Thirty years ago, a cashier at a K-Mart saw, first-hand, what happens when the suits lost sight of that, and a few other, simple concepts.
First, apparently the managers misrepresented their terms of employment.
I needed money for school, so I wanted as many hours as possible. Kmart advertised and offered me 20-24 hours a week. Great! I turned down an offer at Walmart for more hours at Kmart.Sometimes, having the opportunity to take an extra turn or two is a good thing.
But then, they rarely scheduled me for more than 16. I asked why. The HR manager told me she "never promises hours," and Kmart policy prohibited part-time people from working more than 24 hours a week, so they deliberately kept the hours below that so you wouldn't take an extra shift and go over 24.
Second, nobody seemed to care too much about the scanning system working. One day, that proved to be an error too far.
One memorable day the computers went down. This meant that we had to go throughout the store gathering prices for every item. Customers were angry, lines snaked through the store, and the front-end manager told the cashiers we would not get breaks because things moved so slowly.There might not have been a William Slim at headquarters in Troy, but each of those angry shoppers carried a field marshal's baton in their wallet. "You don't get a break if your employees don't get breaks. Perks? Your employees better get them before you do."
At 12:00, the entire management team stepped away from the mess of angry customers and long lines, went over to the in-store cafe, and ate lunch together.
We could see them from the cash registers, laughing and talking.
It took a while for the market tests to come in, but come in they did, and K-Mart has been broken.
1 comment:
At one time most managers in the railroad business had some type of experience in the craft they supervised. When someone questioned a rule or process, a manager could explain or even demonstrate the answer. Some employees left to attend college or attended after hours. The Manager class was a mix of college educated or those that rose through the ranks. The end product was an managerial class that usually had a detailed knowledge of the business.
Now few managers have any hands on experience. It’s difficult to explain & teach the rule book when you’ve never worked under it. It’s amazing how train crews will test new managers with seemingly simple questions. If you can easily mark a switchlist they’ll usually grasp you might actually know something.
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