In
big business, trapped in the
crevice between the actual employee and the customer, there's a
class that fits neither description. The lowest
echelon in
grotesquely big corporations usually consist of disposable employees with little to no interest in how much money Mothercorp will rake in next year with her
hungry, clawing
fingers. Incidentally, these
people are also the ones who deal with the most precious
asset of a
company, the
customers on a daily basis.
So, how does a company keep and make more
customers when their
ambassadors have the least to lose by offending them? Treat the
customer service people as
customers themselves.
Assault them with the same
sound and fury spoon-fed to
consumers in every
advertisement until their
ears ring and your
logo sparkles in their eyes. Like a
dictator who imbues his soldiers with righteous
patriotism and sends them out to
dice people up, the
corporations do their best to insure that their
little people believe in the righteous goodness of their
employers.
Some companies start this before the
hapless victim is even
hired. You may have noticed
pamphlets or other materials in
fast food restaurants that say things like, "
Join our Team!" with pictures of
shiny, happy people in their
uniforms, beckoning you with their wide, pearly
smiles to come work there and have as much fun as they're having. (Oddly enough, the scene behind the counter never really looks like this.)
I recently spent a few months
serving at
Red Lobster (or, as another
server called it, the
McDonald's of seafood). Their
training program is
extensive and
fraught with propaganda in the form of
videos,
pamphlets, and
verbal assault. The printed materials and videos are nothing more than
advertisements, made with all the same
techniques,
flare and
buzzwords as usual, but with a different demographic, the
employees. They have a collection of "core values" which they call "the Compass", basically an entire
advertising campaign for the employees in which eight different words are highlighted as what you're supposed to strive for.
Things like this were
driven into every
aspect of work there,
hammered into our heads. We'd refer to these things as being "compassy". Every morning, at opening, they have, "Lobster Talk" a small meeting in which the
manager discloses the "feature"
drinks,
appetizers, and
desserts or add ons, as they're called. These are also printed on little slips of paper, also called "Lobster Talks" for every
server to carry around with them as you're supposed to "
suggest" them to the "
guests". The slips also have excerpts from "the Compass" on the bottom, like
banner ads except there's nowhere to click. Compassy words were
slathered all over the
binder in which our
schedules were kept. The sections in the
restaurant were also made from the eight "
sacred words" of "the compass" so we had to constantly refer to them:
"What
section are you in tonight?"
"Oh. I'm in 'caring'."
"
Lucky you, I'm in 'quality' tonight. I like 'caring' better."
Every week, the
managers would print up a list illustrating the percentage of addons sold by each server per
customer (oh wait, sorry. They're not
customers, they're "guests") and post it on the wall. Since the numbers are all side by side, it was presumably an attempt to inspire
competition among the servers to get them to sell more.
Sometimes, just after it had been printed, the
manager would stand by the kitchen exit to harass or congratulate
servers with extreme numbers in either direction. They did everything aside from bludgeoning us repeatedly with the
live lobster and screaming, "
SELL!
SELL!
SELL!
The conditioning
lingo even made it's way into their
disciplinary actions. The write-ups were speckled with "compassy"
nonsense like, "----'s continual
mistakes are comprimising the
hospitality our guests can
taste." Much to the
discontent of the
manager who issued it, I laughed out loud upon discovering this as I read my first write-up.
I liked the
work and the
money was great, but I soon grew weary of being treated like an
outsider by the very
company that employed me, not to mention having a
general manager who knew
next-to-nothing about how to deal with
people and couldn't manage a
tool shed. So I
86'd myself and got a job at a privately-owned
restaurant where the
bullshit is shallower and I'm not a target for
brainwashing.