Corporate Logic

Once again Cwnmamau of the Tiny Ouroboros has made a post which has inspired me to rant a bit. Much as she has dealt with the corporate whatnot, I, too, have been unfortunate enough to be employed by a major corporate chain, though in my case it was one of the big-box hardware stores. After that, I worked for a much smaller and more niche corporation, but a corporation none the less.

In terms of making money, there is probably nothing better than the corporate model. Purchases can be made in massive quantities, shipped to a distribution center, then split off to the individual stores. The ability to buy in such bulk allows for selling at prices no Mom & Pop store can begin to compete with. Along with establishing near monopolies on the markets for their goods, they also compete only with other big-box corporations for employees. Unskilled laborers are left choosing which of these giants to work for, creating competition for the job, allowing the corporation to keep wages low.

For those at the top, it is an amazing business. For those somewhere else down the chain, and even for the consumer, the corporate system has wrecked the working and shopping experience.

In my time working as a menial laborer, I made several observations about the way things worked. I, as well as the rest of the people on the sales floor and behind the cash register, had fixed hourly wages. If the store did well, we got our fixed hourly wage. If the store did poorly, we got our fixed hourly wage, albeit with the risk of cut hours. No matter the performance of the store, the pay was the same. Now tell me, what motivation do the employees then have to do a good job. No matter the quality, the wage is the same.

The managers were on salary. Much like the employees, the assistant manager salaries were unaffected by store performance. Only the store manager had any monetary intensive to actually perform well.

Above him was the district managers. Most of these guys got their jobs by knowing people. Some had perhaps worked retail long ago, but most hadn’t.

The further up the chain, the more privileged the life the person had led. By the time you passed district, no one had ever lived a day of their life under a roof with less than six digits coming in, and none had ever seen things from the store employee side of things. Yet these people were the ones making the decisions that we had to deal with.

So decisions by the out-of-touch corporate jocks trickle their way down to the store managers who could do a better job running their stores without the know-nothing district folk breathing down their necks, until eventually the entire store is having to deal with corporate’s dumb ideas. No incentive, and disdain for their employers. Starting to figure out why the people there aren’t exactly happy?

On the topic of corporate decisions and policies, let’s discuss the worst policy of all. All customers are valuable. As someone who’s been at the mercy of these “valued” individuals, I can say with all sincerity that some customers the store is better off without, no matter the size of their wallet. It is this policy that allows customers to berate employees, and forces the employees to just sit their with a smile and take it. Worst of all, such abusive behavior is often rewarded with store credit or the like, in order to appease and keep this “valuable” customer. To corporate jocks everywhere, no. This customer is not valuable. This customer is a burden to your store. This customer knows how to game to system to get free stuff, and in the process berates and demeans the employees, drags down the whole store’s moral, which worsens service to your good customers. Fire the customer.

So what happens to the good employees? They get rewarded with things like more closing and opening shifts, more responsibilities, and the same pay.  They ask for more pay for their hard work? There’s fifteen other guys lined up willing to do the same thing for less, don’t push it. Vacation? Same thing. Sick time? See above.

Things aren’t good for the good, loyal customer either. They just get sent on their way without the discounts or freebies they could have gotten by dropping a few F-bombs at the cashier.

The whole system rewards the bad customers, which causes the employees who already dislike their job and their employer to dislike their customers as well, which rather reduces service as a whole.

And let’s not get started on two-faced, back stabbing managers who game the system from the inside.

Stepping towards the top, lets talk corporate economics. As I stated earlier, I used to work for a small corporation in a niche industry. When the economy tanked a couple years back, it started hurting the corporation. Our little satellite plant was still turning a profit. The main corporate plant, losing about twice what we were making. So what do they do? Give us the axe, of course! Drop the good, hard workers in order to stay afloat a few more months.

That’s the thing about corporate economic sense. It is all short term. Cutting salaries a bit and keeping the plant that is making money is likely much more sound than killing it off. Thing is, job cuts and outsourcing cause the stock price to go up right now.  And that’s what these big corporates sell. Stocks. Not product. Stocks.

In any case, what you need to take out of this is simple. If you are going to treat anyone in the corporation like garbage, make sure it’s the garbage at the top. And if you still insist on treating the people at the bottom like garbage, then you had best pray to whatever god you believe in that I don’t see it happen. Unlike the employees you love to trample over, I am not bound by the corporate to treat you as anything better than the scum you are.

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