Business and Society 9th Edition by Archie Carroll,Ann Buchholtz

Exercise 8

Should I Say Something?
I was hired as a temporary employee of a toy manufacturing company, and the department I was assigned to was going through some rough changes. The director had recently quit. The new director came from a similar company that had recently filed bankruptcy. She said she had about 20 years in the imports business and knew it like the back of her hand. Naturally, her new employees were relieved and hoped that business would continue as usual.
Months passed and I learned a lot about the imports aspect of our company. In those months, my coworkers noticed that our boss wasn't doing much work. They were used to a hands-on director, like their previous one, who wasn't afraid to pull back her sleeves and dive into the deepest pile of papers to get it sorted through. Soon, work that we thought our new director was supposed to handle started piling up. We also gained a huge customer, whose orders were a task equal to the amount of work we already had. Our director requested another such account. She also put me, the temporary employee, in charge of the new customer. Because huge amounts of work were getting cranked out of our department, we worked 10 hours shifts and Saturdays to get it all done. Then my coworkers started complaining. "All she does is watch YouTube videos all day," one said. "She's always talking on her cell phone," another coworker said. Another temp was hired to help us out so that we wouldn't have to work on Saturdays.
I was finally hired as a permanent employee. I was elated for about two months to have a job that I could call "home," and coworkers that I could get close to, and not get sad when my assignment ended. But alas, the company started laying off employees. They began to fire most of the temporary employees; then, they fired 11 regular employees. In all, we lost both of our temps and a regular employee in our department. I can't help but feel that it was our director's fault that we had to lose these employees.
1. The reason I got hired was because of my director's strong push to keep me. Should I look the other way when she acts in ways that are not in the company's best interests? Should my loyalty go to my company in general or to the person who hired me?
2. Even after one of my coworkers spoke to our director about her wasting time on the job she continued her habits. Should my coworker have let the director's boss know what was going on?
3. As an employee, do I have any rights in this situation? Do I have any responsibilities?
4. What would you have done in this situation? Why?