Shouldn't I be getting better service with unemployment so high?

[Runs_With_Scissors]

I’ve noticed customer service is at a shitty all-time low.

But remember that businesses have drastically cut back on the number of employees they have, and the few left are doing the jobs of many.

At yet many companies are still making large profits.

[Markxxx]

@Martin_Hyde

Yet, every time I go to Wal-Mart I see a “We’re Hiring Sign” and I’d say 60-70% of the fast food joints around here always have hiring signs out.

And I’ve applied at those places. I got an interview at Burger King, Target, Walmart and Sears.

NONE hired me. The signs still out. I guess a 46 year old white male with a college education and impeccable references isn’t what they want. I know this 'cause I’ve had temp agencies call my reference and do my background checks and they always come back great.

You know how hard it is to go to Burger King for a job and NOT get it

Hiring managers can be very picky now. If you were manager of a store, who are you gonna pick, ME or a kid you can bully and take advantage of.

It’s a buyers market when it comes to employees and they can pick and choose who they want, EXACTLY who they want.

[Leaffan]

College educated 40-something year old male here too. Last year I was out of work for 10 months. I applied at Wal-Mart, lumber yards, newspaper delivery, bus driver, and every damned thing I could think of. No interviews. Zero.

Oh yeah, they can be picky because they knew the first chance I had that I’d be bolting back to my previous life. Luckily, or fortunately, I was able (eventually) to do that.

[purplehorseshoe]

@Martin_Hyde

You know it’s weird, I read these news articles about laid off software engineers and construction workers who say they can’t even get a job at McDonald’s. Yet, every time I go to Wal-Mart I see a “We’re Hiring Sign” and I’d say 60-70% of the fast food joints around here always have hiring signs out.

I understand I’m only in a small part of the country, but around here at least someone working a low paying (potentially minimum wage) retail/customer service/food service job can essentially change employers at will (not to anything better, but they can easily find a job doing what they’re doing now.)

Hope the last two posts answered this for you. I always quietly :rolleyes: at people who hold this attitude. This is why the term “over-qualified” was coined.

[Swallowed_My_Cellphone]

@purplehorseshoe

Hope the last two posts answered this for you. I always quietly :rolleyes: at people who hold this attitude. This is why the term “over-qualified” was coined.

The trick is not to list your professional qualifications. A guy I used to build sets with got laid off from his suit-and-tie job and was able to get a job at Home Depot by trimming all the suit-and-tie stuff off his resume. He used to oversee a data entry department, so he truthfully listed “data-entry” on his resume to account for the years he was a manager, but never mentioned the actual scope of his job.

[Omar_Little]

Normally, the level of service at McDonalds is a good barometer to how the economy is doing.

Poor service = good economy (lower skilled workers only ones available for those positions)
Great service = poor economy (higher skilled workers forced into taking those positions)

But for some reason, this time around, this little mental model is not holding true. I’m guessing its a combination of managers worried about their own jobs and thus afraid to hire more skilled workers for these positions. Also there government stimulus packages may have alleviated fewer higher skilled out-of-work workers from having to take those more menial jobs.

[UltraVires]

@elfkin477

@seanchai

How about fast food places where you give your order and the order-taker patiently asks the same questions you just told 'em?

It works the other way around too, though. I worked at Wal-Mart during the summer while I was in college, and we did an experiment a couple of Sundays…

When a customer would call, it would either be answered by Customer service, or for some reason the fitting room which also could redirect calls to other departments, and everyone who worked in the clothing departments took turns being the person stuck answering the phone at the fitting room. We noticed that most calls on Sunday were to ask the hours, so we decided to answer the phones “Hi, you’ve reached Wal-Mart. Our hours today are _ to __. How may I direct your call?”

Despite giving the hours, we still had 60% of callers ask us what the hours were. Not anything like “could you repeat the hours? I didn’t catch them” but “what are your hours?” as if they were never mentioned at all.

I think that it is because we have become accustomed to those bullshit, chippy little greetings on the phone that we have conditioned our brains to shut down when we hear them.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

nm

[AmericanMaid]

I was unemployed for 7 months this year (temp gig right now). When I encountered crummy attitude I would quietly tell the person, “You are so lucky to have a job. I would kill to be employed.”