Professor O'Brien

To begin with, I want to say that I really enjoyed Professor O'Brien's visit this week. Her mini-lecture really opened my eyes to business ethic and how some companies carry themselves. Although I understand that the highlight of her lecture was sweatshops and work environment related problems, I ultimately came out of our seminar feeling annoyed at Walmart and American Apparel. Many of the things she stated really struck me as unbelievable, especially corrupted business mechanics. My family comes from a very deep business background and I've also always been very aware of company structure, so to be told that such prominent companies carry themselves in a way like that and are not more often publicly condemned is... not exactly shocking, because corruption seems to be the theme of our decade, but it is disturbing to say the least. 

On a note more related to Professor O'Brien's main goal of teaching us about sweatshops, my only thought is that it's honestly and too unfortunate that some people in this world don't value other humans as much as others do. To see people rule over each other with such an iron fist and have no care for each other's health is always mind-boggling to me. It's very ironic that the law is supposed to better a nation and a country, yet sometimes it fires back against the very public it seeks to protect and serve. I think it really struck me when she asked, "So how do we fight back against this kind of behavior?" (or something along those lines). I didn't really have an answer for that other than: "not shop there" which I know isn't truly an answer because we all have necessities that we have to purchase. She suggested some ideas, but there really isn't one single great answer I noticed. Either we have to suffer as consumers or the workers themselves have to suffer, but rarely do the companies suffer.