Okay, I've been sitting on this for a while and it's time for a grumpy old man post.
One of the hot political topics of the last few years is the minimum wage and what the appropriate pay for law skill jobs is. The result of this conversation is that fast food and convenience store employees are making $15/hr plus here in the people's republic. As someone who's employed people before, one thing I expected from my employees, before they got a raise, was competence.
So, what sorts of things do I expect from fast food and convenience store employees for $15+/hr?
1. Get my order right. If I order Diet Coke, don't give me Coke. If I order "unsweet tea", don't give me sweet tea. If I order something with "no cheese", don't give me cheese.
2. Move the line along. Y'all have extra windows and reserved parking spaces where people are supposed to wait for their food. Get the simple orders through more quickly.
3. (related, but not the fault of the employees) The point of fast food is the fast. Stop adding more and more complicated "coffee" drinks, that slow things down. If you have to add them, don't hold up the line because someone wants 10 Frappachinos.
4. When there are more than 3-4 people in line at the convenience store, one employee working a register, and 2-3 employees standing around, open the other registers.
5. Learn how to make change. It's really not that hard. Especially if the machine does the math for you.
6. (for customers) If there's a long line behind you, don't make 5 minutes of small talk with the cashier, don't get involved with having them check 35 lottery tickets for you, know how you are going to pay and have the payment ready.
Call me crazy, grumpy, and old if you like, but I see this as a simple issue of respect. People choose to patronize your place of business, so get them though the transaction as quickly as possible and get the transaction correct.
One last thing, I'm basing a lot of this on interactions at places I visit regularly enough that this isn't a brand new employee thing.
That's enough for now.
12 comments:
As officially a grumpy old man, your list is spot on. The one point of contention is that the minimum wage has no bearing on any of it, except that these days, low wages is used as an excuse for less than stellar work ethic. They began with crap work ethic and for them to get an artificial wage increase doesn't infuse them with a better work ethic, which makes the minimum wage increase all the more egregious.
I've worked at enough places where I would hear way too often "well, I'm not gonna bust my ass for nobody", to which I would ask, "Did you say that at the interview?" I also ask them how they feel if they hire a mechanic or a painter or a plumber if they accept that attitude when they're shelling out the bucks for service. We all have our moments when we just can't put it in gear nor want to. But for that to be SOP is stealing.
When the argument for increasing the minimum wage to almost $20/hr I'd argue that it does. If I, as an employer, am paying $20/hr for someone to do low skilled work, I expect that they will be able to perform basic tasks with a reasonably high level of competence. Again, I'm talking about employees with experience, not new hires. Once compensation is removed from competency, you have problems.
I agree with the "bust my ass" sentiment, although I'm not talking about that here. If you work at McDonald's it's not "busting your ass" to get the order correct. It's one of the basic, fundamental, aspects of the job.
I totally understand that no one is perfect, and I don't expect perfection. Yet, I do expect that if I order a Coke, I'll get a Coke. Not a Dr Pepper.
If by compensation you mean a wage an employee would expect or find appropriate, that doesn't impact either ethic or competency. If forced to increase wages by virtue of government fiat, neither is considered and the employer is forced to pay for incompetence and/or poor work ethic.
As a customer, I expect to get what I pay for regardless of how much the employee tasked with providing is paid to do so. As an employee, I took the job and expect of myself to be among the better among by co-workers and the pay doesn't factor into that.
By compensation I mean whatever the two parties agree on, or are mandated to agree on. If an employee isn't competent to do the job, then what they are paid becomes more of an issue. Or, another way, the more an employer is paying, the higher the standards.
Yes, if I order something reasonable (Whopper, no cheese), I expect to get what I ordered. No matter what. If I employ someone, I expect them to control the things they can control. As an employee, I definitely want to do my absolute best, or at least to not be the worst.
A HUGE problem with minimum wages laws is that it force small businesses to cut staff, which means more unemployed. With many small businesses, it means the end of the business.
Glenn,
While that is absolutely a huge problem, as is the unionization of small businesses, I think it's more than that.
The original purpose of minimum wage laws was to provide an opportunity for people to have jobs that allow them to learn how to work. As an employer you knew that you could be hiring someone with zero skills and that you would teach them what they needed to know.
Now that the minimum wage has become something else entirely, it's warped the relationship between competence and compensation. It's mandated that people with low competence, be compensated at a level beyond their skill level. Now that we're looking at $15/hr+ for minimum wage, expectations are higher. I understand, because I've been there, how a business works and how compensation should be. One thing it also does is stagnate wages. Instead of starting lower and getting raises for longevity or increased production, it means that employers can't afford to give raises.
This isn't where I wanted to go, but you are correct that it's a fcator.
And I agree that Unions are a HUGE factor in getting outrageous minimum wage increases.
Yes, unions are a big problem. Back in the day, they might have had value. Now they simply exist to empower and enrich the union leaders and support the DFL. We've seen a bunch of stories recently where a local restaurateur is driven out of business because the employees unionized and demanded more than the owner could pay.
Don't get me started on public employees unions.
Oh, I could tell you about public employ unions. The thing with Federal employees is that you don't have to join the union, so when I worked 3 1/2 years as a Letter-Sorting-Machine operator at the main P.O. in Columbus could snub the union without repercussions; all I had to do was watch how they protected the lazy and incompetent. But with Air Traffic Control, my first job after training at the academy in OKC was at Chicago Center. The union was allowed a closed-door meeting with new people to coerce us into joining--either join or you will not get certified. So I joined (that was January 1979). In 1981 they called a strike, which was illegal of course, and although I was still in training (5 year program for certifying on 5 radar sectors) I told them I would honor my oath and stay on the job. My car was damage, my wife called and was threatened with harm (we got our phone # changed). The one fun thing was that in the summer of 1979 I bought a Mini-14 carbine from the one controller who had a gun store. Before our phone got changed he called and threatened to burn my house! I reminded him of what I bought from him and that it would be used for defense and he hung up. It was hell for the first six months before they gave up their picketing.
So by the time the new union got going I was already certified and so ignored them until I was promoted to supervisor and the war started. The union again protected the incompetent and those who did illegal activities. Oh the things I could tell you! I finally got fed up with fighting them as a supervisor and after 17 years in the Chicago area we transferred to Cedar Rapids where I was just a controller again. Then we had bid our yearly schedules I was always first because my seniority date was before 1981. After two years the union fought to have any time in management removed from seniority so I was suddenly way down towards the bottom with a poor schedule choice. And I watched the corruption in that union until I retired 11 years later. I HATE unions.
Yeah, public employee unions are the worst. My primary objection is that they donate vast amounts to the DFL because they know that DFL politicians will give them everything they want. It's a massive conflict of interest.
My older brother was a union painter until he retired a few years ago. He insists the local out of which he worked would not tolerate crappy workers. I told him I didn't think that was the norm and that I believe all union locals should work the same way. My wife worked for an electrical contractor who would call for workers from a particular local and came to know almost all of the electricians who were attached to the local. They could pick and choose and were able to reject a poor electrician who was available, or take them if they had no choice. Each project required doing the same thing so that if they were stuck with a putz on one project, they weren't required to accept him for the next. The only expectation was how much a given electrician should be paid based on their status (apprentice, journeyman, etc.). I've worked in a couple of union shops and saw crappy workers never being let go for being crappy. They did just enough to get away with not doing what was expected by the employer, while being protected by the union.
I'm not a fan of unions, either.
While unions (some) might have a floor, I think experience tells us that unions do an excellent job (especially public sector unions) of protecting those who under perform, and inhibiting those who over perform.
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