March Madness and Ethics at Work

Okay, call me a spoilsport, a curmudgeon, a stick-in-the-mud, but does anybody else see the annual basketball tournaments as an ethical issue?

No, not the games themselves, but the inordinate amount of time expended at work filling out brackets, talking about the games, prognosticating the outcomes, etc. I know what you're going to say: "It's harmless." Is it? There have been a few studies that place the productivity drop during tournament season at a shocking rate. There are at least a few ethical issues involved in that reality. Workers stealing time from employers. Tourney-fan workers unfairly shifting work to their non-fan colleagues. Low productivity costs being passed onto consumers. I could probably name a couple more if I thought a little longer.

Maybe you'll say, "It's good for morale." Yours, maybe, but what about those at work who don't share your enthusiasm for dissecting every last three-point shot or every bad call? What about the anxiety caused in the longer term when the department has not met its goals or families realize a smaller (or no) bonus?

You may not like this message, but I challenge you to really think it through. Think about how you might see this issue if it were not about the tournament, but about something you don't care about or maybe even dislike. Picture all your coworkers spending work time on that issue and see if you might not view it differently.

Come on, sports fans. Cheer your teams. But do it during breaks, lunch and at home.

PS. A couple hours after I posted this I got the 3/26 issue of Business Week Magazine which reports $1.2 billion in lost productivity. It also reports that 67% of workers surveyed say they joined the 2006 pool, of whom 57% bet on March Madness. Finally, for one more ethical issue to consider, 57% of taxpayers say they aren't likely to to report tournament winnings.