08.12.07
Is Bigger Really Better?
Overheard at that really big retailer last week:
Cashier: I’ve been working over eight hours and I still haven’t had my break.
In nearly any field, big companies use “economies of scale” to thrive and grow. When augmented by computerization, we get “management by the numbers”. That is, we get decisions being made based upon ratios and measurements, rather than the readily observable needs. Smaller companies do need to implement some of this, but you can see the effect of taking this to an extreme.
This cashier works longer than she should work without a break because there are more customers waiting to pay for their purchases than the available cashiers can handle. Rather than call in additional cashiers (and possibly incur unapproved overtime), the managers on duty just keep the existing staff from leaving their posts when they should.
This doesn’t just happen when I am visiting New Jersey. We have the same chain in the Victor Valley area of California. At one of the two locations of this chain, it is common to come in late in the afternoon and hear cashiers saying, “I’m supposed to be off already, but I still haven’t had my break.” Again, it is to the advantage of management to do this, rather than to incur overtime.
This is an effect of the centralized management in larger organizations. Despite laws and policies that are supposed to prevent such abuses, Lower-level supervisors and managers may lack the authority to actually enforce these rules. Certainly, they are constrained by dictates from their superiors that they meet numeric targets such as labor cost percentage and customers per hour. Because of the top-down nature of management in large organizations, seeing that it is widespread and frequently-repeated is a clue to where the problem comes from. (I often wonder why such places do not have “rovers” whose job is to cover breaks throughout the store. Even during a rush period, it should only take a minute or two to put a rover in the place of a cashier.)
For SLOBs [Small, Locally-Owned Businesses--search the site for the term] and OMBs [Owner-Managed Businesses--search the site for the term] that deal directly with consumers, it is vital to your business that you take good care of your staffers that do the actual interaction with your customers. One large company decided that its employees cost too much, so it laid off its best employees (the ones who had gotten raises) and forced them to reapply for their old jobs at a lower wage. In a field where most sales happen because a knowledgeable salesperson helps a customer decide which item is right for them, this was a major mistake. Their mistake may land them in the trash pile with all the other failed consumer electronics retailers, or they may last long enough that customers and employees forget the betrayal. Your customers, however, are not likely to give you enough time to prove that you meant well when you let management by the numbers replace common sense.
An OMB or a SLOB that pushes MBTN too far is likely to close its doors, with the owner winding up back in the job market.
