Business Ethics: ‘I Don’t Want Ice In My Drinks!’

In June, the ice cubes used for drinks of restaurants were sampled for hygiene test in Beijing. The result was disappointing. It was reported that the number of ice bacterial colony of sampled ice highly exceeded the national standard. In a simple word, the ice we can see in our daily drinks is even dirtier than toilet water. Some famous restaurants with good reputation, ever, such as Mcdonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, Kung Fu (a popular Chinese fast food restaurant), and Starbucks were all on the list.

In my opinion, the behavior that skipping some essential steps of making edible ice for more cost savings goes against business ethics. Business ethics involves but not confined to employers, employees, customers, and other stakeholders. From the perspective of firms, it seems that some financial cost could be saved by neglecting some details of producing edible ice. However, the cost of loss of reputation appeared instead. In general, rebuilding a good reputation is much harder than making more monetary profit. From the perspective of customers, clearly, the right and interest of  customers were infringed during this incident. Customers made payment yet they did not receive the products or services with corresponding quality. What was worse, the health of customers who purchased the drinks with dirty ice was at risk.