04 December 2011
Business Practices 101
04/12/11 10:22
I was reminded this week about the difference between a well run company and a badly run one. In the former camp is my employer who, as I mentioned before, gave the Employee Of The Year to the payroll person in Accounting. It’s a company where anyone can talk to anyone up to the president or the founder. It’s an open environment where if you have a neat idea they'll take it seriously. A company where quality and customer satisfaction is foremost and everyone pulls together and goes the extra mile because it’s such a great place to work.
On the other hand there is The Superstore where Marsha works. As you might have noticed it’s almost Christmas. The time when the stores are full of people buying anything and everything on the shelves. In order to make sure they’d be open longer than anyone else The Superstore extended their hours. Not by a couple either. They went to a full 24 hours seven days a week through Christmas Eve. They did this despite a history from previous years when they extended their hours and found that there isn’t anyone shopping between midnight and six in the morning. It also makes it difficult for the restocking crews who have to keep the aisles clear in case somebody has a craving for a cauliflower and a bottle of shampoo at two in the morning. Even better, in order to keep from eating into profits they reduced everyone’s hours to offset the cost off additional staff between 11:00pm and 6:00am. Think about this for a minute. Everything they put on the shelves sells as fast as they put it out and they cut the people that put stuff on the shelves and the people that run the registers during the day when there are customers so they can stay open extra hours when almost nobody is buying anything. Even worse, this is a company that’s had labour trouble in the past and now they are cutting their staff’s hours just before Christmas or scheduling them in the middle of the night.
The result of all this is that the customers are mad because the shelves are empty. The staff is mad because for most of them their income dropped by a third to a half or more (Marsha went from three days a week to one). The managers are mad because they are getting all the grief from the customers and staff. And the parent company is mad because sales are down.
Not the best thought out business plan ever.
At my company I’m working on the computer programming for a new robot which has been a lot of fun. I’ve also started designing the computer for another system as well. It’s been a good week for me.
Marsha on the other hand, was not working (and she was also battling a bad cold for seven days). The high point? When she got a call from a cruise line. It was one of those prerecorded advertising messages that went to her cell phone (which is bad enough). Now I imagine when the message was demonstrated for the brass at the cruise line they were happy with it. The message starts with a ships horn and then goes into the sales pitch. On a good stereo system in a conference room it likely sounded great. On a 1/4” speaker on a cheap cell phone the horn sounded like somebody breaking wind in your ear. Amazingly this puts the cruise line on a par with The Superstore in the business management department.
So no, Marsha didn’t have a great week. On the other hand she did have some time to go to the beach and get these pictures.
Doug and Marsha
PIX: A Sunny Day
On the other hand there is The Superstore where Marsha works. As you might have noticed it’s almost Christmas. The time when the stores are full of people buying anything and everything on the shelves. In order to make sure they’d be open longer than anyone else The Superstore extended their hours. Not by a couple either. They went to a full 24 hours seven days a week through Christmas Eve. They did this despite a history from previous years when they extended their hours and found that there isn’t anyone shopping between midnight and six in the morning. It also makes it difficult for the restocking crews who have to keep the aisles clear in case somebody has a craving for a cauliflower and a bottle of shampoo at two in the morning. Even better, in order to keep from eating into profits they reduced everyone’s hours to offset the cost off additional staff between 11:00pm and 6:00am. Think about this for a minute. Everything they put on the shelves sells as fast as they put it out and they cut the people that put stuff on the shelves and the people that run the registers during the day when there are customers so they can stay open extra hours when almost nobody is buying anything. Even worse, this is a company that’s had labour trouble in the past and now they are cutting their staff’s hours just before Christmas or scheduling them in the middle of the night.
The result of all this is that the customers are mad because the shelves are empty. The staff is mad because for most of them their income dropped by a third to a half or more (Marsha went from three days a week to one). The managers are mad because they are getting all the grief from the customers and staff. And the parent company is mad because sales are down.
Not the best thought out business plan ever.
At my company I’m working on the computer programming for a new robot which has been a lot of fun. I’ve also started designing the computer for another system as well. It’s been a good week for me.
Marsha on the other hand, was not working (and she was also battling a bad cold for seven days). The high point? When she got a call from a cruise line. It was one of those prerecorded advertising messages that went to her cell phone (which is bad enough). Now I imagine when the message was demonstrated for the brass at the cruise line they were happy with it. The message starts with a ships horn and then goes into the sales pitch. On a good stereo system in a conference room it likely sounded great. On a 1/4” speaker on a cheap cell phone the horn sounded like somebody breaking wind in your ear. Amazingly this puts the cruise line on a par with The Superstore in the business management department.
So no, Marsha didn’t have a great week. On the other hand she did have some time to go to the beach and get these pictures.
Doug and Marsha
PIX: A Sunny Day