Good: Going, Going, Gone?

Most of us were taught from childhood the difference between good and bad. Most of us were encouraged to be good. Minor indiscretions were OK, but when surveying life’s big picture or when wrestling with a moral dilemma, one was expected to come out on the good side. We still speak in these terms, but I wonder if “good” has meaning anymore.

A good employee (executive, manager, supervisor, white collar, blue collar, salaried, hourly) is someone who does the best job he can, is willing to take on additional responsibility, comes to work on time, accurately reports her hours, turns in legitimate expense reports, tells the truth and admits a mistake, sets an example of trustworthiness, and places ethical values above all else. That’s by no means a complete list of the qualities that make up a good employee, but it’s a start.

Given the Wall Street, banking, insurance and financial debacle (which includes criminal activity as well as the unfair, bad treatment of clients, customers, the public and fellow workers), it’s not unreasonable to wonder aloud whether the good employee is nothing more than a relic. Some of you will say “no.” You know good employees. You are a good employee. Good will always prevail over bad, at least ultimately. That’s what we’re supposed to say, of course, but Pollyanna just may be on life support.

A fascinating, yet troubling, article in the Los Angeles Times shines light on this conundrum. The article doesn’t focus on the bad stuff with which we’ve been deluged for months now. It doesn’t even focus on something new. After all, the good-bad dichotomy is at least as old as the Garden of Eden. But when you consider our recent economic disaster, the Mexican drug war, the remorseless killing of innocents throughout the world, widespread government corruption, not to mention executives willing to lay off thousands and thousands of employees while keeping multi-million dollar salaries, a cynic could argue that there’s no longer a good anything or that the definition of good has been rationalized and radicalized to the point of obscurity.

The Times article concerns the sheriff of Starr County, Texas, Rey Guerra. His predecessor was removed from office in the late 1990′s for accepting bribes. By all accounts, Guerra had restored luster to the sheriff’s badge, coasting to two election victories and being unopposed the third time around. He was a native of  Starr County’s Rio Grande City, a family man, an approachable and helpful neighbor, and a good Catholic. He was a good sheriff, honestly and diligently patrolling a county that shares 78 rugged miles of the U.S. border with Mexico.

According to the FBI, somewhere along the way, something went wrong. In the fall of last year, the U.S. attorney’s office issued a 19-count indictment accusing Guerra and two dozen others of conspiring to smuggle thousands of pounds of marijuana and cocaine through Starr County. Guerra resigned and is awaiting trial.

Others charged in the indictment were a postal worker, a construction foreman, and a local businessman who was a member of the county hospital’s board of trustees and of the county tax assessment board. The arrest of prominent citizens accused of being involved in the drug trade doesn’t shock citizens of Starr County. During Starr County’s more than 160 years as an international border, smuggling — tequila, cattle, now drugs — has been as much apart of life as cowboy hats. It’s become part of the culture.

The enormous amounts of money involved change good people into bad — not just Guerra who’s accused of receiving an unknown amount of money for removing obstacles to drug smuggling, but a complicit cadre of tight-lipped citizens content to allow illicit drug money fund a booming local economy. Despite Guerra’s denial of criminal activity and the assertion by Rio Grande City’s mayor that “the good people far, far outweigh the bad people,” a retired school teacher perhaps sums up the meaning of good in Starr County: “People come and spend money over [the border], and if they have a bagful of 20s, we don’t ask where they got it. That’s not our job. This kind of thing has been around here for years.”

The priest where Guerra attended church often railed against the drug trade. He frequently confronted Guerra with the charge that local officials were either willfully ignorant or in the pockets of the drug cartels. He wants Guerra to have his day in court, but if guilty, Guerra should have “the full weight of the law” brought down on him.

During Lent, I’ve been taking a class in my church’s annual Lenten school of religion. The class is called “Religion and the Holocaust,” a subject that has long fascinated and troubled me. It’s fascinating and troubling because of the enormity of the tragedy (though we know similar tragedies still occur in the world today) and because good, religious institutions and people did little to prevent it. It’s also fascinating and troubling to me because I have to honestly consider whether if I had been a good German citizen, I would have also been a good Nazi.

Much soul-searching is occurring these days. We’re told that the crisis we find ourselves in will change us. We’re told that the good values of service and humility and honesty will supplant the snarly values of selfishness and arrogance and greed. Cynics respond that, given the passage of enough time, we’ll go back to our old ways, because we always do.

I suppose time will tell. In the meantime, thinking about and talking with each other about what it means to be a good employee, a good worker, a good boss, a good executive, a good manager or supervisor, a good person may not make us all good, but it will make us better, at least in the short run. And if we’re lucky, we’ll experience some kind of lasting change that makes human resources and employment law vehicles for good. Pollyannaish?

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   E. says:

   May 4, 2009 at 7:41 am

   A fine post Mr. Phillips. Thanks so much for posing some very good questions. E.