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Has technology killed our ability to have a face-to-face conversation? | Metro News
Face-to-face avoidance has become a reality.
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Has technology killed our ability to have a face-to-face conversation? | Metro News
Face-to-face avoidance has become a reality.
This has been a sad thread for me to read.
To me, the issues are personal responsibility, integrity, reliability...that sort of thing. When someone neglects animals we consider it criminal. Is it possible they have personal problems, or mental disabilities that might mitigate that charge? Certainly, it is. But last week in the news, they told of a home where an elderly woman was bedridden, starving, lying in her own feces, and there were around 20 dogs in the home, in similar conditions. The caretaker was arrested. Who knows what sort of personal problems he may have been undergoing. But it affected other creatures, and he is held accountable for the results, regardless of how he felt about it.
I realize it may seem to be hardly the same sort of thing as we are discussing, but on a larger scale, it is. We are held acountable for our actions (or inactions,) regardless of whatever inner struggles we may have been having. That is a simple reality, whether we like it (or agree with it) or not. No one is prescribing what "ought to be". It is simply what is, and generally for a good reason.
When one asks for a reference, one of the key things others hope to find in it is reliability. The "Hey, the tire is only flat on one side!" argument really doesn't work. "He only failed once." may sound OK, if we are talking about being late to work once. But abandoning a job without communication is not that sort of thing, and usually would be a deal-breaker.
Incidentally, part of my job involves training hundreds of new employees, and one of the "facts of life" that I have to tell them is that we (as a company) lose more employees to attendance-related issues than everything else put together. Sad, but true.
To me, the issues are personal responsibility, integrity, reliability...that sort of thing. When someone neglects animals we consider it criminal. Is it possible they have personal problems, or mental disabilities that might mitigate that charge? Certainly, it is. But last week in the news, they told of a home where an elderly woman was bedridden, starving, lying in her own feces, and there were around 20 dogs in the home, in similar conditions. The caretaker was arrested. Who knows what sort of personal problems he may have been undergoing. But it affected other creatures, and he is held accountable for the results, regardless of how he felt about it.
I realize it may seem to be hardly the same sort of thing as we are discussing, but on a larger scale, it is. We are held acountable for our actions (or inactions,) regardless of whatever inner struggles we may have been having. That is a simple reality, whether we like it (or agree with it) or not. No one is prescribing what "ought to be". It is simply what is, and generally for a good reason.
When one asks for a reference, one of the key things others hope to find in it is reliability. The "Hey, the tire is only flat on one side!" argument really doesn't work. "He only failed once." may sound OK, if we are talking about being late to work once. But abandoning a job without communication is not that sort of thing, and usually would be a deal-breaker.
Incidentally, part of my job involves training hundreds of new employees, and one of the "facts of life" that I have to tell them is that we (as a company) lose more employees to attendance-related issues than everything else put together. Sad, but true.
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Ok, that’s a new fact I didn’t know before. The student president was told if he missed 2 meetings it would be deemed a resignation. Then he missed 2 meetings, he considered himself resigned from the obligation, and thereafter didn’t respond to continuing inquiries. In other words, he had no obligation to respond to your emails and likewise you had no obligation to write him a reference letter.
Can’t you just give him the letter? It’s your prerogative of course but it’s better to find ways to help young people starting out rather than placing obstacles and hindrances in their path. You can be honest in your letter writing because no employer is going to care if the kid was a good student president. I applied for a job once and they didn’t even ask me if I was a student president. In fact, they seemed more concerned about why I didn’t know where I had been for the past 10 years.
Uh no
The topic was less face time and avoidance, ghosting issues.
I used temp service and emails of examples to support it.
That safety valve -- that we assume people quit if they miss two meetings without communiction or sending regrets -- exists to put us in the driver's seat in the event of ghosting. It's not for the benefit of the ghoster. It's for the benefit of the organization.
It's to prevent the rest of the organization from being held hostage by the INAPPROPRIATE ghosting and/or irresponsible behavior we witnessed here. It's there to prevent the entire organization from being paralyzed because the guy who is supposed to be driving the bus isn't available to make important decisions, bless initiatives and lead us.
If we lived in a world where everyone did what they agreed to (the ideal world), then such a policy would be wholly unnecessary. To say that he was relieved of any communication responsibility because that policy was in place, to me, is not putting personal accountability where it belongs. The policy is there to address the negative effects of irresponsibility, not to accommodate it.
No way. As someone who is normally in a leadership position, someone who is responsible with my own personal affiars (even when bedridden, family members dying, and in the hospital, hurricanes hitting my house, cars malfunctioning, emotionally broken) I communicate when life gets in the way. I expect it of myself and others. Otherwise, one's life exudes disrespect for others, tattered relationships, irresponsibility, etcetera. There are also practical, negative consequences for inappropriate ghosting. There is no way I will validate his ghosting with a reference letter for these reasons.
Further, from an ethical perspective, there are different philosophies over time -- utilitarianism (greatest good for the greatest number), virtue ethics (whether a certain action helps you become the kind of person you want to be), deontology (that we have obligations to others, and that others have certain rights). How a person applies these approaches to ethical decision making is highly personal, so I will give the approach that is right for me...Ghosting violates every one of them in my view.
Ghosting does not create the greatest good for the greatest number, it creates temporary relief from conflict for one person, delaying that conflict until such time the people wronged hold the ghost accountable. It hurts the people affected by the ghosting too. Virtue ethics -- can you visualize someone defining their ideal virtue as "my character trait of abandoning commitments to important projects without communication", or deontology "I have a right to quit without notice at any time, even when an entire organization depends on me". None of those fly in my view.
Yes, there can be mitigating circumstances at times. And when we sent him the termination letter, we give him even more time to contact us in case there were mitigating circumstances to explain. He still maintained radio silence.
There is no way, particularly as a professor in an environment meant to prepare people for careers and leadership, that I will validate ghosting with a reference letter. Up to this point, he's had at least 20 professors other than myself. He can get a letter from any one of them if he has behaved well enough....I also ran my unwillingness to give him a reference letter to my superior. She agreed wholeheartedly it sends the worst message to give someone who has behaved so irresponsibly after so many chances, a letter of recommendation. Notwithstanding the assumption of resignation we put in our policies and procedures manual.
In a way, I'm glad he called me, as he saw the consequences of his actions.
But again, the purpose of this thread was to understand the mentality, not to debate whether it was justified necessarily. We gave him enough chances to explain himself, and even when we terminated him, let him know there was room for him to communicate and potentially avoid the consequences. He remained silent.
From this discussion, I see the proposed roots of the mentality -- discomfort with conflict or resignation, misplaced transference of online behavior to the face to face environment, lack of responsibility, perhaps some generational attitudes, and from my perspective, a kind of entitlement.
In the case of this student, I believe there was irresponsibility and entitlement involved. His request for a reference letter, and his arguing the point after I said "no" due to the ghosting seems to affirm those conclusions.
This is very telling.
Ethics only apply when it favors the employer?
The real world doesn't work that way. Your 'two meetings missed' termination, can apply to either party. Your company made that policy and now you refuse to honor it. I suggest you are the one with the ethics problem.
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Best not to annoy the young too much lest they turn us older people into soylent green.
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I have been "ghosted" by 50 year old folks in a church group - not just young people anymore. I know they are getting the messages. I thought as an adult you owe the common courtesy to at least send a txt backing saying you are no longer interested. Society seems to project that it is OK to do that now.
I also would have declined the reference letter. It is your reputation on the line.
I also would have declined the reference letter. It is your reputation on the line.
Ah, but nonetheless, it is there, and if the ghosting SP knew it was there, then he also understood when he missed that second meeting that there was an implication involved that got him off the hook from the need for future contact. If you say to me, "do this or you're fired" and I deliberately decide not to do that because maybe I hate my job, I'm not going to come waltzing into work the following day.
Yeah, it's a poopie way for it to all come down, but that safety valve being put there for your benefit also gave him every reason to feel like his ghosting after missing meeting #2 was going to be expected.
I do not. I’m in my fifties and there’s plenty of people my age and older pulling this crap. Every age group does it; it’s a great feature of our wonderful “all rights, no responsibilities” society we have these days. The absolute worst are the service industries.
And I’ve also had the lovely experience of being asked for professional references by more than one person who has done this. They don’t get one.
I would also add regarding the idea that the OP should have “just given him the letter anyway” that if you recommend someone to me for employment, music or services, and they end up being a flake, you will hear back from me. And if it’s bad enough, I’ll stop hiring or working with the people you recommend. Do you really want to take someone else’s pattern of failures as your own?
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If I committed an infraction in your organization, I think I’d be afraid to talk to you too.
the more the OP respond, the more chains the theory of the student distancing himself from a toxic situation
having a bunch of degrees it's cool and all but if you're going to flout your perceived intellectual superiority (or ability to regurgitate some social theories; I used to think I was brilliant because I could read good and spit back out what I had read too) on a forum about bass guitars, let alone in a volunteer (ie no pay) organization for students (who are paying a fee on top of the tens of thousands of dollars in tuition) maybe a position of power isn't the best place for the great I AM. having the chutzpah to fancy oneself the gatekeeper for opportunities that aren't even any of your business cements that
look I get it, I have struggled with such an innate feeling of inferiority that I just HAD to dominate and belittle those around me just to attempt to validate my own existence. I too have read wordy books and engaged in windy arguments. it's a miserable and lonely way to live, so when I see it in others l have compassion for it. it took almost killing myself to have the willingness to seek change, which has resulted in a simpler, more satisfying life.
I hope you find peace, brother.
having a bunch of degrees it's cool and all but if you're going to flout your perceived intellectual superiority (or ability to regurgitate some social theories; I used to think I was brilliant because I could read good and spit back out what I had read too) on a forum about bass guitars, let alone in a volunteer (ie no pay) organization for students (who are paying a fee on top of the tens of thousands of dollars in tuition) maybe a position of power isn't the best place for the great I AM. having the chutzpah to fancy oneself the gatekeeper for opportunities that aren't even any of your business cements that
look I get it, I have struggled with such an innate feeling of inferiority that I just HAD to dominate and belittle those around me just to attempt to validate my own existence. I too have read wordy books and engaged in windy arguments. it's a miserable and lonely way to live, so when I see it in others l have compassion for it. it took almost killing myself to have the willingness to seek change, which has resulted in a simpler, more satisfying life.
I hope you find peace, brother.
NO!!!! Obstacles and hindrances HELP humans grow! That's how it works! When did this idiotic society get this backwards? Christ...
Interesting, I run into these situations a lot in other contexts -- group projects. I am not part of the group, only the person to whom the people on the ghosting end of the relationship complain. This is part of my full-time work. I have been fielding complaints about teams in group projects for 25 years now. That kind of repetitive, constant complaining from people who want to excel makes you develop plans....
It really ticks them off when their team members ghost.
Like @arabiterusa, I don't agree with feeding that kind of behavior. It first alienates the people who are highly committed. Some even get negative on the whole university because they perceive it to be full of people who are not committed. Second, the people who ghost end up doing it again and again in other classes.
Lately, I've been taking a strengths-based approach. I had one person, a 50 year old project manager with a highly visible and respected company. He had 35 years experience in project management. He called me in Week 1 indicating he had a bad feeling about his team. He explained that 2 members were ghosting after almost a full week of phone calls, texts and emails. The other two had more reasons "why they couldn't contribute than how they COULD contribute". He said he was concerned and could I help.
My solution -- I took him out of the weak team and put him into the best team there was. All the people on the good team had really high engagement with the course, had submitted work early, etcetera. This created diffusion of responsibility on the weak team who weren't contributing. One of them, a general manager at a fast food restaurant, reluctantly stepped up.
The course was a simulation, where they have to make real-world business decisions in a simulation that reports financial and market data.
At the end, three teams ended up with scores of 39/40, 38/40, 38/40. The team in which I put the professional project manager got 39/40, and the team with the guy who stepped up, formerly the weak team, got 38/40. This was based on the extent to which they had improved on various business metrics, auto-calculated by the simulation.
The guy who stepped up found that two others on his team quit in Week 2 when they found they wouldn't get the team grade if the team reported they hadn't contributed. That is what happened, so they both dropped the course, leaving him with one other person to complete the project. Which they did fabulously. So, not only did he perform well, and have a good experience, he also ended up in a committed group of 2 people due to the others being held accountable for lack of action.
On top of that the professional project manager was VERY PLEASED with the whole experience of being on the strong team.
In fact, he attended an optional class on the last day of the session after all work had been submitted for grading. Normally students don't come, but I had two that day. This guy, the project manager, shared his approach to teaming and leading the team, and it was a phenomenal experience to not only hear his approach, but to see his enthusiasm -- torn from the jaws of defeat when he was reassigned to the strong group. It's a great recording of the class (we record them) which I will now share with other classes.
So, I agree that holding people accountable is critical as @arabiterusa pointed out. And I also believe in considering the impact of non-contributors on the committed body.
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Where in the organization’s rule book does it state a mentor can unilaterally resign from being a mentor because a student didn’t meet mentor expectations?
Write the kid a letter setting forth his positive attributes. If you want to complain about his mentality, attach a copy of this thread so at least the reader will understand what the kid had to deal with.
Keep in mind it’s their world now. You had your chance.
Write the kid a letter setting forth his positive attributes. If you want to complain about his mentality, attach a copy of this thread so at least the reader will understand what the kid had to deal with.
Keep in mind it’s their world now. You had your chance.
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