Opinion on Ethics

In My Humble Opinion
1

Recently at my work I have encountered the following situation. Kindly express your opinion by return as I am seeking a direction with this.

I work in Sales and this is what happened:

I asked a warehouse worker about an inventory issue for a customer. When he came to me I started to talk to him and then he just turns around and walks away so I call him back and ask him why he walked away from me because I am talking to him. His response was that he thought I was talking to someone else. We finished the discussion and he returned to the warehouse. The warehouse manager then approached me and said I am disrespectful to his warehouse guy and demanded that I apologize to him.

My question is…who is disrespectful and who should apologize?

2

Moderator Action

Welcome to the SDMB, George350BC. Questions that seek opinions belong in the forum In My Humble Opinion. You don’t need to do anything. I will move the thread there for you.

Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion

3

I feel like you’ve omitted parts of the timeline here, because I’m not getting a good idea of how this conversation actually went. You called him over and started talking to him, he came over to you then immediately walked away?

Second, is there a protocol at your workplace for interdepartmental communication? Was this definitely the warehouse worker who handled the order you were looking into? Were you supposed to go through the warehouse supervisor to look into this order?

There’s a LOT missing from your narrative that I’d need before I could even form an opinion on this event.

4

I’m not seeing the “ethics” angle. This sounds more like a professional conduct and inter-personal relations issue. What did you say to him to piss him off enough to have him turn and walk away from you? Whatever it was, you should apologize.

5

What kind of ‘talking to him’ were you doing, that he was unaware you were speaking to him?

Were you talking at him, assuming he was listening? Was there eye contact?

I’m not getting it, care to try again?

6

Yeah, it’s all in exactly what you said and exactly how you said it (same with the other guy). No-one can give you a real answer without seeing a video of the whole transaction. Anything we get from you is only going to be from your point-of-view, and even if you are being as honest as possible there are just things you can’t know (like what your face looked like, for example, when you were talking to the warehouse guy, or what your tone of voice sounded like objectively).

Maybe you can get more detail from the warehouse manager about why the warehouse guy got offended. Did this manager see the transaction, or is he only passing on the complaint of his worker?

I agree that there’s no ethics issue here that I can see.
Roddy

eta: I’ll bet you could use this as a learning experience, if you were of a mind to do so.