That book and the information it contains is your intellectual property. Ask for the book back and save the email correspondence which stated that they didn’t want your book and would hire another person to compile a reference book. When that book is eventually made, compare it to your old book. If it is identical…
Not if it was done on company time or with company materials.
I can understand your frustration, Joe, but try to tone it down when you communicate with HH. Despite his post’s opening tone, treis’ faux-email pretty much nails what HH has to hear for you to gain the sort of traction you need. Taking an accusatory tone would probably be a career-limiting move.
I actually should have gotten that one :smack: .
Hah. Maybe. Actually, now that you mention it, I was told by my old manager that my new manager was working on something very much like what I have finished. I asked her some about it and she said that she’d been working on it for a little while but hadn’t finished it yet due to time constraints. So maybe I did step on her toes. She seems to shy away from conversation regarding either one :dubious: .
Actually, the majority of the book is not my own original material. Most of it is material written by managers, informational sheets handed to us by Theme Park representatives and businesses we sponsor, and edited photocopies of whatever useful stuff I found laying around different desks in my company. There’s a few things in there written by me, but not enough that I’d blow a whistle if they borrowed and modified it. Putting the binder together mostly involved finding different instructional guides written by different managers at different points in time. For some strange reason, very very few people in my company actually knew that we had step by step instructions on how to do a wide variety of things. It seems as though none of the managers really communicated with each other about what they were making for their own employees, and I got the sense that a lot of the information had only been sent out in an email once.
So finding the right information and “How to” stuff was a bit like like going on a company wide scavenger hunt. I went around to different desks at different locations looking for leftover paperwork, I had the main office fax me everything they could find, I had coworkers bring me their orientation stuff from months and months ago…Half the time no one had any idea what the hell I was talking about.
“I’m looking for a guide written about four months ago detailing how to reserve seats through our sales system for the upcoming Orlando Magic game.”
“Oh, you mean like this one that marketing guy dropped off?”
“No. Our company has us doing it differently than described there. Which is why we need to find the right one.” :mad:
As an employee of the company, said intellectual property developed while employed with them likely belongs to the company. IANAL, but this is something usually outlined in employment contracts and employee handbooks.
I really don’t think I have been creating company policy. The only things I’ve created for this binder have been a Step by Step guide on how to open, how to close*, a phone number listing spreadsheet, and an explanatory paper on using referral programs. All the guideline stuff has been written by managers. Everything else is information directly from different parks and businesses.
I’m 22. So yeah, young. This is my first time starting a thread in the pit in years, but seeing that email before checking out of work today and after a good long while putting this thing together just blew me away. I’ll be calmed down tomorrow I’m sure. I’ll have a coworker forward me the email and I’ll take a good long time to type out a response.
*Both have a disclaimer saying that while these steps apply to many locations, a concierge should check with their manager to make sure they don’t need to do anything extra or differently for their specific working location.
I know…I’m just feeling a bit flustered right now, so sounding anything other than accusatory is a bit hard. I’ll cool down before I touch base with him. I wouldn’t allow myself to talk to him while I’m still upset.
This more than anything else. You’ve wound yourself up into a high dudgeon, and unless you get some perspective and stop with the self righteous, borderline confrontational attitude about the righteousness of your position you’re going be out of a job at some point.
These tips of which you speak are called ‘kickbacks’ and in most companies would get you fired immediately. Tips are something you get from customers for carrying their bags, getting them good seats at a play, etc., not from the company you are recommending these people do business with. It is amazing that your company doesn’t have a policy on these things. I have to sign off on integrity policies every year with mine.
This is different than if a company wants to show you what they offer. If a restaraunt wants to offer you a free meal so that you can recommend them to your customers then that could be okay. There is a limit on what they can offer you before it looks like a bribe.
<snerk> ethics and morals and accepting kickbacks, hehe!
My recommendations about the book are to see if you can become the trainer they want to develop this book. Market yourself as the expert on what your customers (who are also the company’s) want and what it takes to please them. If this book takes you to a level that your current co-workers can’t reach without it, it should put you in a place to get your voice heard. Find a way to quantify your contribution to the company and use that to get your foot on the ladder upwards. Hint: don’t do it in a way that alienates your current boss especially if he is on your side.
I wondered about this too but there was too much else going on in the description to pay much attention to it.
This is effectively a kickback to the concierge from the cab company in exchange for calling them to pick up a customer. I have no idea as to the legalities of this, but it does seem borderline odd in a discourse about giving super customer service to be outraged that the company is clamping down on kickbacks and the overriding concern is “where the hell does the money go if not in MY pocket?”.
What would be the legalities if <B>JoeSki</B> simply encouraged his coworkers to build their own binder similar to his? Would it legally count as an employee manual then, if everyone compiled it themselves?
Hell no it’s not! Unless it’s in your contract, or you signed a separate agreement to that effect, your stuff is your stuff. “I’m sorry Mr. Lamp, you drew that doodle on a piece of company copy paper, now that you are a well known artist, we reserve the right to market and reproduce your work.” Blow that. The OP’s company doesn’t manufacture or produce anything. They are paid to be organized and give their opinions on events, sell tickets ect…
My sister works in the same industry here in Orlando, planning for events. All that information is given out to EVERY planning and concierge group. A lot of it can be accessed by anyone if you call for it specifically. There is nothing secret or proprietary about it. What the OP created was a useful indexing tool for the quick and thorough locating of relevant information. They ought to ask for their original back, toot sweet and bare minimum make a full copy and get it legitimized somehow so they can use it as a plus on their resume’ when shopping around.
Joe, I was totally with you until I got to the part where you were pissy about not getting your palm greased by the “approved” cab company.
THIS.
Even if they don’t like us using them with taxi’s, they’re still heavily encouraged in other areas. A lot of restaurants with Image Marketing, who we’re directed towards via management emails, do give us cash when we make reservations with them. The Arabian Nights Dinnershow gives us $2.00 every time someone turns in a free drink coupon at the preshow entertainment bar. Even if our official Taxi company doesn’t tip us, I’d be very surprised to learn that the car rental company we have a contract with doesn’t allow compensation for making reservations with them. I know one of them pays us directly through our paychecks. Also, we heavily endorse Kissimmee Oaks, we gives us $5 per referral. It’s part of our job.
Besides, most taxi companies give us roughly the same, with a few dollars variance. More expensive companies might give us $5 more for reserving a ride for a guest to the airport, but they’re also going to be pricier. I like to have the option of choosing a driver with the most reasonable rates.
Read the first part of that screed again.
I decided who to call by the following criteria:
[ul]
[li]The driver must not overcharge my guest.[/li][li]The driver must not argue with my guest*.[/li][li]The driver must not get lost.[/li][li]The driver must have a good reputation.[/li][/ul]
The Taxi service my company got behind overcharges my guest, as a direct consequence they typically end up arguing with my guest, and as a direct result of both of those, the have earned themselves a bad reputation. I recall one incidence in which a driver got lost bringing a guest from the airport to one of our resorts, and then charged him more for it. He lowered his price after a little arguing, but that still doesn’t bode well.
A guest is not likely to come back to me after shopping and make up their mind on what him and his family are doing for the week if the taxi driver I referred them to overcharged them $7 on a five minute drive to an outlet mall. When I notice that whenever a guest is upset with a Taxi service it’s the same one 3/5 times, I want to stay away from them.
*Exceptions made here in cases where the guest in question has already earned himself a reputation for being a complete douchebag.
This actually isn’t at all accurate. IAAL (but not yours, which is important), and unless one is producting a copyrightable work specifically for a company under “work-made-for-hire” circumstances, then it’s very unlikely to be the company’s intellectual property. The circumstances under which work potentially eligible for a copyright is the property of a company rather than its employee are very explicitly laid out in the Copyright Act and generally require as a minimum baseline that the work in question be one that the employee was specifically hired to produce (or which fall into the ordinary scope of the duties one was hired to complete). Even then, courts have generally been fairly hostile to copyrights automatically vesting in employers rather than the producers of copyrightable work, outside a specific contract clause indicating that work produced is intended to be a work-made-for-hire as specified in section 201 of the Copyright Act.
In fact, the whole area of “work-made-for-hire” (the only circumstance under which a copyright vests in someone other than the creator or co-creator(s) of a copyrightable work) is a really, really murky one.* For this reason, employers who hire people they expect to be producing work that might be copyrightable generally explicitly spell this out, in writing, at the time of hire. And they almost certainly use the phrase “work-made-for-hire” in the language.
From what JoeSki’s told us, I do not believe that his situation constitutes one of a work-made-for-hire. He developed this on his own impetus (without it being an assigned duty), in his own time (rather than to a schedule dictated by the company), and (at least initially) for his own use. The company didn’t specifically request the thing, and producing it is outside the regular scope of his position with the company. If there’s a copyright available (and that’s a totally different question, actually - there may well be, but for arrangement rather than on an original work basis), it’s most likely solely JoeSki’s.
*For a more complete explanation, see Circular 9 Redirect | U.S. Copyright Office
Why’s that?
Because the rest of your post gives the impression that you only care about this (manual/book) inasmuch as it helps and your colleagues provide better service- and that part (about the kickback) doesn’t fit.
I can’t care about both helping people and making money? I’ll admit in any sales job an employee will find himself at ends between the two at some point. Some days I do fear a truck carrying mysterious, green, hazardous chemicals will tip over onto me, causing me to split into two identical JoeSki’s; one greedy and selfish and the other altruistic and selfless. But that doesn’t mean a middleground doesn’t exist between the two. Maybe that one line makes me sound like a selfish bastard, but it doesn’t negate everything else I’m aiming for in order to please both my coworkers and guests. It also doesn’t cancel out the many sales I’ve talked myself out of whenever a guest expressed interest in the gimmicky Holy Land Experience, or the Pirates Dinner Adventure, the lowest rated dinnershow in town and the one with the highest paying commission.
If a guest cared to they could look up information about Taxi services before arriving in town, but as is they trust us to pick the right chauffer for them. I like to think I pick correctly. Just yesterday I had a woman who I called a taxi for two days prior tell me that she wanted to let me know that the taxi driver I called for her charged her a very reasonable $6.50 and then $9 dollars for two different rides. She told me she was telling me this since she knew in a business like mine feedback was important and that my “man was on point”.
Concierge here.
The problem started when you showed the book to upper management. IMO most hospitality managers have little or no idea what a concierge does on a daily basis. They also believe that a concierge writes his own ticket for free stuff where as actually most concierge (who are members of the local or international organizations such as Les Clefs d’Or) are held to a high degree of professional ethics. Entertainment and service providers must be chosen based on the quality of service and guests needs/desires. If a company chooses to compensate a concierge for a referral that is gravy. Around here at least, concierge do not receive fees from taxi companies (door attendants do), but if a company did offer an referral fee it would be ethically ok to accept it so long as the company was best suited to provide the service at a fair and competitive price. The concierge is saddled with ethical dilemma of determining what is fair and competitive. If they make the wrong decisions they loose their job. Witch is a pretty good incentive to make the right decision for the guests. When management starts to see the concierge as a revenue generating position and forcing them to recommend only companies and services that the company has relationships with, then the position of concierge is corrupted. Also IMO most concierge have higher ethical standards then most companies they work for. So this all means you have to put a lot of trust in the concierge…but that is the whole idea. Would you rather trust the concierge to make the right decision or the company?
Anyhow, the book is not a training manual it is a reference tool. Every concierge desk has (or should have) one or more of these types things. The company would never have enough finesse to put together this sort of tool that would have any value to the concierge. It is the duty of the concierge to assist guests often in spite of hotel policy not because of it.
One more note. It is not ethically acceptable for a concierge to receive cash payments from a restaurant for referrals. Free meal yes, dollars no. In fact any “number of people = cash” incentive programs are against the rules.
-Bat
I’m gonna go out on a limb here, and guess that this company probably does not have a written employment contract, and almost certainly does not have an employee handbook.
I think you should copyright your manual then sue their corporate butts off when they publish your work