There was a scenario today which made me wonder how many others would do the same thing if the situation arose. Essentially, I went to a restaurant today for a small family gathering and in this place you would check off what you want from the menu which they would then make. Afterwards they return the list of what you ordered and then proceed to cross them out as the food is brought to your table. For one of the orders the staff seemed to have made an error as they accidentally made and charged us for something that was more expensive. Their error was apparent too since you can clearly see which dishes were marked down.

However, it was decided that we wouldn’t make a fuss about it as it will potentially get one of the workers in trouble and so we just ended up accepting the dish and the higher price tag. I was advocating though that it should have at least been brought to their attention because as a business they should want to correct their mistakes. Otherwise they will likely not even be aware that they are making these kinds of mistakes.

It does make me wonder though as I pretty much guarantee if this wasn’t a formal restaurant but rather a fast food chain that most people would have no issues in returning the item and asking for a new one. That makes me wonder, why is it that way? In both cases you could argue that asking for a new item could get the person in trouble in terms of their job evaluation.

It makes me think too about things like tipping where people say in the food industry you tip people because you know that the wage they make is very little and so they rely on those tips to survive. Again though, you could argue it’s the same for like a person that works in a fast food restaurant. So why is it so different there?

Funny enough, even for this I don’t think I have ever been told an official story on how this habit has developed. Maybe someone out there has an actual story or tale about this to shed some light.

I was watching various videos recently that talked about the different approach when it came to employee and wages of a company. Specifically, it was comparing how Walmart paid its employees extremely less compared to Costco who paid its employees more. The point of this was how Costco as a business has continued to grow whereas Walmart often mentions things like the economy stops them from paying people more.

The interesting points were things such as considering turnover rates and how much that costs a business. For example, the process of trying to hire and train a new employee costs more than if you try to keep them around for this scenario. This holds true even for a consumer in many ways when you think about it. Think of a situation like a cell phone service prover where it could literally cost them maybe $1000 worth of advertisement to get the consumer to notice them and then sign up. Then by being say inconsiderate and not giving people like a free voicemail whereas many would they could essentially lose people over like a $3/month feature. Like in that case it may make more sense to do more to keep them.

I even have a funny example of this before where I worked for a company and hands down I was one of its key people they relied on and had the numbers to back it up. I read company memos on how it was a corporate policy of sort to only give X amount of people certain wage increases due to budget. So therefore, even if say 100% of the staff were impeccable and deserved full raises or recognition managers were told not to do so.

Sure enough when it came time to learn about how they were going to reward me they came up with what seemed to be template responses while trying to justify a cheap wage increase. This didn’t work too well for them as my situation was kind of special since there was too much factual documentation of the work and results I have achieved that were extremely beyond my role requirements.

I eventually did stop working for the company and the interesting thing was people were telling me how they were specifically spending all this money and energy to find a replacement of me in every way. Example, the assumption of if they found another person of a similar ethnicity that they would get the same results. It ultimately didn’t work out too well as the department reported record losses as well. So like in that example too, it would have probably been better if they invested more into the employee they already had as opposed to having to spend more after trying to get someone new.

Something to think about the next time you are thinking on the best way to grow your business when it comes to the people you surround yourself too.

I heard some interesting stories the other day about various people who despise their jobs and would constantly say they are going to quit. Ultimately they don’t though and when asked why they mention that the money is okay. The interesting thing is that their negativity continued to spread apparently such as them telling new employees how crappy the company was.

If you had an employee like that where technically they did everything well at their job but behind the scenes they were acting as a cancer of sort in terms of morale would you keep them around? Most people would probably say no but at the same time would probably keep them too. I know in a business environment it can be tricky too as technically if the person isn’t doing anything wrong in the actual job then it can open a whole can of worms if you let the go.

It’s almost like the reverse problem where people normally say every company is greedy and just wants money from people but at the same time this can definitely be true when it comes to the other way around. I think either way if anyone is doing anything 100% just for money then it usually won’t work out very well in terms of quality and giving one’s best efforts.

I have seen it many times before but it is always interesting to hear this. Essentially, Christmas is coming up and usually that is when businesses scramble to get their products out for the shopping season. For consumers that usually means scrambling to find those hot products too as they stock up. Today a person was telling me that he was going to apply for this seasonal job at a retail store for the sole purpose of getting this hot release coming as this way he will know immediately when items will be arriving. This isn’t like a student either as it is someone who is rather well off and self employed.

And yes, people were saying why waste time as if he wanted it that badly he could even just pay someone to line up. But of course that then led to him saying things like how it would be fun to try something a little different and that it’s temporary anyways. I was thinking too while on paper he probably sounds like he will be the worst employee ever as he is working to try and make it easier to find items, ironically the business will probably get a good worker as he doesn’t care about the money and is pretty clear in terms of what he is offering and his background kind of shows what he can accomplish.

It must be really weird as a hiring manager I bet though which is kind of funny too as like in this case it’s a seasonal position and so the applicant has an expectation it is temporary anyways. However, I bet in most cases the hiring manager would think it makes no sense even if the person is coming in and will do the job with professionalism while being a team player. At the end of the day I think it is more about the experience though. Like in this case he most likely wants to experience how it is like being on the inside of the crowd rush. It’s not so weird to me anyways when you think of it with that perspective.

I saw an interesting situation today that is probably a common scenario in most businesses. Essentially, in an organization there was this person who used to work really hard and was good at what he did. However, as time went on it seemed like the quality of his work and commitment to the company began to drop. He would then often complain about the most mundane things and generally not taking initiative to make himself better.

Of course during this phase he would always say nothing is wrong. As time went on people were able to get the real truth out of him as he openly admitted that he wasn’t do things as he felt he was unappreciated compared to others. This ended up being pretty costly for the company too as that grudge translated to the person not treating the customers as well too which in hence resulted in less sales.

I think the thing to take away here is you have to find a way to address people like that right away as opposed to hoping the problem will go away on its own. Like in this case it’s not uncommon that people will purposely under perform out of spite to try and make themselves feel better. Usually it can be a little confrontational to have the person in-charge to address it directly and that is when other less senior people in an organization can often be better at getting disgruntled people to say what is really on their mind. I suppose you can say in many ways it feels more like an anonymous survey when people other than the boss starts to ask questions.