It’s official.
The Retail Salesperson is the most popular job title in America according to The Bureau of Labor Statistics 2010-2011 Occupational Outlook Handbook, and of course, my Yahoo homepage http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/110348/the-popularity-issue.
In May of 2009, the BLS stated that 4.2 million people were paid an annual median salary of $20,260.00 to stand in one place for long periods of time, to work weekends, evenings and holidays, and to endure limited advancement opportunities, just so the American populace could get their fill of groceries, hardware supplies and back to school clothes.
If you add in Cashiers (3.4 million), Food Service workers (2.7 million) and general office clerks (2.8 million); that’s a grand total of 13.1 million people uttering the phrase “May I help you?’ some 90 million times each day.
Actually it isn’t a phrase. More often it’s uttered as a single word: “myelpu?”
So 13 million of us get up at the crack of dawn, put on a vest or name tag and struggle through a day of monotony and anonymity.
But sometimes we do get noticed.
By now the name Steven Slater is etched into the minds of each of us in the customer service business. His spectacular exit from a JetBlue aircraft and the company’s employment are the stuff of break room fantasies. Watch his exit here: http://extratv.warnerbros.com/2010/08/watch_steven_slaters_jetblue_slide_escape.php
His life will now be endlessly analyzed, and continuously debated through at least a week of news cycles. His actions will be celebrated, derided and contextualized to support whatever concept countless numbers of pundits care to make.
But I fear that the real issue, as I see it, behind both his actions and the cord it struck with the American people will go unexamined and unmentioned.
Anyone who has worked with the general public can tell you horror stories about the customers they have had to deal with. When pressed, however, they will admit that the vast majority of customers are really very easy to help and that more than most are appreciative.
Conversely, we have all had our fair share of run ins with nametag wearing obstacles whose sole function is to stand between us and the items we came to purchase. Here too, we have to admit that while we may focus on the negative, most of our interactions at retail are without conflict or angst.
So why has this extraordinarily unrestrained act of quitting generated so much interest and discussion?
It’s because at its most basic level it highlights the conflict between entitlement and frustration inherent in the world of big box retail.
My point.
Customers are continuously bombarded with ever inflated promises about what they can expect when they enter a big box retail store. Promises that are from their very inception deceptive. They expect to find legions of expert staffing and products at ridiculously low prices, in endless quantities and varieties. It’s not only a fantasy, but it’s also a model for economic disaster.
What they fail to realize is that the powers that be in the big box retail world care more about customers as a concept than customers as a reality. They worry endlessly about the idea of a “customer”, but could actually care less about a single, actual customer.
Now shareholders, that’s a different matter entirely. But shareholders are easier to keep happy than customers. Customers don’t always know what they want. Shareholders, however, just want you to hit the numbers. Reduce payroll, increase margin and limit inventory and then the shareholders are happy. Customers? Not so much.
Retail workers don’t have the privilege of dealing with customers conceptually; they have to deal with them in the flesh, each one an individual in a very specific time and place. It’s the retail workers lot to try and deliver on the false promises created by the big box marketing machine.
It all too often ends in failure for the customer, which generates disappointment and frustration.
The Retail worker is not immune from this frustration. No one gets up in the morning looking forward to creating disappointment and anger among legions of basically blameless individuals.
Unless of course you are a politician running for office.
So over time, the frustration builds in the customer. To meet this frustration, and to avoid admitting that their promises were false, big companies have enacted extremely liberal policies that are designed to “empower” the customer to the point that the customer feels as though their will should be enough to change the laws of physics.
This “empowerment” condones customers venting their frustration powerfully and continuously until product that isn’t there magically appears, until prices reach the point of negative numbers and until every employee in a five mile radius is summoned to do their bidding.
Retail workers are left to their own devices in trying to meet the demands of these corporately empowered customers.
As customers feel more and more entitled, retail workers get more and more frustrated.
So then, when the customers sense of entitlement leads to anger that they feel perfectly comfortable expressing in a physically damaging way, the retail worker hits a point where the glory of 12 hour days, the comfort of knowing that you will be doing the same thing for the next 20 years and the allure of a princely $20,000 a year in annual income just can’t hold the frustration back any longer.
KABOOM!!
Grab the beer, yank the emergency handle and slide off into the sunset of frustrated worker legend.
There has to be a better way.
Normally I would implore big box managers to examine how they handle both customers and employees and to make changes to policy that can mitigate these types of damaging interactions.
But because of the fact that there are more of us working in customer service than in any other industry in the country, I think It’s time we look to ourselves for solutions.
If you are a customer service worker, look at yourself as a member of a grand profession. Not glorious, but certainly numerous. You can look to your right or left in any crowd and see another soul in the same high frustration job and draw solace. There are more of us than there are of them. More hard working Customer Service professionals than overly-entitled customers and we need to help each other.
Stop and think about the guy serving us coffee on our way to work. He’s one of the 13 million. He shares more in common with you than you might think. Give a smile, take a breath and realize that he has to transact your purchase with a crappy computer system the same way you will for the next 10 hours. Remember the frustration and take a second to acknowledged that what we do, what 13.1 million of us do, is difficult, and demanding.
Lets’ each take a moment to give each other, and ourselves the break we need to do our jobs. There’s a ton of us out there and if we start thinking about how we can work together, there is no telling the changes that can be made
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
I took the summer off.
I took the summer off.
Actually, it was a forced vacation. I developed the biggest case of writer’s block since…well… since the last guy who suffered writer’s block.
See, still suffering.
While I seemed to have spent most of the summer doing nothing, I recently realized that I had been working.
My affliction with the written word forced me to shut up long enough to actually listen to other people, people who could not have disagreed with me more about the future of retail. Folks who felt that things were just starting to get around to normal. I knew they were wrong, but every time I tried to write about why and how they were wrong, the words simply wouldn’t come.
And for a while, it seemed that they might be right. In the beginning of the summer the economy was improving as judged by the return of the Dow industrials to a post 10,000 level, the moderation in the unemployment figures, and a slight rebound in retail sales.
Big Box retailers had trimmed overhead, meaning that they had stopped hiring replacement workers and that they had let inventory levels fall to disastrously low levels. But prices had stabilized and margins had returned. “See”, they would tell me, “The worst is over and things are going to be just fine”.
I seethed with my inability to contradict them in print.
I choked on every attempt to point out the fallacy of their arguments. I tried and tried to write about the disastrous effects of the decline in service levels and the irreparable harm that comes from sales lost to overly efficient (read non-existent) inventories.
I banged on the keyboard trying to communicate exactly how theses short sighted cost cutting strategies executed by large retailers would simply pave the way for new, innovative retailers to come along and eat the big boys for lunch. But the words would drop out of the computer and turn to absolute drivel (you may argue that this drivel continues, but hey, I gotta blast through this block somehow).
“The numbers”, I was constantly reminded, “simply don’t support your gloom and doom scenarios”.
Maybe, but something is going on that the numbers don’t show. I know it, but as yet I can’t articulate it.
My retreat from the confines of the hovel where I write also allowed me to listen to the voices of customers when they weren’t being customers. Since writers are notoriously unsocial beings, I used my kids as cover and did what all great writers do, I eavesdropped on conversations I had no business listening to.
As I sat by the pool sipping margaritas (ok, so it was the community pool and the margaritas were actually caffeine free Diet Cokes) , I listened to people from all walks of life and in all types of financial situations talking about how they were changing the way they shop and how they pay for those purchases.
Most are done buying on credit, either because they are forced to pay with cash because of their financial situation or because they have vowed not to get into debt of any kind.
Lots had mailed in the keys to their homes and were looking to rent for the foreseeable future.
Everybody was talking about what they were doing to cut back on spending because they didn’t have the money or, more often than not, because they were scared about spending any of the money that they had. Those with money weren’t interested in spending, because they didn’t know how long it would have to last.
Many had given up looking for work and were in the midst of starting a small business. Anything they could get into for as little capital as possible. They were starting landscaping businesses, handy man services, dog grooming, dog sitting and dog walking business. They were selling homemade jewelry at the farmers market, canning vegetables, making home made soaps; you name any small time business operation, and somebody at the pool was starting one.
On the other side of the pool, different people were talking about how they had stopped using their national franchise grass cutting service and had switched to a local guy because his prices were competitive and he showed up when he said he would. Others talked about firing their contractor because they found a great handyman who would take on even the smallest job and who did great work. Still more where raving about the home made products they bought at the farmers market because they were better made and cheaper that what they could get in the stores.
“Hmmmm” I thought. And since I couldn’t bring myself to write a friggin’ word, I was left with thinking and going “Hmmmmm”.
On the sales floor the sentiments were the same. Customers had changed the types of projects they were taking on. Doing just enough to get by and not going whole hog. Repairing instead of replacing, painting instead of remodeling, fixing instead of buying new. Sure, they were spending at a level close to what they had spent in the past, but something was very different. The business was better, but it wasn’t the same kind of business as it had been before the recent “Economic Unpleasantness.”
The numbers were showing that the sales were coming back, but the numbers weren’t showing that the type of business we were now doing wasn’t the same type of business we had done “before”.
The powers that be starting talking about how things were going back to normal and while I couldn’t see that happening, I had to admit that something certainly was happening. What it was wasn’t clear.
I had been expecting to see a new type of retail model rise out of the ashes of the economic collapse. That hasn’t happened…yet. Right now it seems as though the “old” Big Box model is being used by customers in a completely different way
If so, then the question is, can Big Box change to accommodate this new shopping pattern and this new economy or will it turn those customers away unsatisfied. How long will customers put up with limited product offerings and lackluster service regardless of the pricing? How long will lower prices stay and how long will it be enough? A gallon of paint is a gallon of paint, but when it’s purchased by a homeowner rather than a contractor, then it becomes a completely different product.
The dollar sale is the same, but the process of completing that sale successfully is completely different.
As the customers came back into the store this summer, I noticed they needed a good deal of hand holding. The wanted more information from the sales associates, who where virtually non-existent and they were looking for products that we were out of stock on or which we didn’t carry.
Big Box has yet to adjust to these new shopping patterns, right now they are just happy to see more shoppers, they have yet to tune into the changes these shoppers are making. Will Big Box adjust? Can Big Box adjust?
I don’t have the answers, but at least now I think I understand the questions.
Actually, it was a forced vacation. I developed the biggest case of writer’s block since…well… since the last guy who suffered writer’s block.
See, still suffering.
While I seemed to have spent most of the summer doing nothing, I recently realized that I had been working.
My affliction with the written word forced me to shut up long enough to actually listen to other people, people who could not have disagreed with me more about the future of retail. Folks who felt that things were just starting to get around to normal. I knew they were wrong, but every time I tried to write about why and how they were wrong, the words simply wouldn’t come.
And for a while, it seemed that they might be right. In the beginning of the summer the economy was improving as judged by the return of the Dow industrials to a post 10,000 level, the moderation in the unemployment figures, and a slight rebound in retail sales.
Big Box retailers had trimmed overhead, meaning that they had stopped hiring replacement workers and that they had let inventory levels fall to disastrously low levels. But prices had stabilized and margins had returned. “See”, they would tell me, “The worst is over and things are going to be just fine”.
I seethed with my inability to contradict them in print.
I choked on every attempt to point out the fallacy of their arguments. I tried and tried to write about the disastrous effects of the decline in service levels and the irreparable harm that comes from sales lost to overly efficient (read non-existent) inventories.
I banged on the keyboard trying to communicate exactly how theses short sighted cost cutting strategies executed by large retailers would simply pave the way for new, innovative retailers to come along and eat the big boys for lunch. But the words would drop out of the computer and turn to absolute drivel (you may argue that this drivel continues, but hey, I gotta blast through this block somehow).
“The numbers”, I was constantly reminded, “simply don’t support your gloom and doom scenarios”.
Maybe, but something is going on that the numbers don’t show. I know it, but as yet I can’t articulate it.
My retreat from the confines of the hovel where I write also allowed me to listen to the voices of customers when they weren’t being customers. Since writers are notoriously unsocial beings, I used my kids as cover and did what all great writers do, I eavesdropped on conversations I had no business listening to.
As I sat by the pool sipping margaritas (ok, so it was the community pool and the margaritas were actually caffeine free Diet Cokes) , I listened to people from all walks of life and in all types of financial situations talking about how they were changing the way they shop and how they pay for those purchases.
Most are done buying on credit, either because they are forced to pay with cash because of their financial situation or because they have vowed not to get into debt of any kind.
Lots had mailed in the keys to their homes and were looking to rent for the foreseeable future.
Everybody was talking about what they were doing to cut back on spending because they didn’t have the money or, more often than not, because they were scared about spending any of the money that they had. Those with money weren’t interested in spending, because they didn’t know how long it would have to last.
Many had given up looking for work and were in the midst of starting a small business. Anything they could get into for as little capital as possible. They were starting landscaping businesses, handy man services, dog grooming, dog sitting and dog walking business. They were selling homemade jewelry at the farmers market, canning vegetables, making home made soaps; you name any small time business operation, and somebody at the pool was starting one.
On the other side of the pool, different people were talking about how they had stopped using their national franchise grass cutting service and had switched to a local guy because his prices were competitive and he showed up when he said he would. Others talked about firing their contractor because they found a great handyman who would take on even the smallest job and who did great work. Still more where raving about the home made products they bought at the farmers market because they were better made and cheaper that what they could get in the stores.
“Hmmmm” I thought. And since I couldn’t bring myself to write a friggin’ word, I was left with thinking and going “Hmmmmm”.
On the sales floor the sentiments were the same. Customers had changed the types of projects they were taking on. Doing just enough to get by and not going whole hog. Repairing instead of replacing, painting instead of remodeling, fixing instead of buying new. Sure, they were spending at a level close to what they had spent in the past, but something was very different. The business was better, but it wasn’t the same kind of business as it had been before the recent “Economic Unpleasantness.”
The numbers were showing that the sales were coming back, but the numbers weren’t showing that the type of business we were now doing wasn’t the same type of business we had done “before”.
The powers that be starting talking about how things were going back to normal and while I couldn’t see that happening, I had to admit that something certainly was happening. What it was wasn’t clear.
I had been expecting to see a new type of retail model rise out of the ashes of the economic collapse. That hasn’t happened…yet. Right now it seems as though the “old” Big Box model is being used by customers in a completely different way
If so, then the question is, can Big Box change to accommodate this new shopping pattern and this new economy or will it turn those customers away unsatisfied. How long will customers put up with limited product offerings and lackluster service regardless of the pricing? How long will lower prices stay and how long will it be enough? A gallon of paint is a gallon of paint, but when it’s purchased by a homeowner rather than a contractor, then it becomes a completely different product.
The dollar sale is the same, but the process of completing that sale successfully is completely different.
As the customers came back into the store this summer, I noticed they needed a good deal of hand holding. The wanted more information from the sales associates, who where virtually non-existent and they were looking for products that we were out of stock on or which we didn’t carry.
Big Box has yet to adjust to these new shopping patterns, right now they are just happy to see more shoppers, they have yet to tune into the changes these shoppers are making. Will Big Box adjust? Can Big Box adjust?
I don’t have the answers, but at least now I think I understand the questions.
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