How to Balance Standards - Work and Personal
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@scottalanmiller said:
@handsofqwerty said:
And stores compete, so if we do better and it makes it so someone will come to my store instead of one of the other local stores, that's viewed as a success by the company.
If that is true, why is someone trying to keep that from happening and why hasn't the store manager or regional manager or higher stepped in? Unless they have, you have something wrong in your assumptions.
Because the company doesn't work that way. But we get reports every week about how we did compared to other stores in tons of metrics and we compete with other stores in our district especially to do better than they are. And the success of our store, in most metrics, is directly linked to me.
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@handsofqwerty said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@handsofqwerty said:
And stores compete, so if we do better and it makes it so someone will come to my store instead of one of the other local stores, that's viewed as a success by the company.
If that is true, why is someone trying to keep that from happening and why hasn't the store manager or regional manager or higher stepped in? Unless they have, you have something wrong in your assumptions.
Because the company doesn't work that way. But we get reports every week about how we did compared to other stores in tons of metrics and we compete with other stores in our district especially to do better than they are. And the success of our store, in most metrics, is directly linked to me.
This doesn't make sense. If it doesn't work that way, then you have your answer. The metrics saying that "you do well are meaningless and are a red herring. Ignore them. They have nothing to do with your decisions.
If the company cared about those metrics and interpreted them the same as you do, they would make it clear. They have made it very clear that they do not.
Your statement here should provide the answer that you are looking for. Corporate does not agree with your opinion as to what is valuable, period. So what you are calling "above and beyond" the store sees as less than ideal - meaning you are falling below the bar, not rising above it.
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@handsofqwerty said:
A) It used to. He is alien to the culture because he's only been in the store 3 months. But this was all started long before I started back in 2010.
So it's really what the company is. I think you know that the policy and guidelines are clear and are just hoping for justification to do something else. I don't see any reason to even think doing anything but what you are asked to do is warranted. I know you want to do a "better job" for your customer's customers. But that's not your mandate and they seem to be making it painfully clear that it is not appreciated.
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@handsofqwerty said:
B) The old manager, who was the foundation of the store, did. The current actual manager in the position hasn't really voiced an opinion yet.
Presumably because he does not need to if his policies and desires are being passed on appropriately. Silence IS a message.
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@handsofqwerty said:
C) They are behind our results, but are totally ignorant to our methods, as they are at the district level (our DM is a totally incompetent idiot too).
This implies that they don't care all the way up. So if it is not important to them, why is it important to you?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@handsofqwerty said:
C) They are behind our results, but are totally ignorant to our methods, as they are at the district level (our DM is a totally incompetent idiot too).
This implies that they don't care all the way up. So if it is not important to them, why is it important to you?
Because I care. Because I refuse to come down to their standards for my own ethical reasons. And because the customers don't normally get that from a retail store and I feel they should. Yes, it's my standard, not the company's.
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@handsofqwerty said:
Because I refuse to come down to their standards for my own ethical reasons.
This is a problem. You apply ethics inappropriately. You have a job to do and want to do a different one. You feel that you get to determine what your job is rather than your employer. This has been a problem you've had for years. Every job you have you have the identical issue. You get clear instructions, make up in your mind a reason why you feel doing something different than you are told is not just acceptable but better and then do explicitly something you are not supposed to do.
ANY attempt to justify what you are doing is the same pattern over and over and over. You are not learning from these things, you are just making excuses. What you are doing and saying is completely predictable. You don't properly understand who you are responsible to, you don't understand what "doing a good job is" in the correct context, you have your own priorities and you attempt to justify them instead of being open about the fact that you simply don't like the job, want to do something else and try to make it seem, in your mind but to no one else, that you can redefine the job in a way that is "better" from your perspective.
You are not doing right by the person you are responsible to, plain and simple.
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@handsofqwerty said:
Because I care.
Then you need to fix this attitude problem because that's what it is. You have decided, for whatever reason, to care about something that isn't your position to care about. Is that okay? Yes. Is it okay to let that affect things you are supposed to care about? No.
It's really that simple. You don't get to pick what you care about at work. You have a job to do.
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@handsofqwerty said:
And because the customers don't normally get that from a retail store and I feel they should.
Tough. Not your place, in any way, to make that decision.
It would be a wonderful world where that was the case, but you aren't going to make that world happen and you don't have the ethical right to demand that it be done without the store's blessing. You are actually going against good ethics rather than with them. You have ethical obligations to the store, not the customer, and you are trying to short circuit that in a way that makes no sense and doesn't hold up in any sensible, ethical way.
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@handsofqwerty said:
Yes, it's my standard, not the company's.
There is a lot of "my" in all of this. Stop, think. If you keep saying "my standards" and "how I want it to be" and "I feel it should be this way", everyone one of those is a red flag. You know that you aren't doing what you are supposed to be doing. What all of these things say, and what has always been your recurring problem is that when it comes to your obligations and responsibilities you say I don't care. That's what these statements say.
You say things like "you care about the customers", but you have no responsibility to them. You do have a responsibility to your employer and what you are saying with this statement is that "you don't care about your responsibilities to them."
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If you want to have a retail shop and have happy customers and provide them with great guidance, that's wonderful. There is a path for that.... it is called opening your own store. If you think that customers will pay for good service like that good luck, because if they did IT people all over would jump on that bandwagon. But if that's what you want, you need to do that on your own and not accept a job with responsibilities and obligations to someone paying you and try to do what you want to do instead of what you are hired to do.
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OMG I just had this vision of a store called "Crazy AJ's" with billboards down the freeway with a picture of AJ's head and a laptop floating beside him and some weird slogan.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Obviously, but they are also violating the social contract of sales - asking for technical advice from a sales person. They know that they are doing this when they go in. It's just part of the social structure. When you go to a store and "ask for advice", you know that you are not getting good advice except for within a very carefully defined, socially accepted window and that even that is coloured by margins, stock levels, etc.
I would argue this pint, not in agreement withAJ, but in respect to how bad people really are.
Warning, opinion incoming!!
The general population honestly has no clue how shit works. They walk in to a store and ask advice for a computer with not even an inkling that the person they are talking to is a sales person and not a technical person.
General consumers do not have this knowledge, ever. How can you even imply people "know this" going in whenever among IT professionals, we see this every day?
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@JaredBusch said:
The general population honestly has no clue how shit works. They walk in to a store and ask advice for a computer with not even an inkling that the person they are talking to is a sales person and not a technical person.
I don't go for this distinction between sales and technical, as I've argued a million times before with @scottalanmiller. I don't want to go over old ground, but just to say that in this case, they are getting good technical advice from AJ, so the general population are doing right by asking his advice.
I get advice from retailers about hi-fi as it's not an area where I have any expertise but I like music. I go to specific retailers whose business model is based on building a good reputation for technical advice which allows them to charge a slight premium and encourages repeat business. It's crucial for hi-fi retailers since without their reputation for unbiased technical advice, I'd be better off buying from Amazon and saving a few bucks. The store employs the hi-fi equivalent of AJ - people who are simply passionate about the products and passionate about making customers happy. This is something that seems to be happening with AJ's store, even though I'm guessing its not something normally associated with Staples (we have a Staples in my town and I'd eat my own arm before taking advice from the spotty adolescents I've seen "giving advice" to customers, you'd get more expertise from my 10 year old son).
Just because AJ's tech supervisor doesn't like it, doesn't mean AJ is wrong. His supervisor could just be an idiot for all we know.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Just because AJ's tech supervisor doesn't like it, doesn't mean AJ is wrong. His supervisor could just be an idiot for all we know.
It's his boss, so AJ is going against the policy of the store as they are portraying it to him.
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Obviously, but they are also violating the social contract of sales - asking for technical advice from a sales person. They know that they are doing this when they go in. It's just part of the social structure. When you go to a store and "ask for advice", you know that you are not getting good advice except for within a very carefully defined, socially accepted window and that even that is coloured by margins, stock levels, etc.
I would argue this pint, not in agreement withAJ, but in respect to how bad people really are.
Warning, opinion incoming!!
The general population honestly has no clue how shit works. They walk in to a store and ask advice for a computer with not even an inkling that the person they are talking to is a sales person and not a technical person.
General consumers do not have this knowledge, ever. How can you even imply people "know this" going in whenever among IT professionals, we see this every day?
Because my argument is that people are not really that dumb and are just lazy or hopeful that somehow they will get good advice by doing nothing and spending nothing. I give people credit for being more intelligent. If you take the computers out of the equation and you go into a car dealer, the social contract is the same but no one tries to pretend that you are going to get good advice. A salesman's job is to sell things, not to give guidance. At the end of the day, they are paid purely through moving product - and everyone knows this and knows what it means.
When you set foot into a Chevy dealer, everyone knows that the guy who works there is going to attempt to sell you a Chevy, not to determine if a Ford, or a boat, is a better choice for your needs. There is never an obligation for the Chevy salesman to be a transportation consultant, and it would be incredibly silly for someone to expect such.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
This is something that seems to be happening with AJ's store, even though I'm guessing its not something normally associated with Staples (we have a Staples in my town and I'd eat my own arm before taking advice from the spotty adolescents I've seen "giving advice" to customers, you'd get more expertise from my 10 year old son).
From the description, this is something going on at the store only when it is AJ doing the work and not something that the store itself is fostering nor supporting nor doing when AJ isn't doing the work. And when AJ moves on, the store will lack this, we must presume.
There can always be a rogue person who decided to not act in their own self interest or in the interest of their implied obligations. Generally they do not last long, however, for the obvious reasons. In this example, AJ has been back less than a year and is moving on in a few weeks.
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@handsofqwerty said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@handsofqwerty said:
My job is to make the customer happy and the company money. My sales accomplish both.
Is that official policy or an assumption? Is it in writing?
No, that's policy. We push for warranties and tech work because it's very profitable for the company, and honestly it's also in the customer's best interest. Also, we are to make customer's happy because that affects CSAT scores and the like.
By all measures I've seen warranties are only good for the companies, and rarely good for the customers - A $20 warranty on a $100 part that 95% of the time will continue to work well beyond the warranty period is not good for the customer. Oh sure, it's good for that 5% who can take advantage of it, but for the rest it's a complete waste.
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@handsofqwerty said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@handsofqwerty said:
- provide quality technical work, and that means quality from a professional standpoint, not a corporate one
Again, is this in writing from the company?
No, their standards are the corporate ones. I meet those and exceed them. But by doing that, I've built the long-term business and I've got a huge list of customers as proof of that.
I'm with Scott here, where is the actual written policy that states this is your job?
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@handsofqwerty said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@handsofqwerty said:
No, I'm signing off that the work is completed to both the company's standards and mine.
Where does it state that it is to your standards? Is that in writing? Unless it is, I feel you have made this up completely because you want it to be the case.
There is nothing in writing about that Scott. But the difference between shoddy and good tech work in many cases isn't spelled out word for word at most companies. But someone who's technical can tell the difference.
You're wanting to update the software on the systems that aren't part of your work order it actually probably costing the company money. Instead of moving onto the next computer and fixing what the company was paid to fix, your wasting the companies time giving something away for free. If the company felt it was prudent to update those software packages, they would probably make up a new policy/process that included them, and most likely at the same time either simply publish this fact to make the customer feel better about their purchase, or raise rates to cover this added time, or both.
Arguably you're stealing from the company by spending their time, the time they are paying you, to do a job the didn't ask you to do.
I think Scott hit the nail on the head - you don't work for the customer of the store, you work for the store.
This makes me think of the movie A Knight's Tale - when Thatcher is asked by the maiden to loose. Of course he wanted to say no because originally he felt that his customer was himself and possibly the crowd (who of course wanted to see him win). But when he realize his real customer (OK I might be reaching a bit) was the maiden, he had to back down and start losing.
