Code of Ethics - Jiffy Lube Style

I am not proud to admit it, especially to my Dad, but lately, given the craziness of my schedule, I have become a Jiffy Lube customer.  My latest visit this past Tuesday not only had a handful of my former students changing the oil in my truck, it also had them rotating the tires and truing my rotors with a “newwickedfriggin’cool on-car lathe system that you have to let us try, Mr. Heavisides!!!!!” Always a sucker for seeing former students excited about their job, I agreed and, ironically, spent the next two hours in the “Jiffy” Lube lobby, perusing old copies of Sports Illustrated and looking for anything to kill the time.  In that vein, I found myself in front of what I thought was the “awards wall” reading ten very similar looking documents.  Upon closer inspection, though, they were not awards at all but rather Codes of Ethics written by every person who worked there, manager to pit monkey.  I read every single one and was so impressed with the sincerity of their words, I vowed to give the activity a go of my own. Below are the results.
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 Code of Ethics
 
Family
I will love my family unconditionally.
I will honor my wife.
I will be the best father that I can be.
I will encourage hope and optimism.
 
Self
I will strive for balance in my life.
I will maintain good physical health.
I will maintain strong spiritual health.
I will not overreach.
I will not worship material objects.
I will strive to be trustworthy, honest, and honorable.
I will continually educate myself with whatever means are available.
 
Work
I will be a positive leader.
I will promote progress and improvement, not achievement.
I will deal with conflict directly and respectfully.
I will help build a culture of collaboration and teamwork.
I will appreciate.
I will support.
I will be part of the solution, not the problem.
 
I was surprised at the difficulty of this activity.  I thought doing a “Code of Ethics” would be a relatively benign and robotic piece of writing. However, I struggled with choosing the categories, what order to put them in (implying order of importance in my life), and prioritizing the indicators underneath. 

Sure, any one of the indicators could be applied to the other two categories, but it was fun making decisions about what went where and why. 

And although I struggled with this activity, taking way more time on it than I had to spend, it was fruitful; I have a clearer sense of what I value, or at least what I should value. 

Who knew Jiffy Lube could be so thought provoking?