The extent to which children absorb the values of their parents and those significant peers and adults around them in contradistinction to the values they choose on their own is unknown. At some point we must choose to act or refrain from acting and be responsible not only for the choice but for the foreseeable consequences of that choice. Reporting for work each day is a choice that, while it seems somewhat automatic for most employed workers, must be made each day. Some persons may feel trapped in their jobs, but they may consciously perceive that even this job is better than no job, and hence they choose to go to work on a regular basis.
Workers enhance their perceived self-dignity when they experience a job well done.
Individually and collectively persons discover the fruit of their creativity as it manifests itself in a common work project. Much of the work that people do, however, is of questionable value to society as a whole and to individuals in particular. It is arguable that there is no line of employment and almost no moment of work in which a worker may maintain an altruistic moral code because the nature of any work site itself is flawed. Workers must make the project at hand the first priority and not the dignity of the workers themselves. Individuals are required to subordinate human dignity for the sake of a product or process that may or may not dignify the human.