We are all humans and humans make mistakes.  We all have fallen in the trap of stereotyping individuals and assuming certain things about them.  Whether we assume some personality characteristics or work ethics. The one time where I fell into this situation and was the worst was not when I stereotyped one individual but rather a whole group of employees.  Before I arrived at my new job I stereotyped all of my hourly pay here in the facility I am a part of.

            I came into this job with GE I was warned about the “union grunts.”  I was told that they were often lazy, took no responsibility, and were extremely strict on certain things that non-union workers couldn’t do.  I was told all of this information by an experienced co-op that has worked in this facility previously and because of this, I walked into this job with a preconceived notion that all of the workers would act this way and it would be very hard for me to work with them and get my job done.

            I immediately expected so many things about the hourly workers that I tried to avoid them and when I had to interact with them I acted somewhat like they intimidated me.  I expected to favors to come from them in any way.   However I quickly learned that not all of my stereotypes came true with the union workers and that was diffidently to my benefit.

            Even though not all of the stereotypes ended up becoming true there were several that did show them selves to me.  Several of the employees were lazy and only did the least that they had to do to get his/her job done.  I sit in an office with a stack of papers to the left of me.  These papers are orders from customers and the hourly workers are supposed to take the top order from the list and work their way down.  Many times the employees will come into my office and sift through the papers in search of the easier orders or the orders that are less expensive so if they mess up it won’t be that big of a deal.