Omni College Plus Up to October 2019

Instructions: Please address each item below for each movie. The total length of your critical viewing
form responses should be approximately one-half to one page, single spaced. This form will be graded
on a pass/fail basis. To pass, you need to provide reasonably detailed and insightful answers to the
items below.
1. Briefly summarize the basic plot, or issue that the movie addresses.
This documentary concerned SAS, a North Carolina based software company that treats its employees
phenomenally well and is also profitable. (‘SAS’ is short for ‘statistical analysis software’, this being the
company’s signature product.)
2. What do you think is the most interesting point in the movie?
The attention to details, relating to employee welfare, e.g. the massages and M&M’s.
3. What is the most controversial statement you’ve heard?
The statement, made by the reporter, that people would be ‘shocked’ by the company’s positive ethos.
This struck me as controversial precisely because it’s true, which shows how thoroughly the public has
internalized the misguided notion that workers should be brutalized.
4. What is the most important ethical issue that the movie is addressing? Please explain.
That decency to one’s employees and colleagues is confluent with economic self-interest—a
lesson I know from my own case. I run a small firm and, although I am the boss, I never
issue orders and always treat everyone—clients and colleagues---utterly decently, simply
because an unhappy employee, I found, can cause trouble and a happy one will go above
and beyond the call of duty.
Critical Viewing Form: McWane Inc.
Instructions: Please address each item below for each movie. The total length of your critical viewing
form responses should be approximately one-half to one page, single spaced. This form will be graded
on a pass/fail basis. To pass, you need to provide reasonably detailed and insightful answers to the
items below.
1. Briefly summarize the basic plot, or issue that the movie addresses.
This is the follow-up to a 2003 exposé, conducted by Frontline, of McWane Inc., the upshot being that
McWane’s ownership and management were criminally negligent, with conditions in their plants being
totally inhumane, leading to routine worker-injuries, including burns and amputations, and death. In the
intervening years, many senior staff went to jail, and the new management (or what was left of the old
one) changed McWane for the better, seeing to it that the requisite safety guidelines were complied.