major corporations. To me, this is would fit right into the course material and is something that is interesting to you to read and for us to learn about before we have to start are own job search.