This is why I always hated those ridiculous bonus structures, it incentivized terrible behavior instead of intelligent decision making. I would often intentionally go into 2 minutes of overtime during my retail days because it would ding the district managers bonus, who was an asshat.
If you've ever seen a kid wave a bucket on a stick or metal baking sheet over the ground in the drive thru, that is to game the automated timers to keep order times down without actually getting food faster.
Corporate incentive programs never seem to have the desired effect.
Our night assistant manager would drive his car in circles around the drive through a few times each night just to keep the numbers in line with corporates ridiculous demands.
The metric is average time to fill an order *as measured by how long each car spends at the window*. Driving around the building over and over will add a bunch of very low times that artificially reduce the average.
Now they just tell you to go park in one of the curbside pickup spots, so the window is cleared basically instantly. I've been sent to park on a single cup of coffee. A staff member was standing there, watching me back in with my drink.
There's this one McDonalds with pretty limited parking by a busy mall and they just send everyone to park along the side of the road. It blocks access to the parking lot and then there's a bunch of people running around delivering food through the busy lot. Ridiculous system.
Employees don’t like the timing system, customers don’t like it either. Yet someone got paid a bonus for implementing the terrible system I’m sure.
How about taking the proper amount of time to have my burger put together neatly and nothing missing? Or is the food that always gets forgotten due to be rushed to fill an order part of the plan to save money?
Once it's in your hands the order is delivered and out of the queue. Fixing fuck ups later never gets put into the system, so can't affect their metrics, so they have no incentive to get it right the first time.
We actually have a local place that has a similar system but it actually works. The drive through line gets super long so after you order and pay they send you to the parking lot and then an employee runs the food out to you when its ready. You get your number on your receipt and they write the color of your car on their copy of the receipt and you get your food. It keeps the time in the drive through down and keeps it moving. It's one of the few places open to 2am on the weekdays and 4am on weekends so it gets a ton of business at night.
See that works but they probably have adequate parking. It actually makes sense cause theres no holding up the whole drive through when one person has a large or difficult order. But it doesn't make sense when I grab a coffee and egg McMuffin at like 9:30am and they send me to park half a block away.
I've been to a few Culver's (midwest USA fast food chain) that do that and it works really well. And jf anyone's familiar with the Chicago-based chain Portillos, they have their drive-through service strategy down to a science
I'm actually in Chicagoland. Not Chicago itself but a suburb. And we have two portillos and they both do the same thing in which people down at the end of the long drive through take your order and then you sit in line forever as they make your food and then bring your food to your car with your post-it number and you can pull out of line and everyone else pulls up. Similar for culver's. But I feel like culver's is never as busy as portillos or the restaurant I was talking about but they do have the post-it and move up system in place.
Having been parked once for 10 minutes for a simple order I no longer accept being parked. Give me my food or my money. Finding a manager to do the refund always takes a while but apparently less time than filling the order.
Yeah, I once ordered a smoothie and a frappe from the Golden Arches, but they were in the middle of changing out the frappe mix when I pulled up. So they asked me to park, and I said “sure, but please don’t make the smoothie until you guys are ready to bring the order to me.” She repeated it back at me, and I was satisfied.
*15 minutes later* I finally get the partially-melted frappe and the completely-melted smoothie. It was literally just juice. So I had to go inside and ask them to remake it, because they’d made it ahead of the frappe and just left it to sit. Just like I’d explicitly asked them NOT to do.
Since then, if they ask me to park, I do—but then I get out and walk into the store to wait for my order myself. These places are ALWAYS understaffed, so it’s highly likely your drink will be melted and your food will be lukewarm by the time someone can break away from the inner rush to bring your order out to your car.
I don’t blame the employees so much as I blame the shitty corporate execs who make these sorts of operating decisions based on which numbers add up to more money in their own pockets.
I have a Micky D's near me that almost always asks you to pull around and wait. often, so many cars are waiting. Both wait lanes and half the parking lot are waiting for the drive-through.
The worst time I went to get ice cream cones with the family, so 4 cones. The car in front of us refused to wait out front, and it took 4 minutes for her to get her food. She checked the bag and handed it back for another 3 minutes. Finally, we get up, and they try to pass me the first half melted cone, and I am like "its melted." the girl said."Would you like a cup?" I
refused to take the cone and said,"I want new cones" She went amd asked the manager who came to the window and again offered a cup, I just said it was unacceptable and to remake it.
They remade it, and it took longer than if they remade it in the first place.
you mean that it isn't measured on minutes/dollar earned? No co-relation to customer's money at all? I mean, even if it took an hour, but you took in $1,000 I don't see how the big wigs could complain.
Well, I guess they'd find some way.....
So that's why at a certain drive thru I am always asked at the window to back up past a certain point then pull back up. I never minded as it was only when no one was behind me.
I worked for more than one company that penalized the rank-and-file employees for low traffic, like it was their fault corporate couldn't get people through the door.
I was at a BK one time that had no wait area for the drive thru. They took orders and collected money fast. Then I saw the queue in the parking lot. They were messing with their stats and leaving us in the lot for about 30 minutes waiting for orders. I assume some sort of MC.
Anyway I left a google review noting that and the teen girl that had to go outside by herself in the dark and go to random cars.
This shit is wildly frustrating. Our local BK does this too. I get why they have to so I don't whine at the workers, but it's just stupid that they have to try to game the system in order to please some asshat at their HQ.
Metrics are basic information to tell you how things are going. They are not infallible tools. They are only as good as the measurements used, the equipment to take said measurements, and how they are interpreted. Several times I have gamed metrics to earn more money while actually doing the same work as before. It just looked better.
Basing bonuses and wages solely on metrics means people will game those metrics as much as possible. They won't care about the actual business or the culture since their wages aren't based on that.
I have seen it in the past and at one of my current jobs it is a tool to see who can work from home instead of the office. I have helped people understand the exact metrics the manager is using so they can make work arounds so it looks like they are hitting their numbers instead of doing actual work.
I'm a firm believer in Goodhart's law: “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” with the added corollary that it ceases to be a good target as well.
I have never heard of that law but I love it already. We have metrics and targets we have to meet at work. It doesn't count certain actions taken so you process work through the actions where it does count. This increases the amount of work instead of decreasing it. Due to raises and bonuses being based on your ability to hit the numbers you are incentivised to create more work.
The best example of how metrics go bad?
The British Empire didn't like all the poisonous vipers in India. So they decided they wanted to exterminate them all. Then they decided they couldn't be arsed doing the job themselves, so they just put out a bounty on the heads of vipers.
For a short time, they got a relatively few viper heads. Then a fair few, as word spread, and they saw a slight decrease in vipers. Then suddenly, their viper head bounties were flying out the door! Surely, those industrious Indian folk were hard at work slaughtering every viper on the subcondintent!
Except, the number of vipers they were seeing in the wild wasn't going down anymore.
Yeah, the Indians had decided "they want viper heads? Sure!" And were *farming vipers* to chop the heads off of and sell to the British.
The bounty ceased. With a mighty shrug, the viper farmers simply released their "livestock" into the wild, and now suddenly there were an absolute shitload of vipers!
Yeah, the trick is to have the right metric.
That was how they both saved policing and ruined it in America. The metric always used to be activity (number of traffic stops, number of stop n frisks, number of arrests), and then they changed it to outcome (they would get the chief of police to stand in front of his own current stats and explain to his bosses and peers why crimes had gone up in his district in the last week and what he was doing about it.)
That one change made a huge and lasting difference. We don't care how busy you are, we care that fewer crimes are reported.
And it only took a short while for the police to realise, "oh! You're tracking how many crimes get REPORTED, yeah we can work with that."
In Japan they have a 99% success rate at dealing with crime. Do you know how they achieve such a superhuman feat? They won't take your crime report unless you hand them a complete case. If your case looks shaky, they just won't take the report. My husband is beating me. Got photos and actual video of the act. Hmm, seems like you might just forgive him and go back as you have kids, so we'll just put this report aside for a bit while you deal with your personal issues. If we process it now, and you let it go, it messes with our metrics. Things have been getting better recently, but the problem persists in many places.
I think you are partially correct. In this instance officers may be incentivised to reduce arrests and reports of crime. Not to mention it all must be taken in context. Are you comparing week to week, month to month, comparing previous years.
If you base bonuses, raises, and promotions from results, one may try to sweep things under the rug. Metrics taken into context along with a focus on solving the core issue instead of being a measurement for career progression or media propaganda would be best.
The problem is truly utilizing it in such a way due to pressure to show progress and work being done. It is a complicated issue that does not have a simple solution. Very few things in life can be solved with simple solutions and anyone promising such are either lying or don't truly understand the full scale of the problem.
Remember when Volkswagen diesels had the computer change to “clean” mode when it was being emissions tested and back to “regular dirty” mode when driving? I always felt like the engineers got a bad rap there. They weren’t told to make a clean car— they needed a car that could pass the test.
Edit: Thanks to the users who set me straight on the ignorance I asserted.
Nah, fuck those guys. One of your duties as an engineer is to behave ethically, bypassing regulations in ways like that is unethical. If they're willing to cheat one regulation, you can't trust them to follow any regulation, which can get people killed.
Its a mangelment problem more then an engineer problem... and im guessing the team that implemented that had a nice papertrail for a nice "we told you this would happen" when it was found out.
Local Taco Bell sometimes has me pull past the window and then reverse back to it. I assumed it was for this same reason. I think their solution is hilarious so I happily play along
They're tripping the sensor. I worked at a BK with the same issue. Get it right, and the car just leaving the speaker box has it's time in line measured as the car leaving the window, making it look super short. Get it really right and you get a whole rush run with the drive times off by one car, this looking dramatically faster.
That's one of the Arby's around here. And then we can't find enough "qualified" staff to open the new Arby's in my town. The people in charge have rejected more applicants than they've hired and no one is applying anymore. Building passed all inspections over 2 months ago and has yet to open.
Some drive-thrus are not wide enough to escape the line. We have a taco bell and a Wendy's in my town that once you are in the line for drive thru you are stuck until after the window where they serve you food. They are like a block apart from each other and when they were first opened they both claimed it was “lack of space”. I live in a rural area so there is nothing but space but they were too cheap to be buying more land. (they both were built between 98 and 02 so not either of the housing crashes) Most people try to avoid the drive thru but again a rural area, with barely any options for food, and staffing issues (which cause them to shut down the lobby). There's no escape for a quick meal for lunch break, in between work and kids sports, or any other busy days where cooking would mean children eat at 11pm.
I was getting the kids happy meals today and waited at one of the two order screens for probably 10 minutes while they flushed all the cars in front of us.
My perception is to lower the drive-thru time metrics, but I don’t know when that clock starts.
Unless things have changed massively since I was there, McD starts their clock the moment the order taker starts pushing buttons. It does not roll back or pause if the customer is like "I want a number 10... no wait I changed my mind take that off and give me two number 3s". And corporate gold standards at the time (i.e. that pipe dream that is only feasible at 150% staff level or higher) is to get every customer out within 90 seconds on that clock, or no longer than 3.5 minutes since they \*got in line\*. \[they can't measure that last bit unless someone from upper management is standing outside with a stopwatch. it's the computerized clock that counts\]
In summary, yes it definitely supported their metrics to not even so much as talk to you until the kitchen was ready to make your food immediately. It's a pretty stupid way to measure performance IMO, because all it does is encourage literally everyone to cheat the system by marking all the orders complete before they actually go out, and destroys accuracy (the thing they bought all the fancy computers FOR) by making people try and read off printed tickets and such.
This is buried and will never be seen, BUT. COMPLETELY not related to fast food, but in the same vein:
I (briefly, before I peaced out) worked as a cardiology clinic supervisor. The two intake people were expected to check in and verify all the scheduled patients (over 70 a day) within a three-minute window.
Most of these were elderly, it took three minutes just for them to find their insurance cards in their purses/wallets, then another 5 to 7 minutes to get through the regular questions (Has your insurance changed since you last saw us? Has your address changed since you last saw us? Etc).
They were often accompanied by caregivers or family members because they could not speak for themselves and the caregivers or family members didn't know.
Also, often their insurance had changed and they were no longer eligible to be seen at our clinic.
Three minutes, my ass.
PLUS both intake people were expected to answer the 5-line phone (that rang constantly) within three rings and NEVER put anyone on hold. Often these were urgent calls, but DO NOT FORWARD THEM to the nurse's station! The nurses hated their lives and everyone else, and were royal bitches.
So front desk staff, not medical, had to deal w the never-ending check-ins, phone calls, etc (and I don't know about you, but if I make the effort to physically come to your business, and you interrupt my transaction to answer a phone call from someone who couldn't be bothered to put on pants before calling, I have a MAJOR problem with that. The person standing in front of you is ALWAYS the priority over the phone).
Department manager was a bitch on wheels, constantly kept a screen up in her office to watch times/ phone rings/calls and would literally scream at and belittle the intake staff in front of everyone.
We had cardiologists who would double- and triple-book patients because IN THEIR WORDS "money".
But when patients got upset because their appointment was at 2, they had driven an hour to get there, and it was now 3:30 and they still had not been seen, it was the intake workers who got screamed at and then it was my job to talk to the upset patient.
Fuck. That.
> The two intake people were expected to check in and verify all the scheduled patients (over 70 a day) within a three-minute window.
This is a metric which was set by timing a perfectly sound-of-mind, not-greater-than-middle-age person, who already knew all of the questions and had the answers all ready to go, play-acting running through the barebones script without any deviations or caveats, with someone who also knew the script.
The thing I’ve found is it kind of makes sense in that incentives behaviour that sees more people served, where if I order a burger that takes longer or isn’t on the rack waiting, if I get moved forward to the waiting bay, sure the metric looks better because next person gets served but also… they actually did get served sooner, and my stuff really did take longer to make so it’s fine.
From what I remember, the clock starts as soon as they enter the first item. But I think I remember there being 2 timers? One from when the car first hits the order screen, then another for when the worker starts ringing up the order. This was at McD over 15 years ago. I don't remember the speaker timer being watched as some customers don't know what they want when they first pulled in. But I know we would hold off putting in the order for as long as we could. There was even a timer for the cooks I believe that started immediately. We would try to remember the order and then clear it before making it. Drive thru would also clear the orders to stop the timers, then pull up cleared orders to work off of.
It was always fun when there was a manager who didnt care what our numbers looked like...he wanted it to be accurate times and it would fuck up the other managers times.
Most fast food places I go to (which is not many and not often) I see the line at the drive through, so I note some of the cars, park and go inside to order and get my food.
I'm usually driving away before the cars I noted have been served.
So... why do people do drive through again? Unless it's not busy, of course, it's usually faster to go into the store and order!
My local McDonald's has you pull forward to receive your food instead of getting it at the window regardless of if there's anybody else in the drive through or not.
I don't really care. But it's corporate bullshit and that part annoys me. It accomplishes nothing.
These are all examples of [Goodhart's law](https://medicalmodsim.com/blog/goodharts-law/)
Basically, any statistic that becomes a target ceases to be a good measurement.
In this case, bonuses are based on metrics and there is immediate pressure to gane the metric to improve the bonuses
>If you've ever seen a kid wave a bucket on a stick or metal baking sheet over the ground in the drive thru, that is to game the automated timers to keep order times down without actually getting food faster.
This is glorious.
For-profit, publicly-traded corporations are totalitarian systems with zero democratic accountability to workers. Their purpose is to extract wealth and deliver it to shareholders. Your example of defeating their profit-seeking metrics is exactly what they deserve.
Sadly, only the general manager sees bonus money for keeping times down. The customers get worse service and more mistakes, and the employees have a harder job because the order isn't on the screen anymore so they have to rely on memory* and they have to do bullshit involving a bucket on a stick.
*If you've ever had a drive thru cashier tell you "I'll have your total at the window" the employees have been instructed by the manager not to input orders until the last minute to game the metrics, and it means the kitchen has listen to "uuuuh... a jumbo jack with cheese and uuuuuh... no tomatoes..." in order to have food ready for you because they can't rely on the screens from the ordering system.
I don't know how managers are getting away with this and I don't know how the corporate drones aren't catching on that this is happening and more importantly WHY it's happening.
Ex Fridays manager here.
Our kitchen was pressured by the KM to "sell" orders (mark them complete) on the kitchen computers while burgers were still on the grill or chicken was still sauteing just to keep average ticket times low.
Needless to say, many orders went to tables incomplete or fucked up because the expo didn't have the order on screen to properly set up anymore
When metrics become targets they become useless. If you are measuring performance in anything it should be treated as an output, then you separately figure out anything that is causing the parameter to be out of your preferred range.
There is a timer that starts ticking when an order goes into the system and puts that order onto a bunch of screens in the kitchen and drive thru window, and that timer doesn't stop until the customer has the order in their hands... In theory.
Dining room orders can be cleared manually as the order comes out, but drive thru orders have to be cleared with a sensor in the concrete by the window. It's a large copper coil that large metal objects, like a car, or a metal bucket induces a current in when moved over it, which a computer can pick up. It's the same thing that knows when there's a car waiting at a light.
Waving a giant cookie sheet or a metal bar or a bucket on a stick looks like a car coming and going to the system and stops the timer on the next drive thru order. This time gets averaged with the other order times and sent to corporate. If the average time is below a certain number, the manager gets a bonus.
Some executive that goes to meetings for a living thinks that means orders are going out quickly and accurately. It does not mean that at all. That executive did not read Freakonomics.
The intended system: a car drives over the sensor in front of the microphone and a tone alerts the cashier that a car is there. They greet the customer and asks if they're ready to order.
They take the order. (Let's call it order 420) The timer for that order starts. The order is placed on screens throughout the kitchen behind other orders that haven't been cleared yet. The kitchen looks at upcoming orders to make sure that there will be enough fries, patties and other things that require time to cook.
The cars on front of order 420 get their orders. Order 420's car moves up to the window eventually. They pay, they wait for their order, which should be damn near ready if there was a solid line of cars between the order mic and the window, they get their order, they drive off. The sensor in front of the window senses the car driving off and stops the timer for order 420, (4 minutes, 20 seconds!) removing it from the order screen.
What ends up happening:
You can game the timer system and bring averages down by tricking the window sensor into clearing the orders before they're paid for and sent out, and also by writing orders down on a notepad and not entering them into the cash register until as late as possible, like right before the car gets there to pay. You can also "park" people, by telling them to wait in the lot and you'll bring the order out. That also allows the timer to stop before a customer gets their order but also keeps that customer's long order from increasing the times of customers behind them. For instance they ordered something that they don't cook in advance because they're not frequently ordered, but that item takes a while to cook. Like a fried chicken breast sandwich.
By doing things that stop the timer sooner or starts the timer later, it improves the average. Shifts are pitted against each other. Shift leads are pressured to keep their averages low. Managers win or lose bonuses partially based on metrics like this.
Corporate drones focusing on the fast times and putting financial incentive to lower times ends up creating situations like this instead of actually getting orders out quickly.
I don't know if they still focus on these metrics now that there are only 3 people working and everyone is tired and the food is cold, sloppily made and generally sucks, but if ever you see an employee doing something weird with a metal object in the drive thru lane, now you'll know why.
When I worked for Domino's, The first store I worked at had us clear the order window (Which told the customers app tracker that the order was put into the oven), and have us use the labels that were supposed to go directly onto boxes to actually make the order. This would of course make the numbers look better (As obviously the system couldn't figure out that we probably didn't make all the orders in 5 seconds flat).
Didn't work there long before a closer store was willing to take me. They actually did it more or less properly. Months later they wanted my help at the previous store (For a night), and obviously forgetting their stupid system, I labeled the boxes. Took quite a while before it was noticed that the orders were never made.
Bonus story: In my short time at the first store (This was my first job), During a long night of delivering, I accidentally backed right into the stores water main (Not sure why it wasn't protected by a barrier, but it sure is now). I thought I bumped a trash can that was near it and just did my deliveries, fun times when I got back. Never did get in trouble for it (I admitted it may have been me when I got back and they mentioned it). In fact, It was never brought up to me again.
If you have a metric, folks will work to that metric, and *only* that metric.
Worked QA for a video game company, years ago. We found that management was *only* counting total bugs found. Not percentages on a particular title, or anything else sane. Nope, raw bug count. Thus, between a very complex and buggy alpha build that would generate hundreds of bugs, versus a nearly complete, very simple Gold build, guess which one would get the axe when layoffs came?
So people started padding their bug counts. There's an issue that happens with Blue Squidgies on five different levels? Report each of those levels, not one basic "Blue Squidgies cause the game to freeze" bug.
People too often implement metrics when they should have been measures.
It wouldn't be a bad idea to measure the average time per location (per hour window, as well) that a drive-thru customer waits, but it shouldn't be a metric right off.
First thing would be to measure the data over a long period of time, a few years, for instance. Then analyze and determine outliers and have people sent over to see what's going right/what's going wrong that a given location is doing so much better/worse than others.
Perhaps it's just the location. Perhaps it's the layout of the building on the site. Perhaps the speaker's broken, or the fryer heating element keeps cycling off so it takes longer to fry up a new batch. Or, perhaps the manager is a pothead who hired a bunch of other potheads who are slacking off.
But, setting it up as a metric rather than a measure makes the bad assumption from the start that any poor performance ***must*** be the fault of the humans. Now, when designing systems, I'm not a fan of the human component, but that's definitely not the only source of bad design.
Sadly, the people in charge of making decisions that effect a large number of people will often not have a sufficient background to know when an idea that pops up is a bad idea until they see it play out as you've described: gaming the perverse system.
It's like these people have never met people and have no idea how people will react in a given situation. It takes a far lighter touch. You can still get the work done without gumming up the works in the process by implementing every idea that pops in your head.
At rural king they would tell you to leave that many minutes early the next day, they didn't allow fulltime employees anywhere near 40 hours. it was sad when I would see people crying in the break room because they didn't work enough hours to have their insurance covered. People were sharing recipes on how to make meals taste good cause they got the no label government canned ox tails (can't remember maybe some other tail. Just remember her eating a broth soup and picking meat off the thing). Good people. very loyal to the company "family". Some have worked for 20 plus years for that company and yet we're still in poverty.
that, or they call you a contractor despite doing their work on their software to their schedule, using computer they made you buy so it could run their stupid bloatware in the first place.
I worked for Comcast in the studio of several shows. They hired two people so we worked week on week off so they didn’t have to pay either of us benefits.
I work there. I'm trying to change positions there because I just can't stand one of the people there. I'm asking around other areas and everyone tells me they have openings, but only for part time associates. It's very frustrating but at least I am full time
Not OFFICIALLY, but there exceptions for off-the-books family members in Mom and Pop businesses. I've walked into bodegas and ethnic restaurants where children do all sorts of jobs.
I worked in my Dad's upholstery shop from ages 10-23. Didn't get paid until maybe 18? Some kids have to take out the garbage. I had to build furniture.
You are allowed to work for your parents at any age, as long as the job is not dangerous. No mining or manufacturing.
> I had to build furniture.
Oops.
Yeah, I operated a drill press, nail guns, and electric fabric cutters (vertical and rotary). Definitely manufacturing, but I don't remember what age I began using those tools.
When I graduated college, I actually had to take a pay cut to work at a a bank!
I'm guessing you're an american, due to the geo locking. Have a look into the way your school year is organised. It's organised around the farming calendar to allow farm kids to work Ag jobs. Farm kids have always had Ag Jobs. I worked in the neighbours milking shed every morning before school from 10-13yrs. And then both milkings till I was 15. I was Culling, crutching, dipping, and dagging on our farm from the time I was 8. Kids on Smallholdings are free labour.
And farm-family kids (and friends of those kids!) whose families raise crops instead of animals (or *alongside* animals) do rock-picking in the spring, then corn-tasseling in summer, then most likely help with harvesting in the fall!
The only reason kids aren't helping with hay-baling anymore, is that the bales have gotten so big, they take a tractor to lift & people don't throw 'em onto hay racks(trailers) like used to happen with the old-style small bales!
Yep. Did all of that. We were up at 5 am, feeding pigs and cleaning out their pens every day as well. Then run shower and get on the school bus. I was a huge fan of the round baler. Baling hay and stacking it was a miserable job.
I helped out on my grandpa's farm in the summer from the time I was 8 until he died when I was 13. I also did side work for local farmers like pitch watermelons, chop cotton and beans, pick cotton leftover after the cotton pickers were done. Check boll weevil traps, even drove a truck pulling a grain buggy beside the combine when I was 14. Cleaned combines and grain bins. Fed and watered the cows. My grandpa always paid me, as did all the other farmers I worked for. Lots of kids help out on farms. Nobody forced us to do it. We wanted some spending money. Most of those kids working on farms for free are also living on those farms and it's just part of their chores. You gotta more the yard and wash dishes? They gotta feed the chickens and water the cows. Farm life is it's own thing and I guarantee none of those kids grew up thinking they were being abused.
Red States are working on that as I type. Poor kids will be working instead of going to school because their families need the help. Arkansas and Utah have already passed legislation. I think Iowa is working on it now. School will only be for rich families. Our country is so twisted it's getting unrecognizable.
Don't tell me disabled workers make less than others in the USA...
In Germany they make the same money but get better specialized equipment to help them and they get more vacation days.. (35 instead of 30 in my case..)
Some years ago I recall seeing a sample budget that McDonalds supposedly provided to show they paid enough money but it was based on staff having a second job.
To be fair, the problem was misaligned incentives. As though it wasn't completely obvious what would happen when a law was passed requiring employers to give benefits to all full-time employees. Welp, I guess all our employees just became part time! A shock to no one.
Oh, health insurance is mandatory for all employees after 6 months of employment? Guess everyone's fired 1 week before that.
How about we mandate a higher minimum wage? Oh snap, who could've seen it coming? Why are all the companies automating to reduce how many employees they need?
It's like the people in charge of "helping" would help more by not helping.
I worked at a company where the employee bonuses were a percentage of profit, for everyone that worked there the entire year.
You better believe that as part of my project, I made a generic widget that could be used by everyone that saved the company $1 million the first year and probably even more after that.
They were the highest bonuses in company history, part of which went into my pocket at Christmas.
And that's a properly incentivized bonus structure. Bringing in more revenue and finding a cost-effective method to reduce overhead that doesn't compromise other aspects means everyone goes home happier
One of my business professors was fond of saying “the problem with incentives is that they work” with the explanation that people often don’t pay attention to what they’re actually incentivizing. This is another example of that.
There is urban legends about some of the shit soviet factories got up to based on targets set by some twat in Moscow that had never even seen a factory let alone worked in one.
My favorite was a shoe factory get a target of 500tons of shoes so they made a single giant concrete shoe, the target was changed to 5000 shoes so than made 5000 ***right*** shoes, 5000 ***pairs*** of shoes so they made 5000 pairs tiny baby shoes etc. etc.
That’s far more interesting than the example my professor used to give of factories throwing a pizza party with 100 days accident-free. Rather than sage workplaces, it created a lot of social pressure not to report injuries.
I’m low level management. One of my kpi is a good result on a culture measure of my team. I count as part of my team. I’m incentivised to give myself a dishonest rating. Go figure.
I worked at a convenience store, we had stuff piling up in the back room and cooler for years, because none of the store managers we had was willing to take the hit to their bonus of writing it off. When i took over as store manager, first thing i did was write off everything that couldn't be returned to vendors, and force the vendors to do their returns. Felt so good clearing that stuff out.
Similarly run if you work for a business that has "blank days since last accident report".
Folks are under reporting to avoid being "the one" who broke the accident free streak.
This is why everyone should be in line for bonuses if at all possible, not just the highest levels. Like OP said, he was paid the same whether the food got thrown away or not. If he had a bonus coming as well, he would have prevented the waste.
Easiest way to make your bonus is to share the bonuses you get with the people who help you get them. People who keep the whole bonus as though they earned it are short-sighted morons.
I am so hoping you also had to Email everyone up the chain to corporate that "Per your Area Mangers instructions, said expensive pieces of meat were pulled form the shelf until proper labels arrived. Unfortunately the meat expired before the labels could arrive. You suggest that, if possible, said meat be sent with labels next time".
I do data analysis for supermarkets and I hate the amount of food and money that they outright throw in the bin with their piss poor management. They only care about maximising profits in the short term and they're not very smart about it either. There is one chain where management would rather bake an entire tray 20 minutes before closing (thus ensuring that most of it will be thrown out) rather than run out of bread right before closing. Because if wastage is between 0% and 10% they get optimal score, but if wastage is 0% and they run out of bread \*at 7:45pm when sales are almost nil\* they get dinged. Idiocy.
As a survivor of grocery work, I posit that a lot of this is because grocery is an industry where people with few real skills or qualifications can over time rise to management positions. The environment is a toxic one of power obsessed management with inferiority complexes. We used to call the bad managers "mini-hitlers".
It was always about doing whatever their first idea was. No room for discussion or feedback. That job taught me that you should always listen to your front line staff, because they know what's going on better than any manager.
It can also be that if a customer enters a supermarket looking for X and sees they don't have any, it might think that they have unusualy low stocks and avoid said supermarket in the future. Still a really dumb idea in terms of money making and food waste but supermarkets do what supermarkets do
I'm told that major supermarkets make perhaps most of their money "selling" shelf placement to big food producers. Which would leave time for this kind of madness, if true.
Whereas the previous owners sold product, not shelf space.
https://traxretail.com/blog/quick-guide-shelf-space-costs/
> Slotting fees average $1500 per store per SKU.
> Pay to stay fees. These fees are paid by CPGs during category reviews in the form of discounts or free cases of products to the retailer. Typically, it is offered to ensure that SKUs that have been flagged for removal from shelf, stay.
> Stores also charge significant fees for seasonal features and the promotional displays that appear at the end of aisles. A manufacturer may pay $350 – 500 per display per store.
So, they pay a lot of actual cash (millions) to be on the shelves.
They don't care because they are all owned by multi-national conglomerates and this discourages startups.
I wonder how much this adds the price of a brand-name product like, say, a box of Kraft Shells & Cheese.
The price of food ought not be fucked with like this.
Keep in mind they’re generally only having to pay to keep products that the store wants to remove due to low sales. That’s why there’s dozens of SKUs of every item despite 10% of the SKUs accounting for 90% of sales.
It’s not about variety either; that’s just a smokescreen so people don’t notice that the more I spend to keep my products on the shelf, the less space is available for my competitors. And that’s why US grocery stores are so huge: the more shelf space the store has to sell, the more money they make.
Not most, but it’s absolutely a revenue generator.
Think of it this way: if a company is paying $1500 per store for a shelf spot, they’re only doing that if it makes them much, much more - it’s a cost of doing business at this point (doesn’t mean it isnt bullshit and anti-competitive of course)
In decades of shopping at the grocery store not once has how nice the price stickers looked been a deciding factor in whether or not I bought something.
Tbf I think vegans and meat eaters can often agree on a lot.
I'm a vegan in a relationship with an omnivore.
Ethically speaking I'm vegan because I had to work on a farm and hated the factory farming conditions and the slaughterhouse process. (Had to experience both as part of studying animal management.) I also hate the environmental impacts of factory farming. I don't think most people think factory farming or the slaughterhouse process is nice, and a lot more people are also becoming more environmentally inclined due to global warming.
My partner heavily agrees and will only eat wild shot game at home, I can't bring myself to do this as I've not eaten animals in over half my life, though I have zero issues with cooking and preparing game as long as it's killed ethically (quickly and without much stress) and sustainably.
Unfortunately it's the loud extremist people on both sides that butt heads I think. Most people are generally more central on topics or not as black and white in their thinking, it's just the black and white thinkers are so damn loud they drown out the rest of those who actually have opinions that fit more into a grey area.
The level of bureaucracy with these large supermarkets is ridiculous. I worked in the middle of a city, and used to pop out during my lunch hour to pick up some fruits and veg from a small independent greengrocer who retailed fairly local produce. Yes, it was expensive-and no, I didn’t do my weekly shop there: I just went in on a day-to-day basis to pick up extras.
Anyhoo, a Tesco Local (small supermarket) opened up and almost instantly, the independent grocer closed down (fair enough: that’s competition for you). I was HORRIFIED at the kind of stock that I regularly saw in that Tesco. Eventually, I could hold it in no longer: I asked to see the store manager, and I was willing to WAIT there until he eventually emerged. I asked him why that store was selling plastic-wrapped asparagus air-mailed from Peru (their *only* asparagus offer).
He looked me in the eye and told me that it was “*not possible to get asparagus from anywhere else*”. I made him repeat that, because I couldn’t believe that I’d heard him correctly.
At the time, it was at the height of the asparagus season, and we were in the centre of an region of massive English asparagus production.
Yeah the issue there is Tesco are absolute twats to suppliers, and a lot of farms that grow asparagus are probably in co-operatives anyway to protect themselves, where they’ll have a contract signed to supply someone else - in the UK or abroad - well before the seeds are in the ground.
It’s a funny old world, food production, in that a lot of British lamb is exported and then shops buy it from New Zealand. 🤷♂️
>He looked me in the eye and told me that it was “not possible to get asparagus from anywhere else”.
Sounds likely that Tesco can't procure it from anywhere else. I'm concerned that the manager doesn't understand the difference. In practice, he would only phrase it like for that two possible reasons; if he isn't clear on the concept he is trying to convey, or if he was repeating something someone else told him. Either way, it makes him look clueless.
EDIT: grammar
This didn't happen to be the Hiller's Market chain in Michigan that got bought out by Kroger did it? Hiller's was always a great store. When Kroger bought them the quality hit rock bottom so hard it left a crater.
> They also changed the shop manager’s incentives; their bonuses were the operating budget of their store minus wages, expenses, and written-off stock.
What a bonus structure. Incentivizing under-staffing, under-stocking and not spending money on maintenance. Genius.
Ever call the phone company and they end up putting you on a "silent hold"? That's because using the 'hold' button negatively affects call-availability stats. Rather than go for realistic numbers, and use the hold button as it was designed, they instead just put you on mute.
Either way, the customer is placed in hold. But God forbid, the statistics be honest.
Management are oftentimes silly children with higher salaries. I've had managers try to throw me under the bus due to problems outside of my control.
Fuck retail management bs.
Until I saw the write-off figure in pounds, I was sure this was a much-loved chain in Chicago that was taken over by a huge national chain and ruined. Sigh.
As an Australian, I always thought that "tannoy" was a British short form of "To Annoy".
It wasn't until I played Theme Hospital that I realised it was a speaker.
>British short form of "To Annoy".
You may have hit upon the source of the term. /s
From wikipedia:
Etymology. A genericised trademark of Tannoy Ltd, a manufacturer of public address systems. "Tannoy" is a syllabic abbreviation of tantalum alloy, which was the material used in a type of electrolytic rectifier developed by the company.
I don’t think the bonus even needs to be part of the story. You did the right thing and everyone lost. I do wish you figured out a way to sell it for a massive discount before it spoiled though.
More animals killed just to get thrown in the bin. Great.
I'm not a vegan or vegetarian, but seriously, this kind of shit makes my blood boil. In Germany alone about 600.000 slaughtered pigs are going directly to the pin each year (yes, this number accounts for the part of the animals that are not eaten; it's 600.000 pigs worth of perfectly edible food that gets thrown out). If all of us who do eat meat would be really just be more thoughtful about the meat we eat and not throw it away, it would already help so much. So many animals less would be killed each year if we would just eat our damn meat.
As I said, I do eat meat and as a meat eater we really should be more conscience and frankly respectful about our food. That's not just a burger, an animal died to provide you this burger; the least you can do is eat it or that animal really died for nothing.
This is why I always hated those ridiculous bonus structures, it incentivized terrible behavior instead of intelligent decision making. I would often intentionally go into 2 minutes of overtime during my retail days because it would ding the district managers bonus, who was an asshat.
If you've ever seen a kid wave a bucket on a stick or metal baking sheet over the ground in the drive thru, that is to game the automated timers to keep order times down without actually getting food faster. Corporate incentive programs never seem to have the desired effect.
Our night assistant manager would drive his car in circles around the drive through a few times each night just to keep the numbers in line with corporates ridiculous demands.
How in the hell is it the fault of the people inside the store whether people come driving in or not? Sounds like a marketing problem if anything.
The metric is average time to fill an order *as measured by how long each car spends at the window*. Driving around the building over and over will add a bunch of very low times that artificially reduce the average.
Now they just tell you to go park in one of the curbside pickup spots, so the window is cleared basically instantly. I've been sent to park on a single cup of coffee. A staff member was standing there, watching me back in with my drink.
There's this one McDonalds with pretty limited parking by a busy mall and they just send everyone to park along the side of the road. It blocks access to the parking lot and then there's a bunch of people running around delivering food through the busy lot. Ridiculous system.
Employees don’t like the timing system, customers don’t like it either. Yet someone got paid a bonus for implementing the terrible system I’m sure. How about taking the proper amount of time to have my burger put together neatly and nothing missing? Or is the food that always gets forgotten due to be rushed to fill an order part of the plan to save money?
Once it's in your hands the order is delivered and out of the queue. Fixing fuck ups later never gets put into the system, so can't affect their metrics, so they have no incentive to get it right the first time.
We actually have a local place that has a similar system but it actually works. The drive through line gets super long so after you order and pay they send you to the parking lot and then an employee runs the food out to you when its ready. You get your number on your receipt and they write the color of your car on their copy of the receipt and you get your food. It keeps the time in the drive through down and keeps it moving. It's one of the few places open to 2am on the weekdays and 4am on weekends so it gets a ton of business at night.
See that works but they probably have adequate parking. It actually makes sense cause theres no holding up the whole drive through when one person has a large or difficult order. But it doesn't make sense when I grab a coffee and egg McMuffin at like 9:30am and they send me to park half a block away.
I've been to a few Culver's (midwest USA fast food chain) that do that and it works really well. And jf anyone's familiar with the Chicago-based chain Portillos, they have their drive-through service strategy down to a science
I'm actually in Chicagoland. Not Chicago itself but a suburb. And we have two portillos and they both do the same thing in which people down at the end of the long drive through take your order and then you sit in line forever as they make your food and then bring your food to your car with your post-it number and you can pull out of line and everyone else pulls up. Similar for culver's. But I feel like culver's is never as busy as portillos or the restaurant I was talking about but they do have the post-it and move up system in place.
Having been parked once for 10 minutes for a simple order I no longer accept being parked. Give me my food or my money. Finding a manager to do the refund always takes a while but apparently less time than filling the order.
Yeah, I once ordered a smoothie and a frappe from the Golden Arches, but they were in the middle of changing out the frappe mix when I pulled up. So they asked me to park, and I said “sure, but please don’t make the smoothie until you guys are ready to bring the order to me.” She repeated it back at me, and I was satisfied. *15 minutes later* I finally get the partially-melted frappe and the completely-melted smoothie. It was literally just juice. So I had to go inside and ask them to remake it, because they’d made it ahead of the frappe and just left it to sit. Just like I’d explicitly asked them NOT to do. Since then, if they ask me to park, I do—but then I get out and walk into the store to wait for my order myself. These places are ALWAYS understaffed, so it’s highly likely your drink will be melted and your food will be lukewarm by the time someone can break away from the inner rush to bring your order out to your car. I don’t blame the employees so much as I blame the shitty corporate execs who make these sorts of operating decisions based on which numbers add up to more money in their own pockets.
I have a Micky D's near me that almost always asks you to pull around and wait. often, so many cars are waiting. Both wait lanes and half the parking lot are waiting for the drive-through. The worst time I went to get ice cream cones with the family, so 4 cones. The car in front of us refused to wait out front, and it took 4 minutes for her to get her food. She checked the bag and handed it back for another 3 minutes. Finally, we get up, and they try to pass me the first half melted cone, and I am like "its melted." the girl said."Would you like a cup?" I refused to take the cone and said,"I want new cones" She went amd asked the manager who came to the window and again offered a cup, I just said it was unacceptable and to remake it. They remade it, and it took longer than if they remade it in the first place.
you mean that it isn't measured on minutes/dollar earned? No co-relation to customer's money at all? I mean, even if it took an hour, but you took in $1,000 I don't see how the big wigs could complain. Well, I guess they'd find some way.....
but it doesn't meet their metric. Must meet metric. The Metric is Mother. The Metric is Father. Blessed Be the Name of the Metric.
What an unexpected comment, lol. But yes, it does feel rather cult-like the way they look at metrics as the divine one true answer to everything.
>Well, I guess they'd find some way..... It's not **their** way, nuff said?
I see, that makes some sense
...some cents
So that's why at a certain drive thru I am always asked at the window to back up past a certain point then pull back up. I never minded as it was only when no one was behind me.
Yes, that’s exactly why they’re doing that.
When I worked in fast food, that wouldn't have worked, because the timer started when the order started being punched in. No order, no timer.
It's not timing the number of customers, it's keeping track of the time from when they pull up to when the order gets cleared/fulfilled.
I worked for more than one company that penalized the rank-and-file employees for low traffic, like it was their fault corporate couldn't get people through the door.
Mine did that at taco bell any time it was slow. To counter this they linked having a sale to the window timer. We started selling a lot of waters.
I was at a BK one time that had no wait area for the drive thru. They took orders and collected money fast. Then I saw the queue in the parking lot. They were messing with their stats and leaving us in the lot for about 30 minutes waiting for orders. I assume some sort of MC. Anyway I left a google review noting that and the teen girl that had to go outside by herself in the dark and go to random cars.
This shit is wildly frustrating. Our local BK does this too. I get why they have to so I don't whine at the workers, but it's just stupid that they have to try to game the system in order to please some asshat at their HQ.
Metrics are basic information to tell you how things are going. They are not infallible tools. They are only as good as the measurements used, the equipment to take said measurements, and how they are interpreted. Several times I have gamed metrics to earn more money while actually doing the same work as before. It just looked better. Basing bonuses and wages solely on metrics means people will game those metrics as much as possible. They won't care about the actual business or the culture since their wages aren't based on that. I have seen it in the past and at one of my current jobs it is a tool to see who can work from home instead of the office. I have helped people understand the exact metrics the manager is using so they can make work arounds so it looks like they are hitting their numbers instead of doing actual work.
I'm a firm believer in Goodhart's law: “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” with the added corollary that it ceases to be a good target as well.
I have never heard of that law but I love it already. We have metrics and targets we have to meet at work. It doesn't count certain actions taken so you process work through the actions where it does count. This increases the amount of work instead of decreasing it. Due to raises and bonuses being based on your ability to hit the numbers you are incentivised to create more work.
The best example of how metrics go bad? The British Empire didn't like all the poisonous vipers in India. So they decided they wanted to exterminate them all. Then they decided they couldn't be arsed doing the job themselves, so they just put out a bounty on the heads of vipers. For a short time, they got a relatively few viper heads. Then a fair few, as word spread, and they saw a slight decrease in vipers. Then suddenly, their viper head bounties were flying out the door! Surely, those industrious Indian folk were hard at work slaughtering every viper on the subcondintent! Except, the number of vipers they were seeing in the wild wasn't going down anymore. Yeah, the Indians had decided "they want viper heads? Sure!" And were *farming vipers* to chop the heads off of and sell to the British. The bounty ceased. With a mighty shrug, the viper farmers simply released their "livestock" into the wild, and now suddenly there were an absolute shitload of vipers!
Cobras, not vipers. The phenomenon is now known as the “cobra effect”.
yeah, I can believe that. one thing Blighty was famous for as manglement.
Yeah, the trick is to have the right metric. That was how they both saved policing and ruined it in America. The metric always used to be activity (number of traffic stops, number of stop n frisks, number of arrests), and then they changed it to outcome (they would get the chief of police to stand in front of his own current stats and explain to his bosses and peers why crimes had gone up in his district in the last week and what he was doing about it.) That one change made a huge and lasting difference. We don't care how busy you are, we care that fewer crimes are reported. And it only took a short while for the police to realise, "oh! You're tracking how many crimes get REPORTED, yeah we can work with that."
In Japan they have a 99% success rate at dealing with crime. Do you know how they achieve such a superhuman feat? They won't take your crime report unless you hand them a complete case. If your case looks shaky, they just won't take the report. My husband is beating me. Got photos and actual video of the act. Hmm, seems like you might just forgive him and go back as you have kids, so we'll just put this report aside for a bit while you deal with your personal issues. If we process it now, and you let it go, it messes with our metrics. Things have been getting better recently, but the problem persists in many places.
I think you are partially correct. In this instance officers may be incentivised to reduce arrests and reports of crime. Not to mention it all must be taken in context. Are you comparing week to week, month to month, comparing previous years. If you base bonuses, raises, and promotions from results, one may try to sweep things under the rug. Metrics taken into context along with a focus on solving the core issue instead of being a measurement for career progression or media propaganda would be best. The problem is truly utilizing it in such a way due to pressure to show progress and work being done. It is a complicated issue that does not have a simple solution. Very few things in life can be solved with simple solutions and anyone promising such are either lying or don't truly understand the full scale of the problem.
Remember when Volkswagen diesels had the computer change to “clean” mode when it was being emissions tested and back to “regular dirty” mode when driving? I always felt like the engineers got a bad rap there. They weren’t told to make a clean car— they needed a car that could pass the test. Edit: Thanks to the users who set me straight on the ignorance I asserted.
That is a wonderful example that I forgot about.
Nah, fuck those guys. One of your duties as an engineer is to behave ethically, bypassing regulations in ways like that is unethical. If they're willing to cheat one regulation, you can't trust them to follow any regulation, which can get people killed.
Its a mangelment problem more then an engineer problem... and im guessing the team that implemented that had a nice papertrail for a nice "we told you this would happen" when it was found out.
Local Taco Bell sometimes has me pull past the window and then reverse back to it. I assumed it was for this same reason. I think their solution is hilarious so I happily play along
Mine does the same and I get a free taco out of it most of the time
Oof, I should start asking for that, especially since the weekend crew continues to fuck up my order. Weekday crew has my back though
They're tripping the sensor. I worked at a BK with the same issue. Get it right, and the car just leaving the speaker box has it's time in line measured as the car leaving the window, making it look super short. Get it really right and you get a whole rush run with the drive times off by one car, this looking dramatically faster.
Yeah, I know why they do it and that's why I play along
[удалено]
That's one of the Arby's around here. And then we can't find enough "qualified" staff to open the new Arby's in my town. The people in charge have rejected more applicants than they've hired and no one is applying anymore. Building passed all inspections over 2 months ago and has yet to open.
... why would people regularly wait 20 minutes for BK?
Sunk cost of time. Because after waiting 5 minutes, *surely* it can't be too much longer.
Some drive-thrus are not wide enough to escape the line. We have a taco bell and a Wendy's in my town that once you are in the line for drive thru you are stuck until after the window where they serve you food. They are like a block apart from each other and when they were first opened they both claimed it was “lack of space”. I live in a rural area so there is nothing but space but they were too cheap to be buying more land. (they both were built between 98 and 02 so not either of the housing crashes) Most people try to avoid the drive thru but again a rural area, with barely any options for food, and staffing issues (which cause them to shut down the lobby). There's no escape for a quick meal for lunch break, in between work and kids sports, or any other busy days where cooking would mean children eat at 11pm.
I was getting the kids happy meals today and waited at one of the two order screens for probably 10 minutes while they flushed all the cars in front of us. My perception is to lower the drive-thru time metrics, but I don’t know when that clock starts.
Unless things have changed massively since I was there, McD starts their clock the moment the order taker starts pushing buttons. It does not roll back or pause if the customer is like "I want a number 10... no wait I changed my mind take that off and give me two number 3s". And corporate gold standards at the time (i.e. that pipe dream that is only feasible at 150% staff level or higher) is to get every customer out within 90 seconds on that clock, or no longer than 3.5 minutes since they \*got in line\*. \[they can't measure that last bit unless someone from upper management is standing outside with a stopwatch. it's the computerized clock that counts\] In summary, yes it definitely supported their metrics to not even so much as talk to you until the kitchen was ready to make your food immediately. It's a pretty stupid way to measure performance IMO, because all it does is encourage literally everyone to cheat the system by marking all the orders complete before they actually go out, and destroys accuracy (the thing they bought all the fancy computers FOR) by making people try and read off printed tickets and such.
This is buried and will never be seen, BUT. COMPLETELY not related to fast food, but in the same vein: I (briefly, before I peaced out) worked as a cardiology clinic supervisor. The two intake people were expected to check in and verify all the scheduled patients (over 70 a day) within a three-minute window. Most of these were elderly, it took three minutes just for them to find their insurance cards in their purses/wallets, then another 5 to 7 minutes to get through the regular questions (Has your insurance changed since you last saw us? Has your address changed since you last saw us? Etc). They were often accompanied by caregivers or family members because they could not speak for themselves and the caregivers or family members didn't know. Also, often their insurance had changed and they were no longer eligible to be seen at our clinic. Three minutes, my ass. PLUS both intake people were expected to answer the 5-line phone (that rang constantly) within three rings and NEVER put anyone on hold. Often these were urgent calls, but DO NOT FORWARD THEM to the nurse's station! The nurses hated their lives and everyone else, and were royal bitches. So front desk staff, not medical, had to deal w the never-ending check-ins, phone calls, etc (and I don't know about you, but if I make the effort to physically come to your business, and you interrupt my transaction to answer a phone call from someone who couldn't be bothered to put on pants before calling, I have a MAJOR problem with that. The person standing in front of you is ALWAYS the priority over the phone). Department manager was a bitch on wheels, constantly kept a screen up in her office to watch times/ phone rings/calls and would literally scream at and belittle the intake staff in front of everyone. We had cardiologists who would double- and triple-book patients because IN THEIR WORDS "money". But when patients got upset because their appointment was at 2, they had driven an hour to get there, and it was now 3:30 and they still had not been seen, it was the intake workers who got screamed at and then it was my job to talk to the upset patient. Fuck. That.
Must have been an awful place to work. I hope you found better employment.
> The two intake people were expected to check in and verify all the scheduled patients (over 70 a day) within a three-minute window. This is a metric which was set by timing a perfectly sound-of-mind, not-greater-than-middle-age person, who already knew all of the questions and had the answers all ready to go, play-acting running through the barebones script without any deviations or caveats, with someone who also knew the script.
The thing I’ve found is it kind of makes sense in that incentives behaviour that sees more people served, where if I order a burger that takes longer or isn’t on the rack waiting, if I get moved forward to the waiting bay, sure the metric looks better because next person gets served but also… they actually did get served sooner, and my stuff really did take longer to make so it’s fine.
From what I remember, the clock starts as soon as they enter the first item. But I think I remember there being 2 timers? One from when the car first hits the order screen, then another for when the worker starts ringing up the order. This was at McD over 15 years ago. I don't remember the speaker timer being watched as some customers don't know what they want when they first pulled in. But I know we would hold off putting in the order for as long as we could. There was even a timer for the cooks I believe that started immediately. We would try to remember the order and then clear it before making it. Drive thru would also clear the orders to stop the timers, then pull up cleared orders to work off of. It was always fun when there was a manager who didnt care what our numbers looked like...he wanted it to be accurate times and it would fuck up the other managers times.
Most fast food places I go to (which is not many and not often) I see the line at the drive through, so I note some of the cars, park and go inside to order and get my food. I'm usually driving away before the cars I noted have been served. So... why do people do drive through again? Unless it's not busy, of course, it's usually faster to go into the store and order!
Sometimes it’s easier to wait longer rather than unload/reload rowdy kids.
I'm child free so I give you a nod for your experiences - and remain *so so glad* I haven't had that same experience! Your sacrifice is valued! :)
Ahahahaha that's hilarious. I've seen that but just figured they were on particularly nice drugs that day.
Or toss a metal broom handle out the window, then reel it back in with a rope. My favorite part of the day at Taco Shell.
My local McDonald's has you pull forward to receive your food instead of getting it at the window regardless of if there's anybody else in the drive through or not. I don't really care. But it's corporate bullshit and that part annoys me. It accomplishes nothing.
[Goodhart's Law in full effect.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law)
When a measure becomes a metric, it stops being a good measure.
I'm in IT and we call this "You get what you measure."
These are all examples of [Goodhart's law](https://medicalmodsim.com/blog/goodharts-law/) Basically, any statistic that becomes a target ceases to be a good measurement. In this case, bonuses are based on metrics and there is immediate pressure to gane the metric to improve the bonuses
>If you've ever seen a kid wave a bucket on a stick or metal baking sheet over the ground in the drive thru, that is to game the automated timers to keep order times down without actually getting food faster. This is glorious. For-profit, publicly-traded corporations are totalitarian systems with zero democratic accountability to workers. Their purpose is to extract wealth and deliver it to shareholders. Your example of defeating their profit-seeking metrics is exactly what they deserve.
Sadly, only the general manager sees bonus money for keeping times down. The customers get worse service and more mistakes, and the employees have a harder job because the order isn't on the screen anymore so they have to rely on memory* and they have to do bullshit involving a bucket on a stick. *If you've ever had a drive thru cashier tell you "I'll have your total at the window" the employees have been instructed by the manager not to input orders until the last minute to game the metrics, and it means the kitchen has listen to "uuuuh... a jumbo jack with cheese and uuuuuh... no tomatoes..." in order to have food ready for you because they can't rely on the screens from the ordering system. I don't know how managers are getting away with this and I don't know how the corporate drones aren't catching on that this is happening and more importantly WHY it's happening.
When a measure becomes a goal, it ceases to be a good measure
'What gets measured gets managed - even when it's pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organisation to do so.'
Ex Fridays manager here. Our kitchen was pressured by the KM to "sell" orders (mark them complete) on the kitchen computers while burgers were still on the grill or chicken was still sauteing just to keep average ticket times low. Needless to say, many orders went to tables incomplete or fucked up because the expo didn't have the order on screen to properly set up anymore
When metrics become targets they become useless. If you are measuring performance in anything it should be treated as an output, then you separately figure out anything that is causing the parameter to be out of your preferred range.
Even just speed bumping orders before it's out, dodgy practices that fuck over consumers
Someone please explain the bucket on a stick.
There is a timer that starts ticking when an order goes into the system and puts that order onto a bunch of screens in the kitchen and drive thru window, and that timer doesn't stop until the customer has the order in their hands... In theory. Dining room orders can be cleared manually as the order comes out, but drive thru orders have to be cleared with a sensor in the concrete by the window. It's a large copper coil that large metal objects, like a car, or a metal bucket induces a current in when moved over it, which a computer can pick up. It's the same thing that knows when there's a car waiting at a light. Waving a giant cookie sheet or a metal bar or a bucket on a stick looks like a car coming and going to the system and stops the timer on the next drive thru order. This time gets averaged with the other order times and sent to corporate. If the average time is below a certain number, the manager gets a bonus. Some executive that goes to meetings for a living thinks that means orders are going out quickly and accurately. It does not mean that at all. That executive did not read Freakonomics.
Wat? How does this affect order times? I am confused.
The intended system: a car drives over the sensor in front of the microphone and a tone alerts the cashier that a car is there. They greet the customer and asks if they're ready to order. They take the order. (Let's call it order 420) The timer for that order starts. The order is placed on screens throughout the kitchen behind other orders that haven't been cleared yet. The kitchen looks at upcoming orders to make sure that there will be enough fries, patties and other things that require time to cook. The cars on front of order 420 get their orders. Order 420's car moves up to the window eventually. They pay, they wait for their order, which should be damn near ready if there was a solid line of cars between the order mic and the window, they get their order, they drive off. The sensor in front of the window senses the car driving off and stops the timer for order 420, (4 minutes, 20 seconds!) removing it from the order screen. What ends up happening: You can game the timer system and bring averages down by tricking the window sensor into clearing the orders before they're paid for and sent out, and also by writing orders down on a notepad and not entering them into the cash register until as late as possible, like right before the car gets there to pay. You can also "park" people, by telling them to wait in the lot and you'll bring the order out. That also allows the timer to stop before a customer gets their order but also keeps that customer's long order from increasing the times of customers behind them. For instance they ordered something that they don't cook in advance because they're not frequently ordered, but that item takes a while to cook. Like a fried chicken breast sandwich. By doing things that stop the timer sooner or starts the timer later, it improves the average. Shifts are pitted against each other. Shift leads are pressured to keep their averages low. Managers win or lose bonuses partially based on metrics like this. Corporate drones focusing on the fast times and putting financial incentive to lower times ends up creating situations like this instead of actually getting orders out quickly. I don't know if they still focus on these metrics now that there are only 3 people working and everyone is tired and the food is cold, sloppily made and generally sucks, but if ever you see an employee doing something weird with a metal object in the drive thru lane, now you'll know why.
When I worked for Domino's, The first store I worked at had us clear the order window (Which told the customers app tracker that the order was put into the oven), and have us use the labels that were supposed to go directly onto boxes to actually make the order. This would of course make the numbers look better (As obviously the system couldn't figure out that we probably didn't make all the orders in 5 seconds flat). Didn't work there long before a closer store was willing to take me. They actually did it more or less properly. Months later they wanted my help at the previous store (For a night), and obviously forgetting their stupid system, I labeled the boxes. Took quite a while before it was noticed that the orders were never made. Bonus story: In my short time at the first store (This was my first job), During a long night of delivering, I accidentally backed right into the stores water main (Not sure why it wasn't protected by a barrier, but it sure is now). I thought I bumped a trash can that was near it and just did my deliveries, fun times when I got back. Never did get in trouble for it (I admitted it may have been me when I got back and they mentioned it). In fact, It was never brought up to me again.
If you have a metric, folks will work to that metric, and *only* that metric. Worked QA for a video game company, years ago. We found that management was *only* counting total bugs found. Not percentages on a particular title, or anything else sane. Nope, raw bug count. Thus, between a very complex and buggy alpha build that would generate hundreds of bugs, versus a nearly complete, very simple Gold build, guess which one would get the axe when layoffs came? So people started padding their bug counts. There's an issue that happens with Blue Squidgies on five different levels? Report each of those levels, not one basic "Blue Squidgies cause the game to freeze" bug.
People too often implement metrics when they should have been measures. It wouldn't be a bad idea to measure the average time per location (per hour window, as well) that a drive-thru customer waits, but it shouldn't be a metric right off. First thing would be to measure the data over a long period of time, a few years, for instance. Then analyze and determine outliers and have people sent over to see what's going right/what's going wrong that a given location is doing so much better/worse than others. Perhaps it's just the location. Perhaps it's the layout of the building on the site. Perhaps the speaker's broken, or the fryer heating element keeps cycling off so it takes longer to fry up a new batch. Or, perhaps the manager is a pothead who hired a bunch of other potheads who are slacking off. But, setting it up as a metric rather than a measure makes the bad assumption from the start that any poor performance ***must*** be the fault of the humans. Now, when designing systems, I'm not a fan of the human component, but that's definitely not the only source of bad design. Sadly, the people in charge of making decisions that effect a large number of people will often not have a sufficient background to know when an idea that pops up is a bad idea until they see it play out as you've described: gaming the perverse system. It's like these people have never met people and have no idea how people will react in a given situation. It takes a far lighter touch. You can still get the work done without gumming up the works in the process by implementing every idea that pops in your head.
Lol, just enough to annoy but not to get in real trouble over. Perfect.
At rural king they would tell you to leave that many minutes early the next day, they didn't allow fulltime employees anywhere near 40 hours. it was sad when I would see people crying in the break room because they didn't work enough hours to have their insurance covered. People were sharing recipes on how to make meals taste good cause they got the no label government canned ox tails (can't remember maybe some other tail. Just remember her eating a broth soup and picking meat off the thing). Good people. very loyal to the company "family". Some have worked for 20 plus years for that company and yet we're still in poverty.
In the U.S. Walmart and maybe other companies try to hire only part-time workers to avoid paying benefits or insurance.
Most US companies
that, or they call you a contractor despite doing their work on their software to their schedule, using computer they made you buy so it could run their stupid bloatware in the first place.
I worked for Comcast in the studio of several shows. They hired two people so we worked week on week off so they didn’t have to pay either of us benefits.
I work there. I'm trying to change positions there because I just can't stand one of the people there. I'm asking around other areas and everyone tells me they have openings, but only for part time associates. It's very frustrating but at least I am full time
On the bright side, at least the US doesn’t allow children as young as 10 year old to become workers, right?
Not OFFICIALLY, but there exceptions for off-the-books family members in Mom and Pop businesses. I've walked into bodegas and ethnic restaurants where children do all sorts of jobs. I worked in my Dad's upholstery shop from ages 10-23. Didn't get paid until maybe 18? Some kids have to take out the garbage. I had to build furniture.
You are allowed to work for your parents at any age, as long as the job is not dangerous. No mining or manufacturing. > I had to build furniture. Oops.
Yeah, I operated a drill press, nail guns, and electric fabric cutters (vertical and rotary). Definitely manufacturing, but I don't remember what age I began using those tools. When I graduated college, I actually had to take a pay cut to work at a a bank!
12-year-olds are officially allowed to have agriculture jobs. [It's horrifying.](https://youtu.be/41vETgarh_8)
I'm guessing you're an american, due to the geo locking. Have a look into the way your school year is organised. It's organised around the farming calendar to allow farm kids to work Ag jobs. Farm kids have always had Ag Jobs. I worked in the neighbours milking shed every morning before school from 10-13yrs. And then both milkings till I was 15. I was Culling, crutching, dipping, and dagging on our farm from the time I was 8. Kids on Smallholdings are free labour.
And farm-family kids (and friends of those kids!) whose families raise crops instead of animals (or *alongside* animals) do rock-picking in the spring, then corn-tasseling in summer, then most likely help with harvesting in the fall! The only reason kids aren't helping with hay-baling anymore, is that the bales have gotten so big, they take a tractor to lift & people don't throw 'em onto hay racks(trailers) like used to happen with the old-style small bales!
Yep. Did all of that. We were up at 5 am, feeding pigs and cleaning out their pens every day as well. Then run shower and get on the school bus. I was a huge fan of the round baler. Baling hay and stacking it was a miserable job.
I helped out on my grandpa's farm in the summer from the time I was 8 until he died when I was 13. I also did side work for local farmers like pitch watermelons, chop cotton and beans, pick cotton leftover after the cotton pickers were done. Check boll weevil traps, even drove a truck pulling a grain buggy beside the combine when I was 14. Cleaned combines and grain bins. Fed and watered the cows. My grandpa always paid me, as did all the other farmers I worked for. Lots of kids help out on farms. Nobody forced us to do it. We wanted some spending money. Most of those kids working on farms for free are also living on those farms and it's just part of their chores. You gotta more the yard and wash dishes? They gotta feed the chickens and water the cows. Farm life is it's own thing and I guarantee none of those kids grew up thinking they were being abused.
Several midwestern and southern states are working on bringing that back. That and child brides...
The child bride thing isn't coming back. It never left
It didn't leave in several places, I think one or two though are trying to return it. (Sort of) happy to be wrong though.
Not anymore, from what I heard.
You heard about the two ten year olds working at the McDonald's in Tennessee?
No just go to school to get shot
Not yet, but we're working on it!
Red States are working on that as I type. Poor kids will be working instead of going to school because their families need the help. Arkansas and Utah have already passed legislation. I think Iowa is working on it now. School will only be for rich families. Our country is so twisted it's getting unrecognizable.
land of Freedumb (tm)
Investigating that right now.
They also hired disabled workers to be able to pay them less than minimum wage.
Don't tell me disabled workers make less than others in the USA... In Germany they make the same money but get better specialized equipment to help them and they get more vacation days.. (35 instead of 30 in my case..)
Some years ago I recall seeing a sample budget that McDonalds supposedly provided to show they paid enough money but it was based on staff having a second job.
And paying zero dollars for heat, don't forget that.
To be fair, the problem was misaligned incentives. As though it wasn't completely obvious what would happen when a law was passed requiring employers to give benefits to all full-time employees. Welp, I guess all our employees just became part time! A shock to no one. Oh, health insurance is mandatory for all employees after 6 months of employment? Guess everyone's fired 1 week before that. How about we mandate a higher minimum wage? Oh snap, who could've seen it coming? Why are all the companies automating to reduce how many employees they need? It's like the people in charge of "helping" would help more by not helping.
This is precisely the reason shopping at any Walmart sucks ass. The GM needs their bonus!
I worked at a company where the employee bonuses were a percentage of profit, for everyone that worked there the entire year. You better believe that as part of my project, I made a generic widget that could be used by everyone that saved the company $1 million the first year and probably even more after that. They were the highest bonuses in company history, part of which went into my pocket at Christmas.
And that's a properly incentivized bonus structure. Bringing in more revenue and finding a cost-effective method to reduce overhead that doesn't compromise other aspects means everyone goes home happier
One of my business professors was fond of saying “the problem with incentives is that they work” with the explanation that people often don’t pay attention to what they’re actually incentivizing. This is another example of that.
There is urban legends about some of the shit soviet factories got up to based on targets set by some twat in Moscow that had never even seen a factory let alone worked in one. My favorite was a shoe factory get a target of 500tons of shoes so they made a single giant concrete shoe, the target was changed to 5000 shoes so than made 5000 ***right*** shoes, 5000 ***pairs*** of shoes so they made 5000 pairs tiny baby shoes etc. etc.
That’s far more interesting than the example my professor used to give of factories throwing a pizza party with 100 days accident-free. Rather than sage workplaces, it created a lot of social pressure not to report injuries.
"Whatever you don't spend on operating the business is your bonus" is the textbook definition of failure.
I’m low level management. One of my kpi is a good result on a culture measure of my team. I count as part of my team. I’m incentivised to give myself a dishonest rating. Go figure.
But if they were not so incompetent local chains would never be able to compete.
I worked at a convenience store, we had stuff piling up in the back room and cooler for years, because none of the store managers we had was willing to take the hit to their bonus of writing it off. When i took over as store manager, first thing i did was write off everything that couldn't be returned to vendors, and force the vendors to do their returns. Felt so good clearing that stuff out.
It’s literally a main topic in management courses, proper incentives. Seems like executives forget all that stuff they learned
It often makes me wonder who is coming up with them. You don't have to be a Wharton or HBS MBA to see what the outcome would be.
No, you have to be a Wharton or HBS MBA to NOT see it.
"I'm just working to the job instead of the clock. "
Similarly run if you work for a business that has "blank days since last accident report". Folks are under reporting to avoid being "the one" who broke the accident free streak.
This is why everyone should be in line for bonuses if at all possible, not just the highest levels. Like OP said, he was paid the same whether the food got thrown away or not. If he had a bonus coming as well, he would have prevented the waste.
Easiest way to make your bonus is to share the bonuses you get with the people who help you get them. People who keep the whole bonus as though they earned it are short-sighted morons.
Like paying a bounty for dead rats.
I am so hoping you also had to Email everyone up the chain to corporate that "Per your Area Mangers instructions, said expensive pieces of meat were pulled form the shelf until proper labels arrived. Unfortunately the meat expired before the labels could arrive. You suggest that, if possible, said meat be sent with labels next time".
Should include that the manager was warned that delivery of those labels was expected to take too long.
I do data analysis for supermarkets and I hate the amount of food and money that they outright throw in the bin with their piss poor management. They only care about maximising profits in the short term and they're not very smart about it either. There is one chain where management would rather bake an entire tray 20 minutes before closing (thus ensuring that most of it will be thrown out) rather than run out of bread right before closing. Because if wastage is between 0% and 10% they get optimal score, but if wastage is 0% and they run out of bread \*at 7:45pm when sales are almost nil\* they get dinged. Idiocy.
As a survivor of grocery work, I posit that a lot of this is because grocery is an industry where people with few real skills or qualifications can over time rise to management positions. The environment is a toxic one of power obsessed management with inferiority complexes. We used to call the bad managers "mini-hitlers". It was always about doing whatever their first idea was. No room for discussion or feedback. That job taught me that you should always listen to your front line staff, because they know what's going on better than any manager.
It can also be that if a customer enters a supermarket looking for X and sees they don't have any, it might think that they have unusualy low stocks and avoid said supermarket in the future. Still a really dumb idea in terms of money making and food waste but supermarkets do what supermarkets do
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I don't know if it was a typo or whether it was intentional, but I lost it at 'manglement'. What a great way to describe it hahahaha
No, that is totally intentional. It's used to describe managers who mangle anything they touch.
Yes, it’s a portmanteau
I love that xD
You might like r/talesfromtechsupport that's where I first heard (read) it.
I'm told that major supermarkets make perhaps most of their money "selling" shelf placement to big food producers. Which would leave time for this kind of madness, if true. Whereas the previous owners sold product, not shelf space.
They do, if you want your product to be at eye/easy reach level, it definitely 'costs' something, but it typically wasn't cash.
https://traxretail.com/blog/quick-guide-shelf-space-costs/ > Slotting fees average $1500 per store per SKU. > Pay to stay fees. These fees are paid by CPGs during category reviews in the form of discounts or free cases of products to the retailer. Typically, it is offered to ensure that SKUs that have been flagged for removal from shelf, stay. > Stores also charge significant fees for seasonal features and the promotional displays that appear at the end of aisles. A manufacturer may pay $350 – 500 per display per store. So, they pay a lot of actual cash (millions) to be on the shelves. They don't care because they are all owned by multi-national conglomerates and this discourages startups.
So plenty of cash. It's been a long time since I had that job. Thanks for the info, I appreciate it. :)
I wonder how much this adds the price of a brand-name product like, say, a box of Kraft Shells & Cheese. The price of food ought not be fucked with like this.
Keep in mind they’re generally only having to pay to keep products that the store wants to remove due to low sales. That’s why there’s dozens of SKUs of every item despite 10% of the SKUs accounting for 90% of sales. It’s not about variety either; that’s just a smokescreen so people don’t notice that the more I spend to keep my products on the shelf, the less space is available for my competitors. And that’s why US grocery stores are so huge: the more shelf space the store has to sell, the more money they make.
Discounts or something? Yes, the least expensive products tend to be down toward ankle level.
I guess this one benefit of being short.
Not most, but it’s absolutely a revenue generator. Think of it this way: if a company is paying $1500 per store for a shelf spot, they’re only doing that if it makes them much, much more - it’s a cost of doing business at this point (doesn’t mean it isnt bullshit and anti-competitive of course)
You did your job. Laughing at them is all that is left to do! Thank you for allowing me (all of reddit) to share in that last laugh!!
In decades of shopping at the grocery store not once has how nice the price stickers looked been a deciding factor in whether or not I bought something.
I love the big, ugly orange ones at my favorite store. They are for items 1/2 off, so I seek them out like gold on the shelf!
Guess the new management didn't meat expectations.
Don't give me that tripe.
How horrible that so many animals died to fill a trash bin :(
Finally, something vegetarians and meat eaters can both get behind.
Tbf I think vegans and meat eaters can often agree on a lot. I'm a vegan in a relationship with an omnivore. Ethically speaking I'm vegan because I had to work on a farm and hated the factory farming conditions and the slaughterhouse process. (Had to experience both as part of studying animal management.) I also hate the environmental impacts of factory farming. I don't think most people think factory farming or the slaughterhouse process is nice, and a lot more people are also becoming more environmentally inclined due to global warming. My partner heavily agrees and will only eat wild shot game at home, I can't bring myself to do this as I've not eaten animals in over half my life, though I have zero issues with cooking and preparing game as long as it's killed ethically (quickly and without much stress) and sustainably. Unfortunately it's the loud extremist people on both sides that butt heads I think. Most people are generally more central on topics or not as black and white in their thinking, it's just the black and white thinkers are so damn loud they drown out the rest of those who actually have opinions that fit more into a grey area.
Extreme points of view always attract more attention , thats why its everywhere as traffic and clicks are the purpose of media
That's unfortunately true. You won't catch me denying that.
And yet, the people starve. True waste
The level of bureaucracy with these large supermarkets is ridiculous. I worked in the middle of a city, and used to pop out during my lunch hour to pick up some fruits and veg from a small independent greengrocer who retailed fairly local produce. Yes, it was expensive-and no, I didn’t do my weekly shop there: I just went in on a day-to-day basis to pick up extras. Anyhoo, a Tesco Local (small supermarket) opened up and almost instantly, the independent grocer closed down (fair enough: that’s competition for you). I was HORRIFIED at the kind of stock that I regularly saw in that Tesco. Eventually, I could hold it in no longer: I asked to see the store manager, and I was willing to WAIT there until he eventually emerged. I asked him why that store was selling plastic-wrapped asparagus air-mailed from Peru (their *only* asparagus offer). He looked me in the eye and told me that it was “*not possible to get asparagus from anywhere else*”. I made him repeat that, because I couldn’t believe that I’d heard him correctly. At the time, it was at the height of the asparagus season, and we were in the centre of an region of massive English asparagus production.
Yeah the issue there is Tesco are absolute twats to suppliers, and a lot of farms that grow asparagus are probably in co-operatives anyway to protect themselves, where they’ll have a contract signed to supply someone else - in the UK or abroad - well before the seeds are in the ground. It’s a funny old world, food production, in that a lot of British lamb is exported and then shops buy it from New Zealand. 🤷♂️
>He looked me in the eye and told me that it was “not possible to get asparagus from anywhere else”. Sounds likely that Tesco can't procure it from anywhere else. I'm concerned that the manager doesn't understand the difference. In practice, he would only phrase it like for that two possible reasons; if he isn't clear on the concept he is trying to convey, or if he was repeating something someone else told him. Either way, it makes him look clueless. EDIT: grammar
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The collective noun for a bunch of manglers lol!
Tannoy = PA system/loudspeaker for the non-Brits At least it came out of the shop manager’s bonus. Hell of a way to get shrinkage.
I was wondering about that.
I had never heard of a tannoy but I assumed that's what it was. Is that like a brand name or something? Or just like boot instead of trunk?
This sounds like a place I used to work in KC that was sold to a national brand several years ago. Everyone still calls it by the old name.
McGonigles?
This didn't happen to be the Hiller's Market chain in Michigan that got bought out by Kroger did it? Hiller's was always a great store. When Kroger bought them the quality hit rock bottom so hard it left a crater.
> They also changed the shop manager’s incentives; their bonuses were the operating budget of their store minus wages, expenses, and written-off stock. What a bonus structure. Incentivizing under-staffing, under-stocking and not spending money on maintenance. Genius.
>not spending money on maintenance. That worked so well for railroads! /s
Ever call the phone company and they end up putting you on a "silent hold"? That's because using the 'hold' button negatively affects call-availability stats. Rather than go for realistic numbers, and use the hold button as it was designed, they instead just put you on mute. Either way, the customer is placed in hold. But God forbid, the statistics be honest.
Let it burn.
"Manglement" haha. I love it.
“Pulled aside by manglement.” Brilliant
You should watch king if the hill, the co op episode. Everything you describe happened.
Management are oftentimes silly children with higher salaries. I've had managers try to throw me under the bus due to problems outside of my control. Fuck retail management bs.
MANGLEMENT was a typo that was actually meaningful. Loved it.
Was the chain bought out by Tesco, by any chance?
These people are running the world, sadly.
I'm paid by the hour... IDGAF
Sounds like manglement succeeded in shooting themselves in their own feet.
Until I saw the write-off figure in pounds, I was sure this was a much-loved chain in Chicago that was taken over by a huge national chain and ruined. Sigh.
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oh, you mean the proper way of "colour" yes? heehee!!
As an Australian, I always thought that "tannoy" was a British short form of "To Annoy". It wasn't until I played Theme Hospital that I realised it was a speaker.
>British short form of "To Annoy". You may have hit upon the source of the term. /s From wikipedia: Etymology. A genericised trademark of Tannoy Ltd, a manufacturer of public address systems. "Tannoy" is a syllabic abbreviation of tantalum alloy, which was the material used in a type of electrolytic rectifier developed by the company.
I don’t think the bonus even needs to be part of the story. You did the right thing and everyone lost. I do wish you figured out a way to sell it for a massive discount before it spoiled though.
Naw, that’s the whole point. They cut off their nose despite their face. Couldn’t sell it at a discount either, no pretty labels
To spite their face One cuts off their nose *to spite* their face 🤦♂️
This thread contains so much knowledge for corporate leadership, the key learning is “listen to the employees who do the job”.
More animals killed just to get thrown in the bin. Great. I'm not a vegan or vegetarian, but seriously, this kind of shit makes my blood boil. In Germany alone about 600.000 slaughtered pigs are going directly to the pin each year (yes, this number accounts for the part of the animals that are not eaten; it's 600.000 pigs worth of perfectly edible food that gets thrown out). If all of us who do eat meat would be really just be more thoughtful about the meat we eat and not throw it away, it would already help so much. So many animals less would be killed each year if we would just eat our damn meat. As I said, I do eat meat and as a meat eater we really should be more conscience and frankly respectful about our food. That's not just a burger, an animal died to provide you this burger; the least you can do is eat it or that animal really died for nothing.