In case you were wondering, that last line reads “Customer Mania WILL BLAST OFF!” I snapped a shot of this clip art-abusing gem at our local Taco Bell.
It seems that every corporate workplace, large or small, has some ridiculous acronym meant to boost employee morale and drive home the point that customers come first and, gosh darnit, you’re going to have a fabulous time doing your job. Right? RIGHT?! Satisfying customers is a party!
“SMILE! Serve! Maturity! Inquire! Listen! Energy!”
“CARS! Customers first! Attentive behavior! Real time solutions! Success!”
Sometimes I wonder if the executive higher ups really think these kind of “motivational tools” really help in a workplace. If you’re in customer service, you know you’re maybe a half a step above an IRS employee. In the call center environment, get ready; you’re about to become someone’s bitch as they rip you a new one over faulty internet, phone, cable, emu service. If you’re in the food industry, be prepared for being underpaid, under-tipped, and under-appreciated.
Working to serve others can be enough of a slap in the face, warranting the digestion of many a cocktail following the end of a shift… no one needs the sugar-coated condescending slogans of interoffice “team building” propaganda.
I remember when I worked for Comcast, one of the most thankless jobs in existence, I encountered one of the most obnoxious exercises ever. Some zippy over the top trainer would shout at a room of over 50 people (who were overlooking the 13.5 hour shifts due to high pay) the following:
“Are YOU ready?!”
To which we were supposed to reply, “I was born ready!”
We were grown adults being made to participate in an almost infantile repeater game. If we weren’t enthusiastic enough, our evangelist trainer would shout, “I can’t hear you!”
We’d have to repeat how we were born ready until they were satisfied that we were super-pumped to go forth and fix the internet of the people. In reality we all knew that as soon as we answered the phone, we transformed into remote punching bags for customers. The training team couldn’t trick us. We knew what we were in for. The fact that they were even trying to pretend how fun it was made it all the more worse.
I’m all for strengthening an organization by building pride among the employees. There is a fine line, however, between galvanizing and spreading a positive attitude and being completely annoying and ridiculous.
10 Comments
June 16, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Having worked several customer service based jobs, this kind of thing drives me crazy. Ugh.
June 17, 2008 at 1:40 am
The store below our apartment has their employees do one of those inane chants every morning before it opens. Mr. Dingo and I usually peep over the terrace at them to silently mock them. One morning, after a particularly rousing chant that culminated in raised hands and a hearty cry of “Boomstick!” Mr. Dingo and I couldn’t restrain our laughter. The employees were embarrassed but the asshat boss kept making them do it over and over until everyone was involved. Yeah, like that was supposed to fire them up for the work day.
June 17, 2008 at 4:30 am
I work on the principal that the customer is always right, unless I happen to be more right than they are!
June 17, 2008 at 6:25 am
The latest fad in our office is “agile programming” (and whoever came up with that name had a great sense of humor). Not only do we work in “sprints”, “spikes”, “scrums”, “stories”, etc., and no one seems to realize how stupid that all really sounds, our local evangelist put signs up all over our conference room with all sorts of “agile” phraseology on it. Someone went around and put an “fr” in front of all of the occurrences of “agile”. Wish I’d thought of it.
June 17, 2008 at 8:26 am
at our work we were forced to shout: “WE ARE THE THEY!”
I still don’t understand it.
June 17, 2008 at 3:10 pm
All the wine - I don’t understand it either.
June 17, 2008 at 7:34 pm
If the customer was right in the first place, why did they need to call customer service?
June 18, 2008 at 10:12 pm
This sounds bad but I hate team building activities. I hate showing fake happiness in the hopes this will actually motivate me to do something. And that stuff doesn’t motivate, I’ve been to enough places that attest to that.
June 22, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I kind of miss working at Verizon b/c we did that kind of crap– hey, at least we got paid for doing that instead of actually working.
August 31, 2008 at 11:44 pm
God damnit Liz, this is the second time I’ve been stumbled to you. STOP SUBMITTING YOUR OWN ENTRIES!
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