21 year old Moritz Erhardt recently died while working as an intern at a bank in London. Rumors suggested he had worked 3 days and nights straight, and that the fellow interns in the workplace felt they had to continuously work in order to impress their respective bosses. This emphasis of constantly working and proving your value seemed to be too much for the young intern who passed away nearing the end of his summer placement at the bank.

The demanding work schedule of a banking internship has led many young men, not just Erhardt, to pull all nighters and take excessive amount of coffee and substances just to keep awake and stay alert in the office. This lack of proper sleep and nutrition raises ethical issues about whether or not the managers and respective bosses of these interns know about the lack of well-being and strain that all-nighters put on young interns.

In addition to this unfortunate death of a young intern, a study found done by Alexandra Michel, with University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, on bankers for 9 years came to the conclusion that these 100+ hours a week put in by bankers cause health problems such as back pain and insomnia.  Performance also suffered such as “creativity, judgement and ethical sensitivity declined after four years of working long hours” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24049679)

I now strongly believe, based on this article, that in many business corporations there are many workers that do succumb to all-nighters or an overload of work. This raises an ethical question of whether or not the bosses of these workers know and choose not to care about this health hazard, or it is unavoidable to keep a high-powered job in a big business corporation. I believe there is an alternative to amount of hours working people in these type businesses put in, and that there must be some form of relief from the stress and health problems that overworking causes and that businesses should implement these measures.