Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It's happening everywhere - the Six Sigmatization of work.
Six Sigma is a system designed for manufacturing as a way to provide consistency and uniformity of output. For that use is was and is very successful and effective. Unfortunately a swarm of overeducated and inexperienced management consultants decided that it could just as effectively be applied to creative roles and those dealing with the public (which require creativity in their own way). Thus you have every human interaction being scripted and homogenized.
You can't get a live person on the phone who actually talks to you like a real person rather than reading from a script, even when you both know it is not in sync with the conversation or the topic. You get someone bugging you in a store every 3.5 minutes because that is what some time and motion "expert" told the company was the ideal timeframe for buying decisions and the period of time it takes for a potential customer to scan and leave the store. You get teachers forcing rote learning and focussing on tests because an accounting team is looking for "deliverables" rather than education.
This almost destroyed the design team of 3M before they pulled it back and many studies show it is destroying morale and effectiveness in organizations as employees are not empowered in any way to actually do their jobs.
You need a job and to work. You have one now. It is easier to find a new job when currently employed. You aren't happy with the work environment.
So.....settle in, learn what you can and look for something you will enjoy more in your spare time. Life is to short to be completely miserable 8-9 hours a day but you do need to feed yourself in the meantime and you do need to increase your chances of finding something you really like.
Unless you have experienced what the OP is talking about, you can't fully understand what he is having a problem with. The company I work for is going more and more the direction his company is and it really is a problem.
For example, our company is on this kick of wanting our customers to fill out a survey when they leave our store. This survey has become their main focus and we are supposed to say "Please fill out the survey on the bottom of your receipt and please tell them we scored a 10 today in the way we took care of you." To me it is really tacky to "beg" for good feedback. I KNOW when I am done helping a customer that I have taken very good care of them and for me to ask them to fill out a survey cheapens the experience IMO. I have had customers tell me that they would have given us a 10 but because we asked for it they would now only give us a 5. There is a fine line between serving customers well and overserving them and offending them.
We are also attempting to make every one of our stores exactly the same, even down to the responses we give to customers when they ask a question. They see a McDonalds in NY being exactly the same as a McDonalds in Ohio so they think we should be the same. What they don't realize is that we don't sell $1 hamburgers, we sell high end products that require a lot of technical knowledge and we need to personalize every interaction we have with a customer.
No, unless you work for a company that is trying to turn their employees into robots instead of thinking, personable human beings, you won't get where he is coming from. I see my own company moving that direction and it bothers me a lot.........and I have been in this field for over 25 years.
I have to laugh because what the OP and I are talking about is a lot like the movie Office Space:
I usually tear off that part of the receipt and hand it back to the cashier and tell them to give it to the next customer so they can save some cost and paper.
Whatever the company and whatever it's rules, if you find it beneath you or demoralizing or uncomfortable there's a simple one-size-fits-all solution. Quit and find something which betters suits you. When you become a business owner you can make your own rules or not, as you choose, but as long as someone is enabling you to keep a roof over your head do what you're charged to do.
Obviously you didn't do much research on the store before you started to work there as you would easily have seen the protocol just spending a few moments walking around.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,585 posts, read 81,206,701 times
Reputation: 57821
Quote:
Originally Posted by STT Resident
Whatever the company and whatever it's rules, if you find it beneath you or demoralizing or uncomfortable there's a simple one-size-fits-all solution. Quit and find something which betters suits you. When you become a business owner you can make your own rules or not, as you choose, but as long as someone is enabling you to keep a roof over your head do what you're charged to do.
Obviously you didn't do much research on the store before you started to work there as you would easily have seen the protocol just spending a few moments walking around.
Yes, this I agree with. Anyone applying for a job in a retail environment, especially a chain, has plenty of opportunity to evaluate the working environment ahead of time by simply wandering around in one of their stores observing. The kind of behavior they expect from employees annoys me to no end, even at the supermarket when they always ask me "did you find everything". If I hadn't, I wouldn't be checking out! Still, they are giving you a regular paycheck and therefore you have to do what they say until you fins something better. Next time check the place out if you can't handle conforming to their procedures.
Yes, this I agree with. Anyone applying for a job in a retail environment, especially a chain, has plenty of opportunity to evaluate the working environment ahead of time by simply wandering around in one of their stores observing.
Until recently I owned and operated a restaurant for 16 years and if someone applied for a position and hadn't been in the place before, I suggested they come in for a while during open hours so they could get a feel for the operation and what the job entailed. Makes far more sense than thinking someone will fit the bill and then have them come in for training and discover it's just not to their liking (or vice versa). Not so easy to do in an office environment but in any retail operation it's such a simple thing to do.
It's happening everywhere - the Six Sigmatization of work.
Six Sigma is a system designed for manufacturing as a way to provide consistency and uniformity of output. For that use is was and is very successful and effective. Unfortunately a swarm of overeducated and inexperienced management consultants decided that it could just as effectively be applied to creative roles and those dealing with the public (which require creativity in their own way). Thus you have every human interaction being scripted and homogenized.
You can't get a live person on the phone who actually talks to you like a real person rather than reading from a script, even when you both know it is not in sync with the conversation or the topic. You get someone bugging you in a store every 3.5 minutes because that is what some time and motion "expert" told the company was the ideal timeframe for buying decisions and the period of time it takes for a potential customer to scan and leave the store. You get teachers forcing rote learning and focussing on tests because an accounting team is looking for "deliverables" rather than education.
This almost destroyed the design team of 3M before they pulled it back and many studies show it is destroying morale and effectiveness in organizations as employees are not empowered in any way to actually do their jobs.
This is one of the clearest and most well thought out explanations of the problem that I have seen. It hits it right on the head.
Companies are so hungry for sales these days they are trying all kinds of tactics and it is accomplishing exactly the opposite of what they want. We are hounding our customers so much that they are uncomfortable coming into our stores. For a while our company wanted every associate on the floor to constantly be trolling for customers to help. But when you have 6 or 8 employees walking up to the same customer in a 15 minute period saying "Can I help you ?" the customer feels smothered. I actually have had customers say to me "For God's sake, will you people let me shop in peace !!"
What bothers me the most about my own company is that we have gotten so far away from the roots that made us successful and are following the lead of a new CEO who came out of the internet retail business. He feels if we mechanize our staff to recite the same lines and offer the same solutions that we will grow. But what really made us prosperous was having employees who cared about doing the right job and knew their customers. Now we are being handed scripts to recite and are not to deviate from those scripts in any manner.
It's not being a robot. It's called making sure all their employees are exemplifying the same qualities. Come to my job where I have 4 - 5 pages of scripts that need to be remembered word for word while going on the street to entice people to join our gym. Smiling is important to ANY job. You have to show you actually like your job and are happy to help customers.
I say quit your whining and look for another job if you feel you can't live up to their expectations.
Herein lies the dilemma of today's workplace. The "guideline" I've always used is to set my own ethical boundaries which I will not cross for ANY reason, ever. Outside those moral and ethical parameters, everything else is open for consideration.
With that said, however, you are the one that has to go there every day. You are the one that has to look at yourself in the mirror at the end of the day. Can you, the individual you are, live with the choices and compromises being asked of you? It's not a question I need an answer to, but one you have to answer within yourself. Let that be your guide.
All the best in whatever you decide.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
