Having been chewed up and spat out by more than one job, I feel eminently qualified to comment on this issue. Of course, sometimes I only recognized the signs in retrospect, having been hired by a company that had a reputation as being good to work for because at some point in the distant past, it was and word hadn’t gotten out yet that since the original owner/CEO/whoever died/retired/whatever, the place wasn’t what it used to be, working-for wise.
So, anyway, I’ve identified a few things that should make a new hire, or, if you get advance warning, prospective employee, run screaming into the streets.
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Twelve hours of orientation, spread across two or more days, which is mostly spent telling the new hires what A Great Company This Is To Work For.
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Showing a video called Fish during orientation. The company will never be the fun, happy workplace that the fish market in the video is. Unless the company happens to be a fish market in Seattle…
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Referring to employees as “associates”.
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Referring to employees needing interdepartmental help as “internal customers”.
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Orientation videos that are designed to train people in how to give good customer service. Bonus points if the scenarios depicted in these videos have absolutely no relavance to the job descriptions of more than half the people in the orientation room.
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Referring to situations in which a customer is unhappy as a “Guest-op” (Guest Opportunity)
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Having particular words that are mandatory for use if someone asked “How are you”. (Note- the root word for “Terrific” is “terror”. If you are told to tell people you are “terrific”, run away.)
Those are the ones that come to mind at the moment. I’m sure there are many others…