Decency

There’s one lesson I thought everyone was taught: when you enter a room, you’re suppose to greet, or at the very least acknowledge, everyone who was in the room before you.

I was wrong.

There are certain things they don’t prepare you for before the transition from college to working in an office, from being a student to an adult. (The different between the two is you have so much more leeway as a student, but that doesn’t last long.)

Recently, we’ve had paid interns join us for the Summer. It’s so refreshing to have new, youthful faces around the building! Considering the demographics here, and the fact people still fill out paper times sheets, we’re living in the stone age. Having people with fresh new ideas, new stories, new experiences is exciting. People talk however, and I’ve noticed too, how some will come in and greet everyone and others will walk right past you, unless you’re a senior manager, and say nothing at all.

When I was intern I didn’t know everything (and I still don’t), I barely knew how to work the printer. Once, I was struggling to make dozens of copies of an orientation packet one page at a time. Meanwhile the printer could make all the copies I needed with the click of a few buttons. My own supervisor walked past me and it wasn’t until the I had made the copies that she showed me the more efficient way…

Basic decency goes both ways. If you see someone struggling, why not help if you can? They teach you nothing and expect you to know everything while asking why you didn’t speak up and ask questions, as if they made you comfortable enough to. As a organization, they’ve yet to find a balance. (I’m excluding myself and few others from this because those of us with common decency do exist!)

We would be doing them a disservice if this Summer we didn’t teach them explicitly instead of just assuming they’ll learn all of this on their own or that they already know. Some of these lessons go beyond the office and are things you should take with you throughout life. It’s looking like we’ll probably have to start with the very basics.