The Paradigm Shift of Truth in Workplace

I am not a macro-economist, nor am I social scientist, or even an aspiring intellectual observer of organization behavior, but I have tried to run a business trying to make a profit in the challenging cultural industry for over 35 years.  I’ve probably had over 10,000 different employees over that time and while I can’t remember 9,700 of the names, I can report from the front lines that something dramatic in the labor market has changed since the start of the pandemic.  It’s not simply an issue of millennial work ethic or tech vs. service jobs, or hybrid and office changes.   It’s a much deeper change regarding honesty, truth, and the normalization of being unethical. 

Societal norms clearly change overtime.  The Mad Men Era has seemed to inform my sense that everyone had three martinis for lunch and fancy scotch bottles in the office for all of your meetings.   That was normalized then, but certainly not acceptable behavior these days in the office.  I’m listening to a lot of podcasts lately trying to understand the various advancements in AI, such as chatGPT, Stable Diffusion, Dall-E, etc. and their on the effect on truth, misinformation, and the long-term impact on our society.  Generative AI tools are not only reshaping our business and creative lives, but are facilitating the big lies which is helping normalize societies little lies. 

I’ve been really trying to understand lately why the work ethic has changed, why the commitment to work, why the increase in lying, cheating, and scamming of employers is on the rise.  The number of ambulance chasing people trying to get a free ride suing large companies  is twice what it was only 3 years ago and getting worse. People just not showing up for work has become normalized.  What has so dramatically changed the rules or normalized this behavior.   It used to be, you don’t show up for a shift, you get one chance, but a repeat, and your fired.  Today, we expect one to three call outs every day and we can’t have a big enough team to just give one chance anymore.

As easy as it might be to blame both the Pandemic on one hand and Trump on another, it goes deeper I fear.  George Santos has taken the lying to get a job to a new level.  There seems to be no punishment for him making absurd statements to gain a seat in house and now even get promoted and placed on some committees.  If you do that on a college application, you’re kicked out immediately.   It’s surreal to think that we have come to place in politics whereby you don’t accept the democratic process and can convince a gang to shoot at your rival’s home.  Yellowstone is great dramatic TV, but it should not be reality.   

But in our workplace, the normalization of scamming your employer has become ok.  “Quiet Quitting”--the new phrase for taking a paycheck until you’re ready to move, even if that means staying on our payroll for 6 months, not really contributing, playing a game instead of working, then quit the week before your new job starts is very painful economically.    Or working for a day or a month, then falsely accusing your superior for some lie, just so you can try and scam a big payday for not really working is not the rare occurrence anymore.   I have seen more fake “trip and fall” claims from customers, ambulance chasing bartenders, and even senior management with psychotically scary fantasy claims, but requiring costly legal defense in order for us to operate. 

What has happened with human cognition and the changing of rules?  Our values have shifted, been reprogrammed,  and I would contend that the normalization of misinformation, false truth as it proliferates its influence in social media, television, politics, has reinforced the shift.  It becomes exponential like Moore’s law did for silicon chips.  Exponential BS has hit the inflection point which has created a society where it is ok to lie.  I guess this is Dorf’s Law, but if AI can generate enough mis truth in media to make a claim and no one checks, then it becomes the truth.    On one hand, I am bemoaning that Google will not accept my advertising for our upcoming Music of Paul McCartney at Carnegie Hall because it does not believe I have the right to sell tickets.  I’ve had to submit my contract with Carnegie and now waiting to see I am telling the truth.  The New York Times never asked to see my contract for the show to spend money and advertise before.  But I guess in this new era of scamming the public,  it’s a new level of security, of scrutiny, that sadly is required when we don’t know the truth from fiction.  And it’s moving fast, changing daily, and needs to be paid attention to by the rest of the world.  Or as Jack Nicholson articulated, “You can’t handle the truth.”  Maybe so, but I certainly would appreciate a lot more honesty right now.