I’m not so sure of that. I’ve never worked as a bank teller, but I applied for the job two years ago. During the interview, the hiring manager stressed the importance of being able to sell services. This set off warning bells in my head; I’m most comfortable in a job, if it must be a customer service job, where the customer comes to me, tells me what they want, I fill the order, everyone’s happy. I don’t do sales, and I was not happy to find out that I would be expected to try to sell loans and banking services to people who just wanted to deposit a check.
Thankfully I got hired for my present job two days before the bank called to give me a job offer. I don’t have to do sales at all and I’m earning twice as much as I would have at the bank.
OK, I have a question: Did you say this just as part of a general list of things you don’t want to do as part of your job, or do you actually get commission (or some other “reward”) for selling those promotions you mentioned?
I ask because recently I was in a Walgreens and, as I browsed the store and selected my goodies, I noticed that the cashier was exremely energetic. So happy! So helpy! So chatty! So friendly! (When I got to the check-out, I actually checked his name tag to see if he was a manager who was going a little over the top to set a customer service example for his employees or something. He did not appear to be such.)
Finally, after my purchases were totalled, Mr. Happy asked me if I would mind doing him a “favor”. He pointed to a rack of M&Ms at the checkout, emblazoned with Pirates of the Caribbean movie insignia. He explained that the M&Ms were a two for a buck and that he would get a commission for every bag sold, so if I bought one it would really help him out.
I paid an extra buck and took home two bags of peanut M&Ms - one for me and one for SkipMagic.
Turns out that not only does SkipMagic not *like * peanut M&Ms, but he also gave me crap for having fallen for the line of “commission” baloney the clerk gave me.
But now that I’ve read the OP, I’m thinking that it could be true, right? Right . . . ? I mean, why else would Mr. Happy give a flip about my spending an extra dollar on some M&Ms (which, by the way, turned out to be all yellow ones - “Pirate’s Gold” or some such)?
But getting back to the OP, is it possible that I’ve either missed, or there’s been some recent boom in the practice of commission sales among employees who previously didn’t have to work that way in the past (i.e., fast food and pharmacy employees)?
If so, it’s interesting to note that sales clerks at a local high-end department store in my area do not work on commission. I’ve been so well-trained by the Commission Tradition ™ that it took me awhile to realize it. Every time I shopped this department store I’d look for my favorite sales person, Mary Alice, to make sure that she got the commission on my purchases. Finally, one day there was a computer glitch and her register password wasn’t working, so I was rung up by a manager. I asked Mary Alice if she’d still get the commission, and she said, “Oh, we don’t work on commission.”
So basically I’ve just been seeking her out to have her do extra work all this time. :smack:
Maybe I’ll make it up to her by taking her a bag of Peanut M&Ms.
I do believe it’s an attempt to reduce goldbricking - if you have to do the work of finding your own replacement, then you might as well just come in and do the shift yourself, right? How well this works, I don’t know, but it does strike me as pretty uncompassionate toward folks who really are sick.
In my late highschool and early college days, I worked:
[ul][li]at a small office supply place where I checked in and shelved stock we received and pulled, packed and shipped items for individual orders. [/li][li]at a bigger factory as a typical line worker, doing various repetitive tasks (labeling bottles, making boxes, packing boxes, “quality control,” etc.) for eight hours a day (mandatory overtime some days as well).[/li][li]at a large parts distribution warehouse, as a painter. I painted lines on the floor and handrails and stair rails and rails for lift trucks next to every single one of the shelves.[/ul][/li]
Very little interaction in all of them, very little “responsibility” as you’re definining it.
I worked at a corporate HQ in accounts payable making sure that customers got their check refunds from items purchased at our stores. My job was to deal with employees at the stores and at HQ but somebody got my name somehow and came to HQ to have me explain to him why I couldn’t just print out his check and give it to him today. I was a little pissed at our security guard who told me I “had” to come down and speak with this guy (it was an order not a request) and he wasn’t to happy when I sent my manager down instead. I didn’t paid enough to deal with irate customers face to face and it wasn’t part of my job description. If you want me to do that or to constantly train new employees in addition to my normal duties then you need to increase my wages.
This bullshit is SOP in part because of saps like you who act as a manager without getting paid as a manager. Order inventory? “Sorry, not my job, but if you make me the store manager I’ll do it.” Come in after your shift to close the store? “Sorry, I can’t make it, I have other commitments.” Yeah they were bastards but you were a sucker.
Nope, people got sacked for less. “Sorry, someone said they saw you steal a quart of milk. Have a nice life.” “Sorry, you are getting paid too much and we are trying to trim our numbers. Have a nice life.” Minimum wage workers (especially part-time ones) are totally dispensible.
<blink, blink> You are working for the wrong companies then. I didnt at Wells Fargo/ADT, I didnt at US Foodservice, I didnt at State Farm and I don’t at Oakleaf.
I have been called at WF/ADT and Oakleaf to come in on an off day [i dont work a couple days during the week, and do work sat/sunday so I am perfect to replace a missing person on a tues or wed as I am not already sched to come in normally]
Any retail job I worked we were NOT allowed to give out employee phone numbers-even to other employees. The manager was in the wrong in this case. I’d tell him to get stuffed. (Well, not like THAT!) I’d be REALLY pissed too if my manager gave someone my phone number so they could call me to come in.
Sorry to the OP. I would have gone through a lot of similar things in my current job (which I’m about to quit), had I not put my foot down. And luckily, it’s a small company and the boss really didn’t want me to leave, because I was doing the work well.
After a minor skirmish, I spelled out, I will not do any soliciting, I will not do any begging or ‘being friendly’ to get people to go against policy for us, I will not lie to clients or vendors, I will not make the walking deliveries (I have bad knees right now anyway) just because you’re too cheap to call the courier, and I will not sit downstairs in the boss car for up to half an hour because you’re parked illegally and want me to drive off if a meter maid comes. etc, etc. Until I put my foot down I was asked and pressured to do these things more and more, I guess because the boss thought he could get away with it.
So I guess the answer is to find a small enough place with an employer who need you…
Next time, go in sick, and call the health department and let them know. They’ll do a surprise inspection and they never say they got a tip. Guess who’ll get into trouble? Definitely not you.
The health department will make them send you home (most likely, it depends on the state) and they’ll have to arrange your replacement - not you.
I once worked at McDonalds. I woke up and was supposed to go to work, but I was puking all over the place (had some weird flu-like bug). I called in to work on the way to the hospital because I was so ill I was dehydrated and I couldn’t stop puking. My manager told me that this was unacceptable and that I had better show up RIGHT NOW.
I did. My mom drove me to McDonalds. I even put on my little McDonalds shirt. And proceeded to puke all over the lobby while apologizing to customers and asking my manager in the most pitiful voice why he’d made me come in this morning, I was on my way to the hospital.
I’m a bitch, I know. They had to close down the store for two hours while it got decontaminated (luckily, I didn’t puke on any food stuff, it all happened in the lobby) and my manager got fired for being a dick. The labor board also made a surprise visit because demanding employees to come to work while en route to a hospital creates a definite “hostile work environment” and also constitutes a violation of a state labor law.
While I don’t really want more responsibility at my job, more work would be nice. I work concessions at a movie theater, and there are stretches of two to three hours while the movies are showing that we’re just supposed to stand around and wait in case any customers show up. I keep trying to convince the manager to let me build the big cardboard movie standees during that time, but so far I’ve only done one (Miami Vice, and damn that sucker was complicated). Making big cardboard standdes is much more mentally stimulating than asking people if they want butter on their popcorn, I’m good at it, and no one else wants to do it, and yet the managers want me to stand at the register doing nothing while no customers come in.
I’ve been an employee and a manager of employees and let me tell you that you must take the employee at his/her word regarding sickness. It is a moral imperative to take a human being at their word without any other factors involved, in my opinion and that of many of my previous “superiors”.
But I do want to say as a employrer/manager that there a lot of assholes out there who lie about sickness just because they’re hungover, or because a casual girlfriend showed back up in town ( insert a more appropriate reason to the previous, if you can think of one).
They don’t give a shit about anyone else !
Your manager is probably young, undertrained, and just maybe sees his job as overwhelming, compensating by providing more than he bargained for in order to maintain the extra 50c per hour that he requires in order to secure the affections of a woman (or women) whatever the case maybe.
He’s pissed off. The “manager” that is.(He is not the manager in the old sense. I’ve known 18 year old managers more recently)
That maybe because I’m damn sure that ultimately if he doesn’t get a little bit of good luck, he’s going to have to cover for you himself !
Trust me. I’m 90% sure that’s what would happen if he couldn’t get a replacement. Then he’ll have to do the paperwork on HIS OWN TIME.
So while we all applaud tashabot’s handling of her personal situation (she made sure she wasn’t a victim), let’s not forget the plight of young “managers” who are coerced into being assholes.
Wow, I’m lucky. I work nights. During the night shifts there are two people working, and we’re not allowed to work alone. I once called in sick around noon, nine hours before my shift started. Even under these circumstances, it didn’t occur to anybody to make me find a replacement.
But then, of course, I live in a liberal socialist paradise.
