How does it take away from those things? Will they happen less?
What, entirely? Mod actions open and transparent = Worthless board? I’d guess something like 95% of posters don’t even read ATMB on a regular basis.
Actually, I’d very much disagree with that specific example. I’ve worked retail, and in my experience, if a customer complained about an employee acting out they’d certainly be told whether there was going to be any (and the nature of any) disciplinary action alongside an apology, so that the customer has good reason to believe it’s not going to happen again.
If complaints have no apparent effect, then that’s a customer you might well be waving goodbye to, and a workforce that doesn’t know what behaviour isn’t acceptable, meaning a higher chance of even more problems. Not good business.
Sure it can. Employee libels, slanders, or defames customer. Customer complains. Company gives no assurances beyond “we’ll look into it”. Customer, having nothing but vague assurances that the matter is taken seriously, sues.
(my bold)
Mindless nitpickery to no purpose would be worthless, IMO. YMMV. And even without your example, that sort of bickering crowds out other meaningful discussion.
An apology sure. But you really think it’s appropriate or common that a store like, say, Target, is going to inform a random complaining customer of any potential or lack of disciplinary action towards that employee? That’s hard to believe.
Customer: I’d like to complain, the cashier didn’t properly greet me and didn’t tell me to have a nice day - I think they were being rude! Store: Ok, ma’am. We’ll be sure to log 10 demerits in their personnel file. This will be 30 in total and 20 away from a super demerit. At that point we will suspend the employee and they will need to attend re-education camp.
That’s not going to happen. More like, “Our apologies and thanks for bringing it to our attention, we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Seriously, if a store responded to each complaint the way you describe they’d be bombarded. It would invite more and more complaints. You’d have people just searching for businesses to screw up or to set up so they could complain and try to hit the next pay day. The thirst for blood would be insatiable.
For one thing, most of my supervisors haven’t regularly screwed up so it’s not a daily concern. I would much rather have good supervisors than that detailed policy to handle poor superiors.
At one company there was a manager who was being an asshole to his subordinate. In that case, the VPs above the manager did let the employee that the manage was to not do that again to report future abuse. That’s reasonable.
If it were something like this case, where the mods have done things which normally a poster would receive a mod note or warning, then I’m satisfied that it’s being handled if it gets reported. I think Miller is really classy to apologize for his actions.
I think that the only thing would be if there were truly frequent, ongoing misbehavior, then I wouldn’t be satisfied.
You know, you are right, I was just following the analogy of the workplace. Of course, this analogy is about as relevant as a shih-tzu on a bobsled, so I apologize for contributing to the hijack.
Sure, that’s reasonable, and that is exactly what is being asked for, I think. Not a detailed blow by blow of discussion and discipline, but letting us know that that mod (manager) is not to do that again.
At the risk of resolving this issue, I think Miller set a good precedent when he apologized in thread for his insult towards another poster. I would suggest that, should a mod be reported for rules violation, and if ed and/or co determine that the rules have been broke, then maybe the mod should edit the post by adding an apology and a promise to try to avoid repeating the offense. This lets other posters and readers know that the comments made were not acceptable, and to avoid them themselves in the future, and it gives closure to any posters who may have been offended by the post.
How? There isn’t a limit on open threads at one time. The only limit I can think of is how many visible threads on one page of a forum there are - and I’ve never known ATMB to be so busy that active threads are pushed off the first page. And within a thread there’s no limit to posts, either.
Even if ATMB was full of nitpicking posts, it wouldn’t have any impact on the rest of the board. So how would it be worthless?
That’s almost literally what would happen when I worked retail. The exception would be that the customer wouldn’t be told whether the employee had been problematic before, unless the (equivalent of) their “demerits” had already reached a significant level. Or the behaviour they’d exhibited had been so bad as to warrant something beyond a bad note in their file all by itself. But yes; that is going to happen.
Nope. Didn’t happen. With respect, given that I’ve worked at a retail place with that kind of policy, I’d say if it resulted in something terrible like that. No doubt it would’ve changed my mind on how good or bad open processes are.
The flaw in a lot of these analogies is that the posters are not employees of the SDMB-most are guests, and some are paying customers. We don’t “work” here in any capacity, so any knowledge of what happens internally isn’t really owed us-it’s more of a gift.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree then, RT. IME what you describe is completely foreign and unrealistic. I’ve also worked retail and your experience doesn’t match mine. Perhaps it is a cultural difference and that’s fine with me. What you describe would be totally undesirable IMO. I’m glad it works for you.
[Taking off **Miller's** blindfold as he stands on a ledge overlooking the quadrangle] Pop to, mister! Look down. Silence. Silence! Do you know who's behind you? The Ten! The Ten is behind you! If you face us boy, you're goin' on a ride. You're goin' down the Hole. And you'd be better off steppin' forward, than steppin' back into the hands of The Ten. Don't move! Don't turn around...
It’s not a gift; it would be a sensible policy that would prevent more problems than it solves. It’s no more a “gift” than making mod warnings in public instead of sending them through PMs is a “gift”.
Foreign, clearly, and perhaps literally, if this is a British thing (or a not-where-you-live-thing). Unrealistic? I’ve lived it. It’s real. This is not a pipe dream.
One other thing that’s worth pointing out is that my experience does mean, at least in theory, a wider possible knowledge of problems. If with the transparent processes I’m used to, there are problems, I’m much more likely to know about what they are than under an opaque process like the ones you’re used to. For all we know, my experience actually does explain a lot of what goes on where you are - but there’s no way for you to know it.
So being content in my opinion is irrelevant, but being undesirable in your opinion is relevant?
How do you know they haven’t regularly screwed up? You don’t get that information, under your system. You’d only know about regular screwups as they specifically pertained to you, and even then, all you’d know is that they happened. If your supervisor regularly screwed up with other employees - you don’t know. If your supervisor screwed up with you only infrequently, but wasn’t set straight - you don’t know. If your supervisor screwed up regularly with you, but you didn’t realise because you didn’t know it was a mistake or that you had to report it - you don’t know.
I would much rather have good supervisors and - for those inevitable mistakes that even good supervisors make - a good policy that helps everyone out.
I agree, depending on the level of “being an asshole”.
You wouldn’t know if there were truly frequent, ongoing misbehaviour. You don’t know if it gets reported. You don’t know that anything is being done about it, unless the mod in question takes it upon themselves to apologise. And I don’t agree Miller is “classy” to apologise; apologising is the basic level of respect when you make a mistake.
Your situation is like standing outside a soundproofed room with a closed door and saying, “Oh, if there was something bad going on in that room, I’d want it stopped. But I don’t feel any need to look in the room.”
So you have everyone’s mistakes up on an excel chart in the lunch room or something or do you just go after supervisors?
I never told my subordinates about each other’s screwups and I wouldn’t expect all of my subordinates and their subordinates to have to keep track of mine. That’s a fucked up company if management can’t handle that.
I reported to my VP who reported to the president. He was a real hands on guy and i trusted him completely.
What dysfunctional company do you have large number of screw up by VPs?
No. That’s absurd.
We have this forum for reports on mods.
How many bad things have they done in the last year?
Maybe not, but if the employee loudly insulted the customer (or another employee) in the presence of customers, it would certainly be wise for the management to make it clear that that kind of behavior would not be tolerated from a representative of their company.
I know of a store where a similar incident happened. The owner stood by the employee and denied that the incident ever happened, despite the fact that she wasn’t there and people who were there verified it. She was out of business in less than two months.
There’s regular staff meetings where along with general information we need to know or future stuff coming up is addressed, where this kind of thing is included. Occasionally if there’s a more immediate issue that needs addressing we’ll get told ASAP so we don’t do the same thing. Most of the time it’s just someone saying, “Hey, I told you about this earlier, but upstairs told me that’s actually not right, instead it’s this. Sorry about that.”
I’m not talking about keeping track. I’m talking about not knowing that something is a problem because you haven’t been told that someone screwed up in that way. Not knowing that something that happens needs reporting because, unless you yourself are involved in that problem, you have no way of knowing that a report has even been made.
Where I work, management certainly handles spreading out information about past and potential future problems, and they keep track of screwups, too.
Based on what? You have no information about how he handled problems that you didn’t personally bring to him.
There are plenty of dysfunctional companies in the world. But there’s also functional companies where people screw up rarely - but still screw up. Those screwups are bad things, and a transparent system helps to avoid them, and to deal with ones that have already happened better.
That’s input. We don’t get output. To quote engineer_comp_geek;
[QUOTE=engineer_comp_geek]
And again, we are not publicly accountable. We are accountable to Ed. We do not receive the same warnings that regular users do. We cannot warn each other or moderate each other’s posts. For those of you who want us to receive the same warnings that you do, sorry, but that’s not going to happen. Ed gave us clear instructions not to warn or note each other, even when we were acting as posters and not as moderators.
[/QUOTE]
He makes it clear that we can talk about things in here, but all that means is we can talk about the limited matters we do know about. We do not get public mod warnings for mods, either to know they’ve happened, or why. Unless a mod takes it on themselves to apologise.
I do not know. That’s kind of the point. Information isn’t shared. To go back to the analogy, asking me this is like you having stood in front of your soundproofed room, and then asking me, “Well, have you heard anything bad coming from in there?”
There is a large difference between immediately taking the employee aside and privately punishing said employee, and telling everyone in the store the complete details of the situation. Besides. I don’t see where your story about the owner that loudly denied that there was any problem at all has any relationship at all to what is being discussed here. The question on the table isn’t whether or not there are problems-The question is what is the best way to handle said problems.
The best way is **Ed’**s way because, like it or not, that’s the only way there is. And it seems to work well, as witness the pretty high standard of modding on the board. (And I can assure you there are many places out there on the net where the moderating is as arbitrary as it is unintelligent.)
You aren’t talking anything remotely resembling the situation on the board.
Here, and in my examples, we are discussing violations of rules. You are discussing simple errors.
Nothing you are saying is relevant to either my company situation or the board.
You don’t get it. The only person that the president of a private company needs to share that information with is himself. It would kill moral for him to share how he handled any violations of company policies by the VP with common employees. That would be ridiculous.
I can see an announcement over the PA: “The VP of sales turned in a questionable expense report that accounting discovered. We have instructed him to repay it and it will do on his permanent record.”
And you really have no idea of what my company was like. You’re discussing something entirely different, mistakes versus rules violations.
There have been three things recently discussed. Are there any more?
Your analogy fails because there is a reporting system. People post here. Maybe not all of them, but it’s not going to only be 1% of the rules violations.
No, actually. An alternative would be to mod note (and/or warn) mods when they break the posting rules as posters. That’s another way.
I agree that things generally work well here, especially in comparison to some boards. On the other hand, I’ve also seen boards which work better than here.
I’d like this board to work better.
And, of course, the general point I’ve already made elsewhere that we can’t really declare that the modding works well here on points where we have no clue as to what goes on. We don’t actually know how well the modding works behind the scenes. We don’t see the successes, we don’t see the failures. It’s very possible you’re right in that everything behind the scenes works excellently - and if so, we would be made better by understanding some more of those excellent processes, if only so that we can say, “Wow, what a great system.”
Correct. You asked me questions about how it worked for me where I work. I answered those questions. It seems churlish to now complain that the answers don’t have anything to do with this. They were your questions.
This, however, isn’t correct. Violations of rules can arise from errors. I gave you the example of a superior informing me that something they’d told be before wasn’t right; that can, and has, included errors in the nature, following, or reaction to rules. I don’t know where you work, but let’s go back to a retail example. Say a superior tells an employee that they’re allowed to smoke in the break room, and they’re told by their own superior that actually that’s wrong. It’s a sensible response to pass that down, explain the real rule and why it’s in place, and then to disseminate it in case people don’t know. And apologise.
I’ve worked in several places where that situation happens. Morale is not killed. To the contrary; morale is improved by knowing there’s policies in place to catch rulebreaking and errors, improved by knowing that serious rulebreaking has consequences, improved by the better spread of information on potential problems, improved by knowing that no employee is “above the law”.
I wouldn’t do it over the PA, but this seems like a good idea. I’m assuming that since the VP in question hasn’t been fired that this either wasn’t a serious issue or could be put down to simple error. An example of how the expense system shouldn’t be used, tips on how to avoid these kinds of errors, clarity where the rules in question might be as uncertain to other employees as the VP in question. As I’ve said upthread, we have something along those lines at my place of work, along with other errors of safety or HR problems and the like as a regular company-wide email.
I do know what your company was like, because you’ve told me. You said that;
[QUOTE=TokyoBayer]
I’ve never worked for a place which goes into details about any of these things you want.
[/QUOTE]
Unless that was inaccurate, then I do know that you don’t get details about the kind of things I’d want details about. So, as I said, it’s correct to say you have no idea about how problems are handled behind the scenes at your company, or by the superior in question you were talking about. Except for problem you’d personally bring to them, you aren’t told. So how would you know how well these things are handled?
Again; I don’t know. Soundproof room.
What percentage is it going to be?
What basis do we have for knowing the part of the process that’s completely behind the scenes is working well?
When errors are made that we don’t see, but have an effect on how the rules on the board are enforced, how do we know what those errors are?
If there’s a problem - even if a very simple and minor problem - that could easily and simply be addressed if openly discussed, how do we do that?
The point is that, if upper management determines that they would not like to operate in that fashion, then we, who have no financial stake and are not even employees, don’t.