If you know that one of your fellow workers is engaged in wrong-doing, should you report it?
At age 18, I was hired by a greenhouse and landscaping business in the Southland area. My title might just as well have been “ditch digger,” since for the next several weeks, I averaged 10 hours a day digging holes for the planting of trees around newly constructed homes.
Their root systems encased in burlap covered dirt balls, the large trees were lowered by tractor into holes 3 feet wide and 4 feet deep, which I had spent all day excavating.
The foreman of our crew, a veteran landscaper, warned me that a shovel is a primitive tool: “It can break a man if you’re not careful,” he said. And though I did figure out how to pace myself, it was that cursed shovel, I’m sure, that was partly responsible for the back pain I still endure.
Relief finally came after a month on the job, when the foreman took me to the driver’s license facility on 99th Street & King Drive to get my chauffeur’s license. After passing the test, I was qualified to drive the company’s two dump trucks, and I transitioned from ditch digger to truck driver, picking up and delivering trees, black dirt, or hundreds of rolls of sod.
It was a heady job, as I’d roar down Harlem Avenue or the Dan Ryan Expressway, shifting through the six speed manual transmission with a bird’s eye view of traffic.
But my joy over the promotion was short lived once the foreman gave me an unusual assignment one rainy morning. I was to drive out to the quarry and pick up 5 cubic yards of dirt, a full truck load, and then dump it on the parkway at an address in Palos Heights. What was peculiar was that I was to pay at the quarry with cash, and was not to say anything about it back at the store.
In other words, the foreman was free-lancing, taking on landscaping jobs. Which would have been fine, except that he was using our company’s equipment and its driver, unbeknown to the owner.
I did not think to question him. Not only because he was my immediate supervisor and only real contact with management. But I liked him. He pitched in with the work, laughed with us on coffee breaks and at lunch. But he was smart and experienced and commanded our respect as foreman.
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On the other hand, what he was planning was not ethical. In fact, probably illegal, insofar as he was essentially stealing from his employer. Rather like that politician you often read about who has city workers paint his house or pave his driveway.
The more I thought about it, the more anxious I became. When the quarry manager gave me a funny look after I handed him cash instead of signing a ticket as I usually had, the risk I was taking really hit home.
And when I went to deliver the dirt, I was in such a hurry to unload and escape, that I kept backing up and braking with the truck bed still elevated, tearing off both rear mud flaps.
The rest of the day, and all through the night, I worried about getting caught and losing my job. I got no sleep as I wondered if I should have gone to the owner of the landscaping company, blown the whistle on the foreman, gotten him fired, likely incurring the wrath and mistrust of the other employees.
It was also possible that my coming forward would backfire, and I’d be canned myself. After all, when push came to shove, whom would management believe: their long time foreman, or an 18 year old rookie?
It’s a dilemma that many of us contend with at the workplace: whether to remain loyal to colleagues who frequently are among our closest friends, or to speak up for the sake of honesty and in fairness to the employer who puts bread on the table.
There’s even a whistleblower law that was enacted in 1989 that protects employees who report misconduct by fellow workers or superiors; but it only applies to people in government.
As I got ready for work early the next morning, I must have changed my mind three or four times about whether to report the foreman and put an end to my paranoia, or just keep my mouth shut and not rock the boat.
Unsurprisingly, the foreman was the first person I saw at work. Surprisingly, he was not happy.
“You screwed up,” he said. “You dumped the dirt at 13011 instead of 13017. It took me all goddam night, and 100 trips with a wheelbarrow, to move it.”
The good news was that he would never again enlist my help in his freelancing.
The not so good news was that he quit a short time later to start his own business, and was replaced by the owner’s brother who seemed to hate teenagers, hate his job, and drove us like prisoners on a chain gang.
No, I am not advising you snitch to the boss for every time a coworker makes a false move. Instead, for the sake of the company that pays your income, for your own peace of mind, and, yes, even for the benefit of the co-worker, go first to him or her. Tell them what you think.
And if discussing it with the offending party does not make them stop, then you can blow the whistle to the authorities with a conscience free and clear.
Former Oak Forest resident David McGrath is Emeritus English professor, College of DuPage, and author of “The Territory.”