Ethics Post 1: Wonderful World of Ethics & My Experience

It's been a while since I've been on here, but it has been a busy 2 week winter break haha. A lot has happened! I'm currently wrapping up an internship with Octagon Sports Marketing. I've learned SO many things there in the creative department. I'll truly miss the creative staff and the experience.

The above paragraph is relevant to my post, as I've also witnessed crisis management (on a lower level) and ethical decision making while working at Octagon. For more details though, I'll give a rundown of my experience with ethics in the work place in general:

• I worked as a lifeguard at a Beach/Pool club for 7 years in New York (for privacy's sake I won't mention the name). When you deal with patrons/customers on a very close level and at a regular basis, you tend to naturally take ethics into account; if you care about your job that is. For lifeguards, the contemporary professional ethics involved serving swimmers and patrons and assisting if they were in trouble. The values reflected were that we cared about the customer's opinion and the customer's well-being.
• Ironically, during my time at the club, there were many young people involved who didn't share the same understanding of the above mentioned ethics as me and a couple other employees. They would blatantly come late to work with no proper explanation as to why they were late. The more responsible lifeguards and myself were left with a decision to make: take the fall for the late employees and the lack of service/coverage around the pool, or expose the late guard and basically teach them a lesson in responsibility.
• One BIG ethical part of our job is discussing pay and paychecks. Our boss asked time and time again not to discuss pay rate, but there's always trading of info once the paychecks come out. Information such as that could stop productivity as someone feels they're entitled to more pay than someone else (or just as much). It's funny because while typing this, I thought of the term "veracity" used in the textbook; "the duty to tell the truth". Keeping information about pay rate from some employees might lead to more hostility or willingness to not work. They know there's a reason they haven't learned information in exchange with sharing their own, and this causes them to sometimes distrust other employees or the manager. I should know, it happened at my job.

So overall, my experience at the pool club taught me a lesson in ethics and keeping professional under pressure. Even situations involving public safety at the pool can be included in my ethics experience; many a time there have been safety situations involving a storm or inclement weather and we've had to keep the public in best interest no matter what they say to us (trust me, they do NOT like being told to leave the water). While it's not a PR setting, there is definitely a lot of public relation that goes into being a lifeguard as the swimmers trust you with their lives and safety. However, you still need to watch how you handle situations with them or that trust WILL be broken. Then you'll be fired and SOL...just like with many other jobs.

I want to do Graphic Design/ Creative Production work once I graduate from grad school. Something along the lines of working in print/web, filming or editing video footage or motion graphics. There is definitely some consideration of ethics in these fields, as graphic designers are the ones creating the visual product that the world will see. Not to say we don't have a stake in the actual content, but more times rather than not we have a creative director or project manager who makes the call on the finished product. Take BP's oil spill back in 2010. It resulted in a media frenzy as well as an economic foul-up (thousands of gallons of oil were lost).

I'm sure the BP Creative/PR department was quite busy for the next few months as the world was bombarded with messages of how they were cleaning up and making sure the environment was protected from further damage in the Gulf Coast. However, new reports STILL came out of how they had trouble fixing the leak and how the condition of the surrounding eco-system was steadily declining. BP worked so hard to soften their image (and gain back customers) that eventually the satirical animated South Park decided to dedicate a whole episode to their antics.

As a growing graphic designer, I've learned that one can appeal to a greater crowd and increase the meaning of content using aesthetics. Aesthetics allow the audience to interpret more meaning in the content they are viewing. One BIG example of aesthetics is the use of Sarah McLaughlin's "Angels" in the "Stop Animal Abuse" commercials; the editor specifically chose heartbreaking/somewhat disturbing images of abused and abandoned animals that would get an audience's attention. The music in the background makes the tone of the commercial a somber and sad one.

Making the right decisions can sometimes blur the line between being ethical and being moral. The difference between the two can even affect the overall interpretation of the message.