Imagine a store where you work. It's a GREAT store. It has all of the latest gadgets. You are so excited to work there. The customers are AMAZING. Every time they come in the door, they challenge you with really hard questions. When you are at the store, you feel like you are exactly in the place you are meant to be.
But there are a few issues with the store. Some of the other workers...well, they don't work so hard. They don't try to help the customers as much as they should or could, so the customers don't get the high-quality product that the store boasts about. Some of the workers don't seem to care much about the customers or the products. They kind of hide behind the canned good aisle until it's time to go home. They just want their paycheck so they can buy a six-pack of beer and get out of there.
Some other workers think they might be doing a good job, but they're not. They don't have the proper training. To the disservice of the customers, they have been hired for reasons other than their skills and qualifications. Some of them have been customers for a long time. Some of them just get along really well with the manager. Some of them have never done this kind of job before, and were asked to help customers right away without receiving proper training. Customers helped by these workers often leave the store confused and frustrated.
You would think the management would catch on to these issues, but they have issues, too. The assistant manager has been a manager of a different kind of store, but has never been a worker. He doesn't even know what a worker is supposed to do. When workers go to him with really big problems, he says things that he thinks will help, but they really don't. Sometimes what he has to say just makes the problems worse. Often times there is a big spill in the store, or something gets broken, or a customer is mad, but he doesn't know what to do. Sometimes the assistant manager tries to help a customer, but since he has never been a worker before, he doesn't have any idea how to help. When the good workers see this, they feel alone about the good job they are expected to do. Sometimes this assistant manager sees some workers working really hard, and other workers not really doing anything, and he treats them exactly the same. He might even make excuses for the bad worker, even though they know better and have enough training to do a really good job. Then the bad worker figures out that they can do not much of anything and not get into trouble, and the good worker wonders why they are working so hard at all.
Then, there's the manager. The manager really needs help. He thinks that everyone likes him and that he does a good job, but there are a lot of people who don't like the manager. Sometimes, when the manager talks to a worker in private, he says things to the worker that are lies. The manager thinks that the conversation is over, but the worker is really upset, and goes and tells his worker friends what happened. The other workers get mad at the manager for this. Pretty soon, there are a lot of workers going in to talk to the manager, and the manager is telling everyone something different, not knowing that all of the workers talk to each other and are very close. Although the manager doesn't realize it, he is making the workers very, very angry. When the manager calls a store meeting, he acts very happy and thinks that everyone believes what he is telling them. But the workers have seen enough from the manager to know that what he is telling them is probably not true.
Now the store doesn't feel like a safe place anymore. Instead of talking to each other and the customers about what a great place the store is, the workers talk about how unhappy they are there. They love the merchandise and they couldn't imagine life without the customers, but they are getting tired of working for managers who don't appreciate them and don't know what they are doing or what a really good store should look like. Even the customers are starting to notice that something isn't quite right. Workers who have been at the store for a long time and work very hard for the customers are frustrated. The manager never tells them they do a good job. The assistant manager does sometimes, but he doesn't really know what a "good job" is, so it doesn't really count. He tells all the workers they do a good job, whether they really do or not! That's kind of like comparing a high-quality product and a cheaply made product in the store and telling a customer that they are both exactly the same! No good worker would do that.
Can you imagine working in a store like this? Not me, but I certainly could imagine a store I would LOVE to work in....stay tuned!
HOLLA -
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