MORE THOUGHTS ON WORK

The other day I sat down to write about my job and the pleasure I take in working with the women there.  I wandered off through a litany of my jobs in the last few years.  Probably because I woke up at 5 am and couldn't get back to sleep.  Blogging while sleepy makes for meandering thoughts.

When I told someone in my book group that I was hoping to get out of my last job and wanted to work with women again, she was skeptical.  I have met a lot of women who prefer to work for men.  I don't get it.  I have had the best experiences working with women and especially women in creative environments.  My last job was tolerable but tiring when it came to the sexist "jokes",  language, innuendo and the boys will be boys stuff.  Even that isn't what broke down my desire to remain.  There was a fundamental unfairness in the compensation offered and a negative attitude toward the employees by the owner.  He harped on any little problem and rarely acknowledged the positive.

In the jobs I have had in the past 9 years, the businesses owned and run by women have been the most "fair" when it comes to how employees were treated.  There was concern for the individual, appreciation was expressed for hard work and benefits were more generous.  And with those policies and attitudes came more success than in the last business I worked for.  Karma?  I don't know.  Just an observation that with happy, supported employees comes hard work and extra effort which contributes to the bottom line.

The exception was the hotel.  The manager was thin skinned and overworked so her management was uneven.  She had a great assistant manager who is the main reason I stayed so long.  The owners of the company were the big problem.  They are multi-millionaires who were incredibly cheap when it came to employees.  They were known to say they hated having employees (they are primarily involved with real estate investments and built the hotel for reasons unexplained.)  They paid just over minimum wage and I was amazed to find out shortly before I left that no one had had a raise in over 4 years. 

When I left  a couple of long time employees said something along the lines of "all the good ones leave."   That does seem to be the way it works.  Turnover is a pretty strong indication that there is something wrong not with the employees but with management.  But as often happens, those who create the problem tend to blame others rather than recognising their part.

The man I worked for last was talking with one of his insurance agents and their conversation turned to finding good employees.  The insurance guy said  "We don't have an unemployment problem in this country, we have a lot of unemployable people who don't really want to work."  My old boss took up that statement as his new complaint.  I pointed out that I had seen ads from insurance companies when I was job hunting and they wanted all kinds of skills and experience, even sometimes a license yet offered no more than $10.00 an hour in pay.  Do they really think that is going to attract qualified applicants? 

Getting a job in a tough economy is important, but what is the point of a job that doesn't pay enough to cover even the most austere expenses?  (Remember, we live in one of the most expensive areas of the country - maybe $10.00 an hour is a living wage in other parts of the US, but not in the San Francisco area...) 

Blaming employees for the cost of doing business; downsizing, reducing benefits and pay, not offering sick

days or vacation time, etc. are short sighted and short term fixes which rarely, if ever, positively affect the bottom line of a business. And clearly, we have all seen the death of good customer service, the long wait to get through to a live person when we call, had to search for an employee when we are shopping and need assistance and the long check out lines in stores. 

Now that the economy is starting to recover, it would be a great idea for businesses to invest in hiring, training and generously supporting some good customer service employees again.  We would all benefit.

WE ALL PAY FOR FREE

At work I get a lot of newsletters and industry related forum stuff.  Many times there are opinion pieces by business owners and consultants. 

This week there was one about long term customers versus new customers.  I occasionally wonder if I am the only consumer who is offended by the  deals "new customers" can get that are so much better than what I can get as a long term customer, so this article caught my eye.

What if loyal, long-term customers requested their bills to be reduced by the amount being charged to offset the “free” offers made to new customers? How quickly things might change.

Free offers frequently start small. But innocent, complimentary offers often accelerate into awarding outrageous commissions, “finder’s fees,” travel junkets, fishing trips or outright kick-backs to people who refer work to us.

Okay - not exactly where I was expecting this discussion to go - what happened to the customer?  Why are we back to talking about the woes of the business owner?  It goes on:

A freebie mentality doesn’t involve only introductory offers to potential customers. It involves the people who work for our company, too. Are “free” health benefits and other “perks” really free? What about the automatic pay increases expected year after year. Who pays for that?


Business owners aren’t exempt from this freebie mentality, either. How often is the company check book used as a piggy bank for the owner’s personal purchases (some of which can be pretty grand) that bring no value to either the company or its customers?

Too often, these “perks” are viewed as entitlements of business ownership, rationalized by all the hard work and financial risk the owner takes in building his business. Somehow the concept of “someone always pays” gets overlooked.

I’m always intrigued when someone comments about a business owner’s ability to “write off” legitimate business trips, charitable donations or other business purchases. The underlying message is that these things are free.

Okay - so the customer has sort of been left out of this conversation in a direct way, but I understand that the writer is speaking to the "big picture."

As an employee of 3 different small companies in the past 10 years, I can testify that there is not simply one mindset driving the way business is conducted. With regard to employees and expenses, this is my experience.

I worked for a billionaire who didn't pay employees much above minimum wage, who didn't give annual raises (employees went for 4-5 years with no raise when I was there), who only paid the minimum 25% of the employee's health care premium and who gave a $50.00 Target gift card at Christmas.  They offered 3 paid sick days, we could earn paid time off and there was a bump if you worked a holiday. He did not mingle his personal expenses with the business.  However, he gave comps to friends and family, and used the services at no expense to himself for very long periods of time, making those services unavailable for paying customers.

I worked for a woman who was the sole support of her family (her husband was the "stay at home").  I got raises at least once a year, she paid the entire employee premium, we had paid holidays and vacation plus she paid for the week we were closed at the end of the year. She also gave year end bonuses which were tied to the profit of the company - very generous. I wasn't privy to all the bookkeeping but it did not appear that she ran any of her personal expenses through the company.

Now I am working for an owner who likes to think of himself as generous.  He pays slightly above average and I did get a promised raise during my first year. We get no paid time off - no sick days, no paid holidays, no holiday pay, no paid vacation.  He does pay 75% of the employee health premium. Every so often he will hand out a $100.00 bill. 

He likes to complain about how he can't afford to do this and that but as time has gone on I see and hear a lot which says otherwise.  He runs most of his personal expenses through the business.  He writes off his personal travel, for example, trips to Hawaii, Mexico and Las Vegas by "visiting a local businessman while he is there".  He writes off his clothes as "uniforms." All his and his wife's car expenses, entertainment, even their home utilities are paid by the business.

Does that make it "free" to him?  No.  It is his business and what remains as profit at the end of the year before or after expenses is his. However, if covering personal expenses makes it impossible to cover the needs of the business or offering a few days of sick pay, then it goes beyond being all about his paycheck.

We all pay for the business decisions being made.  As President Obama said in his State of the Union Address - if we raise the minimum wage then those workers will have more money to spend on goods and services. Bringing manufacturing back from overseas may cost a company more, but it will, in turn, benefit the whole of the economy.  Each decision has ripples - for good or for bad.

Employees who work without the basics of compensation and care become resentful employees;  probably not as effective and loyal as those who feel valued by their employer.  Customers who feel second best to the "potential" customer are likely to take their business elsewhere or just stop using that kind of service. 

As a customer and an employee - I feel the pinch on both sides.  I know that nothing is free.  My employer has the right to decide what is important to him when offering employee compensation.  I have to decide if my loyalty is being rewarded by the businesses I patronize and by my employer's business I put so much time and energy into.

YET ANOTHER REASON NOT TO SHOP AT WALMART

I have only been inside a Walmart store a few times. I have been aware of their anti-union practices for a very long time and chose not to shop there for that reason. Over the years, more and more news has supported my decision.

The actions of our country's largest private employer indicate that they have no regard for their employees, and in fact count on their 70% annual turnover rate to continue to make their profits go up. The majority of their employees with children live below the poverty line, the buy in for benefits at 35% of the total cost is double the national average so less than half opt to buy in. A 2004 UC Berkeley study showed that California taxpayers pay 86 million dollars to Walmart employees - imagine what it is now!

Walmart has been sued and found guilty of numerous wage and hour violations (otherwise known as theft.) They manage by intimidation and employees are frequently threatened with firing if they report overtime, injuries or other inequities on the job such as being denied lunch breaks. Gender discrimination has been proven, as has the knowing hiring of undocumented workers and breaking of child labor laws.

And now we can add discrimination due to sexual orientation. Fernando Gallardo, an 18 year-old resident of Las Vegas, got a seasonal job Walmart. A few weeks into the job, Gallardo says, his immediate supervisor asked him "point-blank" in front of four of his coworkers if he was gay. "I told her yes, and after that she was very rude and short with me," he told The Advocate.

Following that incident, his duties were changed, he was told to wear a yellow vest and "wander around the store." His supervisor and manager stopped speaking to him. His complaints to the store management didn't change anything. He left the job after he overheard two managers talking loudly. One, he says, told the other that Gallardo was "a little girl. All he is good for is walking around the store."

When contacted, Walmart corporate spokesman Phil Keene said the company fosters "respect for individuals" as one of its core beliefs and a foundation of Walmart culture.

Gallardo has filed a complain with the Nevada EEOC. He could win monetary damages and another job with Walmart, but he is requesting that the company hold mandatory annual cultural diversity training for all Walmart and Sam's Club supervisors and managers in Clark County, Nev., with a certified cultural diversity trainer.