So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Bruce Wayne]

This election cycle. It's sucking the oxygen out of everything!

It's enough to make one go buy an acre of land in Lincoln, Montana & live in a one-room shack.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Either there'll be another one in four years -- or there won't be. Either way, we live in what the Chinese curse calls "interesting times."

 

[BlueTrain]

I have reason to go live in a one-room cabin (not a shack) or cottage somewhere I don't have close neighbors but this election isn't one of them. But I'm married and it won't happen.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Complain as you will, you can't say this election hasn't been fun. It's getting scary now as The Day approaches, but I haven't experienced as entertaining an election year as this one in my life.

 

[Zombie_61]

Complain as you will, you can't say this election hasn't been fun...

I can. I haven't found it to be "fun" or "entertaining" in the least, because one of these imbeciles is going to be the figurehead for the United States for the next four years. And if this is the best they can do, we need to scrap the whole thing and start over.

 

[Stearmen]

I've grown used to seeing political campaigns sling mud and fan the flames of fear, but I've never seen it devolve to the pits of this cycle. Can you imagine Lincoln and Douglas debating on the size of the other's "hands"? I wouldn't vote for any major party candidate for my local school board, let alone the President of the United States.

It was every bit as vile in past times. Yes, they question the size of, well everything on John Adams! Just look at this small sample of cartoons. Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Abe Lincoln!

 

[swanson_eyes]

Here's something that annoys me to no end: people assuming because they sent me a message that I actually got it. Look for a confirmation! I sent an email to a group of friends last night to see if anyone would be willing to pick me up from work today because there's no public transport on Sundays. Two responded and I worked it out with one of them, so it was all settled and I went to work. I checked email on my break and saw no other responses. I figured no one else had responded because they were unavailable. OK, that's fine.

When I was about to clock out a totally different friend was there to pick me up and was annoyed that he and aforementioned friend--whom I'd settled it with--both had to come across town. It turns out he had emailed and texted me sometime after my break. Now, I work retail. I'm only allowed to even have my phone on me in order to help customers. I don't use email in my position. I don't get on the web unless it's to go to our site to look up something. And I was running busy for two solid hours--tons of needs at my store; I never stop. How could I have let him know Other Friend was picking me up if I never saw his email?? On top of that he threw out a "...you know, you're the one being helped..." Niiiiice. Not my fault you made an assumption. This is not the first time with this person. I never assume someone has gotten my email immediately after I have sent it, even if people have smartphones. Some don't have notifications turned on.

 

[swanson_eyes]

And thinking "customer is king"...

It was Selfridge who said "Treat the customer as if her were always right." He knew they were sometimes wrong. But people have turned that into "The customer is always right," as if none of them are ever at fault. It's the ones at fault who like to repeat this. And what is it, some kind of law? Some guy said it so I have to agree with it? I'm all for giving grace--I do it all day, every day--but sometimes I'm going to say no to a request, like the person who wanted to exchange a broken TV today. He had no packaging, no receipt, supposedly paid cash. We can bend the rules a bit for people, but I'm not doing it for electronics that cost hundreds with no proof of purchase. Who buys something like that and doesn't keep the receipt??

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Either there'll be another one in four years -- or there won't be. Either way, we live in what the Chinese curse calls "interesting times."

I can. I haven't found it to be "fun" or "entertaining" in the least, because one of these imbeciles is going to be the figurehead for the United States for the next four years. And if this is the best they can do, we need to scrap the whole thing and start over.

In other words, life will be different -- not necessarily better -- just different.

 

[BlueTrain]

We have to opportunity to do things differently every four years and in some ways, two years. Democracy doesn't suit some people.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

 

[LizzieMaine]

It was Selfridge who said "Treat the customer as if her were always right." He knew they were sometimes wrong. But people have turned that into "The customer is always right," as if none of them are ever at fault. It's the ones at fault who like to repeat this. And what is it, some kind of law? Some guy said it so I have to agree with it? I'm all for giving grace--I do it all day, every day--but sometimes I'm going to say no to a request, like the person who wanted to exchange a broken TV today. He had no packaging, no receipt, supposedly paid cash. We can bend the rules a bit for people, but I'm not doing it for electronics that cost hundreds with no proof of purchase. Who buys something like that and doesn't keep the receipt??

The biggest difficulty customer-service people face is layers of management who never actually deal with customers face to face. It's easy to say "the customer is always right" when you're insulated off in an office somewhere and never have to deal with some crazy old battle-axe calling you "retarded" to your face because her credit card was declined. When I'm dictator all management at all levels will be required to work regular shifts behind the counters.

 

[BlueTrain]

I think that sort of insulation, as you put it, is true in other places, too. There are engineers who are behind a computer instead of on the production line, food company executives who never killed a chicken, slaughtered a beef or dug anything to eat out of the ground and so on. What also happens in other ways is discrete filtering of information from the bottom up. The ones on the bottom, to put it bluntly, are the ones who actually get their hands dirty doing things and, in theory at least, know how things work. There is the problem that those doing the work never see the big picture, however, so the bottom-up flow of information has some flaws. But the filtering is a reason those at the top of very large corporations are ill-informed or misinformed. And that includes government.

 

[Fading Fast]

The biggest difficulty customer-service people face is layers of management who never actually deal with customers face to face. It's easy to say "the customer is always right" when you're insulated off in an office somewhere and never have to deal with some crazy old battle-axe calling you "retarded" to your face because her credit card was declined. When I'm dictator all management at all levels will be required to work regular shifts behind the counters.

Even worse are those managers who never ever worked the floor. I eventually became a manager, but after having done several entry level jobs in my field and having worked directly with the retail customer (which is why I pro-actively found a way to direct my career away from the retail customer) which, I hope, made me a more rational manager.

Also, whenever we were discussing meaningful changes to our business model, I'd always ask several of the "front line" people to join the discussion, review the proposal, etc, as their input was incredible. But I worked for some bosses who came through some executive training program or something like that and they had these great theoretical ideas that reflected that they had never actually done the day-to-day work of the business. And they'd get mad when their ideas flopped and, sometimes, blame the front-line people who were never brought in to the discussions in the first place.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's right up there with the new executives who come in and want to change the way of doing things to ways that have already been tried and shown not to work, because they weren't here at the time to see those ideas fail.

Captains come and go, and sergeants spend their lives training new captains.

 

[HudsonHawk]

The biggest difficulty customer-service people face is layers of management who never actually deal with customers face to face. It's easy to say "the customer is always right" when you're insulated off in an office somewhere and never have to deal with some crazy old battle-axe calling you "retarded" to your face because her credit card was declined. When I'm dictator all management at all levels will be required to work regular shifts behind the counters.

I'd make it a requirement for everyone to work at least some period of time in a service job. The only thing worse than management who doesn't have to deal with the public is the public itself.

 

[Fading Fast]

That's right up there with the new executives who come in and want to change the way of doing things to ways that have already been tried and shown not to work, because they weren't here at the time to see those ideas fail.

Captains come and go, and sergeants spend their lives training new captains.

There is truth to this, but to be fair, I've also seen some really smart managers. One that I both respected and tried to model some of my manager approach on is a manager I had many years ago when I was new in the business who was hired in from another firm. He spent the first several months on the job sitting on the desk with the traders and salespeople, talking with our clients, having meeting with the traders and salespeople individually to ask them what they thought could work / what they thought should be improved / what they need to do a better job / etc., - and he took notes throughout those meetings.

He also reviewed the last several years of results and asked why things had worked or didn't. Then, when he started to make changes, they were incremental - discussed in advance - and had pretty strong buy in. And when he did ask you to take a leap of faith on an idea, he had enough credit in the bank with us that we would. He was a very successful manager, improved our business and revenue and moved up pretty quickly. As I said, I patterned a lot of how I worked as a manger on his behavior.

The one thing a good manger can do is really make things holistically better if he / she does implement a thoughtful, intelligent plan. As a line worker, I can offer up ideas (and to be fair, while line workers have great ideas on how to make things better, they don't always know the legal, compliance, budgetary restraints that might make their ideas impractical), but a good manger can implement them.

It's all balance. A good manger, working hand-in-glove with his front-line and business support people and engaged with the clients can be effective and truly make the business better. An aloof, I-know-best-don't-bother-me manager, usually fails.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Problem is also that it's very rare nowadays for top management, especially at CEO level, to spend most of their careers in a particular business or industry, much less the same company. Perusing the biographical details of many CEOs will frequently show stints with various companies in often totally unrelated businesses. Yet they supposedly bring to the table a "wide range of experience" from these resume-building tours, even though, in truth, they were never ever grounded in any one industry. And then when they join a new company they're very eager to "make their mark" sometimes to merely be different from their predecessors even if it's with a policy doomed to failure.

 

[BlueTrain]

For that sort of thing to work, it needs support from higher up, and some work environments simply don't support anything like that, although others certainly do. And trust is always difficult to maintain.

 

[BlueTrain]

This is in response to Mr. Brunswick's comment.

Some especially successful business and businessmen have been conglomerates, meaning large corporations that own or operate totally unrelated businesses. But such businessmen may be more accurately described as investors rather than managers. Overall, however, the real leadership in a corporation is naturally at the top and if top management is not committed to something, it doesn't matter how good middle and lower management or the employers are. Even old companies cannot coast. There may be good reasons management may not be committed to a certain industry or to the direction they are headed but nevertheless, good management at the top is as necessary as it is everywhere else in the company.