So, whose fault is it?

A couple of weeks ago I was talking about the airline industry and some things I think we can learn from them. Reader Wayne commented that drivers are often their own worst enemy - the bad apples make the whole industry look bad.

Of course, he's right. There are definitely drivers out there that make the entire industry look bad.

But I started thinking about this and it seems like it might be a chicken-and-egg situation.

Do drivers act unacceptably because they're inherently ignorant and insensitive? Or do they get put in situations that push them towards that behavior?

All of us have had jobs at one time or another where we didn't perform at our best. And most of us have had jobs where the environment was generally crappy and we ended up doing things we wouldn't otherwise do. Maybe it's cutting corners on quality. Maybe it's stealing office supplies. Maybe it's fudging a timesheet. If the environment we're working in is bad enough, most of us will start equally bad things as a result.

In other words, we rise or sink to the level of our surroundings.

So, the question then is - how many "bad apple" drivers are like that anyway, and how many are otherwise good people stuck working for companies that treat them poorly? In the latter case, it's not really the driver's fault at all, is it?

In those cases, I think we should be screaming just as loudly at the companies that treat drivers poorly. They're the ones that are making us all look bad.

What do you think?