I was “employee of the month” at my office supply store in October. I got $20 in cash and a horrible Polaroid of me on the wall in the breakroom.
There was oh, so much in this post that spoke to me.
I just came out of a company that treated employees in exactly this way. It was disgusting and dehumanizing. And they wonder why their profits keep going down in the Ottawa stores where there is lightning-fast turnover, and skyrocketing in Cornwall, where they have had the same staff for months.
One of the best comments I ever read came from Ali Davis, the author of the “True Porn Clerk Stories” blog. She had to look for work after her video rental store was closed. After trying out for a few jobs with big corps, she wrote:
Here’s the url of the blog in question:
Hazel
“Corporate America is convinced that there’s no point in investing in training for low level jobs.”
Ummm, I beg to differ here somewhat. While I am sure that there are still a lot of corporations that are completely clueless, I happen to be a personnel trainer for a very large financial corporation and I do just that…I train the CSR’s here in the basics of customer service, the more advanced aspects of customer service, all the way up to high-level theory of customer service (such as time management of your duties and responsibilities to better serve the customers you come into contact with). I happen to make a ton of money doing this ($95K), because the company I work for recognizes the value of employees that are well-trained. Yes, an un-trained employee will last on average only from a week to a month (depending on the type of business)…but a well-trained employee will last on average from several months to over a year. AND those employees that DO last over a year will usually be there for 10 years or more. Less turn-over equates to less cost of retraining…hell, management likes me so much that for Christmas I got a $5000 bonus.
Not bad for Customer Service, eh?
Oh, and by the way…I started out 20 years ago in a “shitty” job at crummy pay and idiotic managers. I smiled constantly, worked my ass off and learned everything I could, because I knew I wouldn’t be there forever.
And when customer after customer after customer after customer WROTE in to commend and compliment me (in 2 years, I had 17 letters from pleased customers), management had no option but to admit that I knew what I was doing. Yes, I’m making a ton of money right now, but guess what? I EARNED it, by WORKING for it…by giving MORE than what I was “worth”. If I had only worked equal to the wage scale, I have no doubt that I’d be at the same level, drifting from job to job and griping about how evil management is, taking advantage of their lowly workers.