Friday, September 22, 2017

Opportunism

Instead of talking about a circumstance about a time when I didn't act opportunistically, I'm going to give a more realistic example and talk about an instance where I definitely took advantage of the situation I was put in.

A few summers ago I worked as a summer intern for my local city along with another coworker. We were each tasked the same job and were expected to complete the same amount of work. The job consisted of taking a list of properties around the city and surveying their plot of land to see if they were suitable, under city standards, to have some tree planted in their property by the city. We were also inspecting if the tress which had been planted the previous year had survived the winter or not. We were each given a book of which had sections of the city mapped off and let you know exactly where the tree had been planted. We were also given the list of the locations we were supposed to visit and finally a city car that got us there. 

The first day, we each surveyed about the same amount of properties at about the same amount of time. Where the opportunism started to take place was once I discovered that the method they told us to use to locate these properties was, to say the least, very inefficient. They had the properties in alphabetical order instead of grouping them by locations that were near one another. Basically, had I not discovered this, I would have been going back and forth to opposite ends of the city time after time instead of clearing sections at a time. The obvious faster method. I ended up taking the list and categorizing the locations by section so that way I could finish all the locations that were in one area of the city without having to come back to it. I also edited the excel list so I can travel to neighboring sections in order. This method cut my time by a factor of 3. To add to this, once I had organized the list, I stopped using the map of sections that they had given us and just started using my phone's GPS. Since I knew where the general section was once I used the GPS, near locations were easy to remember without the need of the book which was very confusing. 

Ideally a "good citizen" would share this information with his coworker but for me, it did not even cross my mind. At first using this newly self discovered information made me look like an all-star compared to my not-so-fast coworker. Once I found out that there was no benefit in finishing early and that there would be no further work if I completed the list for the summer, I ended up taking advantage of the situation even further. I would finish my day's in a few hours or so and go home to take a nap and eat. At the end of the day, I would still come back with more locations surveyed than my coworker and in the eyes of my boss I was an ideal intern. I could only imagine what he would've thought had I not been so opportunistic. 

At the end of the day, I chose not to be a "good citizen" because in this specific case it would have worked against me. I would've completed all my tasks much earlier than expected and would have been out of a job early in the summer. I was in need of saving money for the upcoming school year and simply took advantage of the situation that was presented to me. 

3 comments:

  1. Normally we don't think it opportunistic when the employee ends up being more productive than expected. The surprising part to your story is why management didn't figure out to do this themselves. I wonder if you have some insight on that.

    You said it didn't cross your mind to give the information to your coworker. Obviously, that thought occurred to you eventually. Did you consider it before having to write this post? Or did the post itself trigger the question?

    Now a different question about your internship. When I was approximately your age, internships did not exists. You worked a summer job, quite often with no prospect of that being a long term employment. For example, one summer I was a teletype operator in a Ship Brokerage company. They thought I did a reasonable job so also hired me for winter break. But that was that.

    Nowadays I believe the term internship is used both when there is a long term employment relationship possible and when it is only a summer job. There are unpaid internships, which have to be in the first category or why would the person do it? Paid internships, however, can be either of these.

    It seems to me that if you had thoughts of working for the city after graduation, then you might have told your supervisor of your idea, as your inventiveness would have been a good credential for getting a permanent job. So I infer from what you said that you had no intention of working there in the future. Put a different way, whether there are future rewards from good behavior might very well determine whether you are opportunistic or not. Do you agree?

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  2. I appreciate all the context behind your story and I found it very helpful to understand your story. I have a clear understanding of the situation, your task, and the opportunism at work. Your writing makes it very easy for the reader to understand and communicates your message well.

    I would like to know your relationship to your coworker though. You said you had the same job description, but never included your thoughts on them. Were they a good coworker, friend, or person? Did you view them in a positive, negative, or indifferent light? I'm guessing you had no relationship to this person and therefore did not feel like you were making them worse off by not sharing your information. I would argue, had you known this person and valued them then you would have shared the information to benefit both of you.

    In addition, I believe you could have really impress the company you interned for by sharing your information with them. If you would have told them how you came up with your own method of decreasing the time and effort going to each location, while increasing productivity it could have really blown them away. In this sense, I believe you could have been more opportunistic and taken ownership of the information.

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  3. This post is great. You clearly connected opportunism to your story and as a reader, I found this very helpful. Your example is really spot on for this prompt.

    I think this scenario is quite unique. I wonder if the other co-worker had considered doing the same thing as you, but maybe feared that the company had presented the list of locations to visit in a certain order and was afraid to question it even though it was quite inefficient? Nonetheless, you were confident in your realization and perhaps your coworker should have been the same way.

    Essentially, your common sense and need for efficiency put you ahead of your coworker. Maybe this could be a sign of initiative to your company? If they saw that you were able to optimize your time, they would be impressed by your work ethic.

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