Today I accidentally stumbled upon a piece of news that happened in a particular Blenz franchise here in Vancouver a few days back. For those who are unaware, Blenz is a coffee house. What caught my attention was this image that has been floating around the Internet:
As it appears, it seems like four employees that worked for this particular Blenz franchise were fed up with their working conditions and felt that they were not appreciated and therefore they decided to quit by placing this large note on the window of the store for the entire public to view which is essentially the four employees being blunt and direct to their former boss, which is possibly the franchise owner, that they quit due to various circumstances.
I know the first reaction from most people is that these guys are like heroes for sticking it to their former employer in such a publicized way for treating them poorly. Even for myself, I am one of the first people who would absolutely agree that in many cases certain companies treat their employees as if they are expendable resources to help drive profits for the business without too much concern about their personal well being and so I would applaud them for speaking out. As odd as it may sound to many business owners or people who work in higher management roles, often times these complaints and concerns that are brought up by employees is to help the business grow as they genuinely like the company and want to help improve it.
In regards to agreeing with the way they chose to deal with the situation though, I personally don’t fully agree with it. Keep in mind that I personally can’t verify the merits of the information provided on that picture, so I am just basing this from a general sense as I see and hear similar situations happen everyday in other companies. For this particular incident though, since this is a company that is a fairly large organization, there were probably other ways that they could of gotten their voice to be heard internally such as attempting to contact individuals from a higher corporate level to help rectify the situation. Who knows, maybe the person is just following rules and directions from his superiors which is often a factor that many people overlook.
If you think about it too, even for myself as a general spectator of the incident I would immediately think of the entire Blenz company as a whole in this ordeal as oppose to just that particular franchise. So unfortunately, if their intent was to just target this particular franchise operator, placing it for the public to view in this fashion is probably going to create a public relations disaster for the company in general which I don’t think is what they originally intended to do. Carelessly start a fire in one place and the odds that it will likely create a fire in other places that you did not intend are highly possible.
Like every large company, you are bound to have executives and managers who seem to care about nothing but themselves and profits. Likewise, large companies are inevitably going to have certain employees who do nothing but abuse company resources and to try to work the system for personal gains and so everyone needs to see things from each other’s point of view. However, I personally believe that if a company worries too much of its material assets while neglecting to take care of its most important assets, their employees, they will not be as successful as they could be. Like the old saying goes, if you take care of the people they will take care of the profits.