June 2003 Archives

By Vincent Safuto staff writer

June 28, 2003

I've always thought that ethics in business is something that doesn't require college classes, with credits, tests and term papers, but that's not the view of many of today's college students majoring in business.

A recent New York Times story relayed the whining of business school students, who, the reporter noted, "are worried that their study programs might teach questionable values that may later contribute to mismanagement or corporate fraud."

Further on, the story noted, "Only 22 percent of respondents said their schools were doing 'a lot' to prepare them to handle workplace conflicts involving mismanagement or fraud. 'There could have been even more emphasis at Wharton (School of Economics) on ethics and social responsibility,' said Jordan E. Silvergleid, 33, who graduated from Wharton."

Not only that, the story continued: "One in five respondents did not feel they were receiving any ethics training. About half said the messages and priorities taught in MBA programs might have contributed to the recent scandals."

Hogwash, hogwash and — again — hogwash. This is excuse-mongering that'd get you a lifetime of pushups at Parris Island.

I find it amazing that these students, who are allegedly so intelligent, cannot see that there are things you aren't taught in business school, and that ignorance of the law is no excuse for doing wrong.

I suspect that most of these students surveyed will go on to make tons of excuses if they are caught doing something illicit, unethical or illegal in their business careers, and will try to excuse it by blaming their college for failing to teach them ethics.

But having an ethical sense in life, as well as in business, is not rocket science.

The military service academies teach a simple set of values: You don't lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate lying, cheating or stealing. In 12 words, you have a business value system that, if followed, will keep anyone — from a kid in the mailroom to an executive in the corner office — in line. It's called the honor code, and violators are punished harshly for it.

In the wake of Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Tyco and the latest stock brokerage firm revelations, it has become clear that the "no-one-told-me-in-college-it-was-wrong" defense is the lamest attempt to divert one's own culpability.

The very idea of hiring a graduate who is unsure of his or her ethical responsibilities because they weren't addressed in college should be frightening. I wouldn't give such a person responsibility for cleaning toilets.

The best way to teach business ethics may be one I read about last year, in which students got to participate in a white-collar version of "Scared Straight." They visited a prison and talked with people who had decided the law didn't apply to them, and were paying the price.

I don't know if such tours would even be effective, but if business students need an incentive to avoid doing wrong, perhaps a trip to your local prison for corporate criminals might be just the spice the curriculum needs.

Vincent F. Safuto is a copy editor for the Press Journal. Reach him at Vincent.Safuto@scripps.com.

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By Vincent Safuto staff writer

June 21, 2003

One of the cultural stereotypes I've always bucked in my life is the belief that real men prefer dogs to cats.

True, as a child, I thought having a dog would be the neatest thing, at least until one arrived in the Safuto household and made a mess everywhere. Cats, though, proved their worth and cleanliness. Once the initial parental resistance was overcome, cats became an integral part of my life.

It seems, though, that some people reserve a special kind of cruelty and viciousness for cats. I try to treat all animals with compassion, though I've had my share of encounters with the munching mandibles of fire ants and gladly spread all sorts of pellets and crystals to end their lives.

But even when cats have invoked their feline defense systems and drawn blood, I've never inflicted pain on them.

I understand that they don't know any better. Annoy a cat enough and that million-year-old program springs into action, the one that can leave you with scars up and down your arms and legs. Humans are trained quickly and efficiently by their cats in the ways cats wish to be treated.

I guess it's because I can identify with victimized people and animals that stories of mistreatment and abuse anger and frustrate me. One of the saddest tales of cat abuse I recall was an incident that happened when I was in the process of moving to Vero Beach.

Someone decided to leave a mother cat and her brood of kittens at a vet's office, and picked the Memorial Day holiday weekend to do so. This person placed the mother and her kittens in a Tupperware container, punctured it with a few holes for air, and left it on the doorstep.

It sat there in the hot sun, and fortunately the vet's office also boarded animals, so when an employee showed up to walk the dogs and feed the cats, she found the cats and saved their lives. They were, the news story said, almost out of air at that point.

Why someone would do something so stupid is beyond me, but some people are, I think, just cruel and cats are a convenient means of expressing that cruelty. I read another story recently of someone who fed a cat to a crocodile.

Someone might say that I value a furry feline more than a human being, but the truth is that I value people, but believe you can judge a person's character by how they treat another person — or an animal.

Cats make wonderful pets, and my Tommy and Mikasa have trained me well. I feed them, water them and change their litter, and they occasionally deign to acknowledge my existence.

Cruelty toward animals has no place in a supposedly civilized society, and I think the best punishment for someone who abuses animals would be a requirement to work in an animal shelter for a few weeks, not just cleaning up, but also seeing people adopting pets to see what compassion toward animals, and not just cats, looks like.

Vincent F. Safuto is a copy editor for the Press Journal. Reach him at (Vincent.Safuto@scripps.com).


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By Vincent Safuto staff writer

June 14, 2003

A recent article in the newspaper The Onion told the tale of a young man who checked into a hotel, and was glad to learn that HBO was included in the room rental.

His happiness ended, though, when he saw what was on HBO that night: "Summer Catch," a formulaic 2001 baseball movie that struck out in the hearts of movie-goers and critics; back-to-back episodes of "Tracey Takes On," which has never caught on; "The Mexican," another film that not so much was released as it escaped; and finally, "Ghosts of Mars."

He spent the night sucking on ice cubes.

The Onion (www.theonion.com) is deliberately fiction, but there's a grain of truth to that story.

It is an unfortunate fact of life that so-called "premium" service is often differentiated from plain-old ordinary service by its price, and little more. This is especially true in the realm of cable television, where channels for which one pays a lot of money turn out to have very little high-quality programming to justify the higher cost.

Sure, they'll toss out an occasional four-star movie, and some channels have interesting and very enjoyable original programming, but most of their stuff, even on the "classic" movie channels, is recycled junk, direct-to-video dreck that was too awful even to get into a theater, and "Making of" promo films.

It's gotten so bad that I have a swollen DVD collection, films that I haven't seen on cable in years that I'd like to see every so often. I wonder how many others are paying north of $70 a month for premium cable channels and ending up hitting the video store every couple of weeks to get a film that hasn't been shown on those channels.

Such channels pull a nifty bait-and-switch with potential subscribers by flashing brief snippets of past films they've shown, and the logos of future film fare. The catch, once you pay your money, is that the past films are probably never going to be shown again, and the films to come are six months away from being on the network.

In the meantime, here's another heartwarming tale of a boy and his tarantula; another "coming-of-age" film that stank up the theaters for a couple of days; some interviews with "stars" who can barely put two words together in a coherent sentence, except to talk about what a genius the director of their last film was; and the umpteenth rerun of "Summer Catch," in case you haven't had enough of it yet.

On a recent evening, I paged through premium channel listings that offered nothing of interest to me or the cats. So I ended up watching a great classic film on DVD.

Unless the premium channels wake up, they may some day find all their viewers canceling their subscriptions and spending that money on DVDs so they can see the movies often promised and seldom delivered on premium cable.

Or spend the night sucking ice cubes.

Vincent F. Safuto is a copy editor for the Press Journal. Reach him at (Vincent.Safuto@scripps.com).

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By Vincent Safuto staff writer

June 7, 2003

I'm planning on going to New York City in October to see the family, visit old friends and watch my youngest brother get married. I'll be bringing luggage, of course, and leaving the kitties home.

In preparing for a trip to New York in its current state, you'd better have a list of laws, because there are countless innocuous things you can do that will bring down the wrath of New York's Finest on your head — and pocketbook.

New York City has, according to the Daily News and New York Post, gone summons-happy.

Among the famous tickets written was handed to a man for sitting on a milk crate. There's a law against that in New York City. A pregnant woman sat down on the steps leading to the subway. Ticket for blocking the stairs, though there was plenty of room to pass. It's the law.

A tourist got nailed for the awful crime of taking up two seats on the subway, even though the car was empty. It's the law.

In my old neighborhood, a woman whose car was hit in front and badly damaged got three tickets — one per day — for having a car with broken headlights even though she wasn't using it. She was waiting for the insurance adjuster to look at it, but you don't get any mercy from the police anymore. Another family got a ticket for blocking a driveway — their own. It's the law.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg claims nothing has changed and that the city is just enforcing its laws. The police commissioner says he's enforcing "performance standards" on the cops and the mayor's press secretary says it's all the fault of the media.

But the police officers' union has taken out full-page ads saying there's a "quota" system in place, and one news story noted that when a cop asked for a day off, he was told to go out and write 20 tickets first, and then he'd get his day.

It's a far cry from the good old days of the mid- to late 1970s. Sure, the city was a financial wreck — as it is now — but you felt like you could get away with things. It seemed that everything fun was against the law in the city, but enforcement was lax. Student drivers technically couldn't drive in the city, and the only way to practice for the road test was to go outside the city limits, but you could get away with it.

Fireworks were banned in the city, though the Fourth of July often sounded like "shock and awe" day as just about every house on the block lit off firecrackers, M-80s and rockets until they ran out of everything. Sparklers were allowed, but no self-respecting teenager would go near them with a 10-foot pole.

Where everything is illegal, and even minor infractions cause massive punishments, contempt for the law flourishes. Lots of places have weird laws, and New York may think that enforcing them is a good way to bring in revenue, but the end result is to become the laughing stock of the nation.

But I have to hold back because I wonder if laughing at New York politicians also can get you a ticket.

Vincent F. Safuto is a copy editor for the Press Journal. Reach him at (Vincent.Safuto@scripps.com).


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By Vincent Safuto staff writer

June 1, 2003

Arecent article in The Wall Street Journal detailed the tale of the flying horse.

No, this wasn't Pegasus, the winged equine of Greek mythology, but a two-foot-high "seeing-eye" horse flying on American Airlines with its owner.

The owner was going to be on "Oprah Winfrey" and, in the airlines' new push to be cooperative with passengers (read: financial desperation), they allowed the animal into the first-class cabin.

Reports are that the horse behaved well, except for its minor "accident" just before landing. There was discussion about whether the animal should have been diapered, but even though a crew did have to do some major cleaning of the seat, the horse was allowed on the return flight in which, presumably, there was no incident worthy of reporting.

I had wondered if maybe someone could have taken the horse to the airplane's toilet, but then I remembered that airline johns are difficult enough for humans to use. I flew once on a 737 whose lavatory was so tiny that I could not turn around inside but had to exit and then back in so I could use it.

It's a far cry from the golden age of aviation. I remember my first flight on a 747 from New York to Los Angeles, and the young girl who, faced with a whole array of bathrooms in the tail of the aircraft, asked me, "Which one is the ladies' room?"

I suppose that someday airlines will start charging to use the bathroom in an effort to raise revenue.

The new rules allow people to bring animals aboard even if they're there for "emotional stability."

I once joked about bringing my cats with me on my next flight to New York, but my mother said that while I was welcome at the "Hotel Mom," the "grandcats," Mikasa and Tommy, were not. Oh well.

The flights when nothing happened are never remembered, I have found, but we always remember those flights where something wasn't right, like that first 747 flight of mine, which ended when the plane blew all its main landing gear tires on touchdown in L.A.

Or the one I took to New York in which a child in the row behind me screamed for most of the flight, collapsed into sleep in exhaustion, and awoke just before landing to resume her screaming.

I don't think any small animal can even approach the chaos I witnessed on one flight, the return from New York after the "screamer," in which children were running up and down the aisles of the plane while it was on final approach, with gear and flaps down.

The understaffed cabin crew had its hands full and failed to make the usual check to see that we were all buckled in, with seatbacks and tray tables in their full upright position. Fortunately, we landed safely and no one was hurt.

Truth to tell, if I had to choose between children running wild on a flight and flying with a horse, even with the potential for a smelly "accident," I think I'd take the horse for my emotional stability.

Vincent F. Safuto is a copy editor for the Press Journal. Reach him at (Vincent.Safuto@scripps.com).


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