Quotas – We Got That

You know the concept.  You hear it often.  Quite frequently especially in car ads.  The dealer says we have to sell X number of vehicles before X date.  They never say why or even after the sale period is over whether they ever made their goal.  Thus this is the big problem with quotas.  Numbers created to seem like a sense of urgency to the consumer as if they are responsible to keep a dealer in business.  Sad to say, some people actually fall for this gimmick. 

Quotas are also used to push individuals to levels that they no they can’t really achieve.  Imagine a coach saying to a pole-vaulter the following:

“I am setting this rod on the ground-now vault over it”.

Not a problem since the rod is on the ground.  The coach then continuously raises the rod an inch after every vault.  The pole-vaulter is successful the first many times, but then comes the point that the pole-vaulter can’t get over the rod because it is just too high.  However, the coach is insistent that the pole-vaulter succeed or else they will be removed from the team.  At this point, the pole-vaulter can either quit or be removed by the coach.  Eventually, the bar was raised to high even for the best athletes.  There is always that level that is too high.

Relating quotas back to my earliest employment started with Woolworth. Back then, the floor employees (not me, thankfully) were required to turn in weekly damage reports to Store Manager Bernie. Every floor employee had to turn in X number of sheets per week valued at X amount of dollars per week. This was Bernie’s requirement having ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the company. These damage reports were a way to defraud manufacturers of delivered goods to the store by writing them off instead of selling them. The big problem for Bernie was that he had to make sure that everyone was doing their job on these reports as he didn’t want to fire anyone for non-compliance. Bernie did occasionally verbally reprimand employees for failure, but never fired anyone. Certainly if any employee was fired, they would probably report Bernie for fraud, so this kept Bernie and the employees in line. What really was bad about this whole thing was how hush-hush everyone was about this fraud. Eventually, this fraud caught up with the company and Bernie was shown the door. Sadly it took about 4 years and quite possibly as much as $50,000 in write-offs to make the company see what was going on. Ironically, Bernie’s successor, Mikey rarely used if ever these damage reports and with that employee quotas disappeared off Woolworth’s radar.

Most of my existence with Staples never had quotas either until Shawn Nichols appeared. Much in the same vein as Bernie did, Shawn used quotas for a purpose of evil and punishment to those who didn’t live up to his expectations. For the floor people (again, not me), quotas were placed on employees to have X number of service plans sold per week.  I will have much more to say on these plans in a future post.  For the cashiers (me included), the quotas were placed upon the number of service plans sold in addition to number of new rewards cards signed up by customers. 

And there lies the problem.  Shawn with his twisted thoughts believed that those who work the most number of hours and have the most seniority should be able to sell the most plans and also get the most rewards card sign-ups.  As I pointed out in my previous post, this couldn’t be furthest from the truth and the furthest from reality.  Shawn had raised the rod so high that nobody could ever reasonably reach their goals.  Thus came the reprimanding.  Not just occasionally, but weekly to the point of extremes.  It came to the point of getting written up multiple times for my “failure to succeed” with his desired numbers.  Eventually, his quackery numbers would force me out of the company (his lame excuse for termination), leaving me wondering why.  That “why” would come to light at my day of termination and it had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with his voodoo numbers game.  Stay tuned for the REAL REASON….

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Commentary:

It should be quite obvious that I HATE quotas.  They are nothing more than a bar raised too high that can NEVER be achieved.  When some crackpot manager like Shawn Nichols sets the bar too high, it should be obvious that there is something else driving his agenda.  That agenda was totally revealed at my day of termination, which was later denied by Shawn in my lawsuit against Staples.  What makes this whole thing even worse is that Shawn had been out of the company himself for about 6 months when my lawsuit came up to the state.  He had a sworn written affidavit lying about what he said to me in person on day of my termination.  The bad thing about this affidavit is that when I requested a copy of it, I was denied it.  Another Staples lie about a piece of paper that doesn’t exist.  Gee, would Staples REALLY do that?  If you have been reading this blog on a regular basis, then you already know the answer to that one.  If you haven’t been reading, then you seriously don’t hate Staples.  Between Bernie and Shawn, it should be obvious that quotas are for the minds of the criminals only and should never be used to judge another employee’s performance.  Sadly, quotas cost both of them their jobs.  Then again, maybe quotas are a good thing in a way.

Up Next:  Easier to Find Waldo Than a Store Employee!

First Lowe’s Disappeared–Now Best Buy Leaves Biddeford

It seems that Biddeford can’t catch a break.  No more than 6 months ago, Lowe’s closed up shop overnight and now Best Buy has announced it will be closing its store in mid-May.  Being one of the unlucky 50 stores chosen by the company is no surprise given that the area seems not to love its retailers.  While I don’t know really anything about the Biddeford economy, its seems that something wrong is going on down there.

Last Saturday on April 14, 2012, it was publically announced that this store was closing.  The store was closed for the day and a manager was out front of the store handing out coupons for $10 off a purchase (made on that Saturday only) at either the South Portland store or the Portsmouth New Hampshire store.  This is a slap in the face to customers as by the time that tolls and gas is figured into the cost of the trip to one of the other stores, it is no bargain at all!

According to the press release given by the company, all the employees will be given the opportunity to transfer to one of its other stores or receive a severance package.  To those stupid enough to want to transfer, I really wonder if they could get a job at another location as I don’t think any other location will be willing to hand out jobs just for the fun of it.  Thus, these employees will wind up in the end with nothing!  Since the store has been in the area for around 5 years, I doubt that any employee has worked for the store long enough to earn a decent severance and quite possibly may not get anything either. I see this as a lose-lose situation either way.

According to the press release given by the company, all the employees will be given the opportunity to transfer to one of its other stores or receive a severance package. To those stupid enough to want to transfer, I really wonder if they could get a job at another location as I don’t think any other location will be willing to hand out jobs just for the fun of it. Thus, these employees will wind up in the end with nothing! Since the store has been in the area for around 5 years, I doubt that any employee has worked for the store long enough to earn a decent severance and quite possibly may not get anything either. I see this as a lose-lose situation either way.

Overall, there is a much bigger issue here: Best Buy is dying and fast. They can only blame themselves for all their failure. They had the opportunity to take control of the electronics market after Circuit City disappeared, but instead destroyed that with a lot of bad missteps. Here’s how:

• Bad return policy - If you have a receipt, you still need a driver’s license for a return? This is the DUMBEST and WORST return policy of any company PERIOD! Let’s all say this together: IDENTITY THEFT! Storing credit card numbers AND driver’s license numbers together is not just bad – its illegal!! And we thought Staples was bad with what they do with credit cards, this is many times worse!
• Lack of floor employees – If you go into Best Buy on a Tuesday in the video department, you notice these oddly dressed people in fancy clothes putting up the stock and rearranging the shelf stock. Don’t even think about asking these people for help as they will not help you at all! The few people that are out around the floor are so stupid, I wonder why they were ever hired at all. Just an example, one of the employees directed me to use the other customer kiosk in the store when the one I was at had a “broken printer”. The interesting thing was that this other kiosk DID NOT have a printer attached to it! Come on Best Buy, know your equipment.  Eventually, I got the attention of another Best Buy employee who fixed the “broken” printer.  The only thing wrong with it was that it just needed the cable tightened in the back of the unit!  Very sad customer service!!
• Price match guarantee – Don’t even think about doing this as I found out – its not easy or quick.  I had a competitor’s flyer ad with me for an item I wanted to purchase in their store.  The price difference was only $5, but I had to wait while the cashier called the store to verify the price and make sure the item was in stock.  For the $5, it took a whopping 20 MINUTES to complete this transaction!!  Not worth the time to do that ever again!!  Of course this will mean loss of sales to Best Buy if they continue this harassing practice.  During my 20 minute transaction, at least 5 customers were lined up behind me looking very frustrated.  I am surprised that these customers didn’t walk out empty handed.  After this incident, I decided NEVER to do another price match ever again – apparently $5 is worth wasting 20 minutes of my time and the cashier’s time as well.
• Store remodel – Since the first of the year, the South Portland store made a significant remodel—and not to the good.  As an example, computer games are no longer over with the other computer software, but instead is located at the end of the DVD section.  The DVD section is divided up into 2 sections of shelving and half of one area has cds at its end and the other side has blu-ray discs at the end of the shelving area.  Other items that are messed up are having blank media located down by the repair center instead up with other computer accessories.  This store has gone through a transformation of being shopper-friendly to being shopper-hell!  Sad to say, I have shopped in other Best Buy stores in the past and they are equally as bad if not worse!  Ironically, Staples has fared much worse in the remodel category as I will explain in a future post.
• Product selection – Looking for a DVD that came out of 2 years ago? – don’t bother with Best Buy as it is apparent that they don’t carry anything that is very old.  The exception to this rule is the dirt cheap crap that nobody would ever want anyway.  I expect this from Walmart, not Best Buy.

Unless Best Buy fixes the above mentioned issues, they WILL be out of business much sooner than they think.  They really need to improve otherwise every customer will be ticked off and never shop there ever again.  Consider this a fair warning of the future.  Biddeford and the other 49 locations is just the beginning of the end!

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A Statistical Game of Cards and Lies

Mark Twain once said that there are three types of lies: “lies, damned lies, and statistics”.  Certainly Mr. Twain could have been speaking of Staples even though it didn’t exist way back in his days.  He was just way ahead of his time.  This blog post is all about statistics or should I say the manipulation that Staples uses statistics or should I say more lies of Staples.  But then again are you surprised?  If you have been reading this blog, nothing of Staples’ lies would be a surprise.

Let’s now turn the clock all the way back to my college days when between Political Science courses and a Statistics course.  Back then I learned a lot about the manipulation of data and how it can alter the truth.  So get ready for Professor Brown’s crash course of Statistics.

First off, all statistics begin with a sample size.  The larger the sample size, the better the representation of the real world you get.  This is true most of the time.  It is quite possible to get a sample size too large and thus create many incorrect conclusions drawn from it.  Consider all the political polls that have come out lately.  Depending on who does the collecting of the data and who is asked, the results could skewed to misrepresent the truth.  If say only 5 people were polled about which presidential candidate a person supports, this would not be a fair representation of the whole country as the sample size is way too small.  On the other hand if everybody in the world could possibly be polled about which candidate for U.S. President each person liked, the results would become very undesirable as most of the data would be inaccurate.  Sadly, this is how Staples collects its improper data.

As I have realized over my 20+ years in retail, there are two types of customers:  traditional ones and non-traditional ones.  The traditional ones could be called the regular customers, those who visit a retail establishment with some regularity.  The non-traditional customer is those who are curiosity seekers and may or may not purchase anything.  It is these customers that are usually the hardest to please because they don’t shop in the establishment often enough to care and don’t want to be bothered with anything more than getting out of the store as quickly as possible.

Another consideration to make is that most non-traditional customers shop mostly after 5pm at night as these are family people just out for a night out. The traditional customer usually are those that do the majority of their shopping well before 5pm. Walk around any mall or store and notice the difference of the type of people around and you will quickly realize that it is a completely different type of crowd. It is the non-traditional customer that makes many employees not want to work after 5pm. They just don’t like dealing with these type of people.

So how do you sell services to the non-traditional customer? Simply put, you don’t and realistically you can’t.  Yes, you can open the big can of whoopass excuses and say that services can be sold to this group, but I have NEVER seen it be successful.  I do mean NEVER!  It is stupid to ever think you can as most managers think that is possible to sell to the non-traditional customer and it becomes hilarious when they always fail miserably. 

So now how does all this relate to Staples rewards cards?  Welcome to the Staples’ manipulation of data. 

As mentioned before, the non-traditional customer has no interest in any services and this includes signing up for or using a rewards card.  Not only are they not interested, but they feel being harassed by being asked all the time.  For those employees who arrive at store opening up to around 4 or 5pm, getting customers to either sign up or using a rewards card is fairly easy.  After that time, it would be easier to pull all their teeth out than trying to sell them the rewards card.  Given that I usually started my day around 1pm, the bulk of my day featured mostly the non-traditional customer period. 

To add more to this circumstance, when I arrived each day, I was placed either at the end register where hardly anybody ever goes or right to the customer service desk.  Each of these locations had their flaws.  The furthest register usually didn’t get many customers and what customers I did get were not rewards customers and didn’t care to be.  Being at the customer service desk all created problems as this was where the bulk of the customers did their returns and also tax-exempt transactions.

Now here is the problem:

Every transaction counts.

If an employee rang up a customer and they had a rewards card, they had 100% compliance.

If they rang up a second customer and they didn’t have a card, the percentage dropped to 50%.

If they rang up a third customer without a card, the percentage drops to 33%.

As you can see, the percentages can drop quickly without having quite a few rewards cards entered.  I know some of the employees did cheat by randomly entering a rewards card info just to keep their percentages up.  Since returns and tax-exempt transactions are usually not associated with rewards cards, this drops the percentage significantly as well.  Of course at the end of the day, with several returns and not many rewards cards, it becomes quite obvious that the percentage is significantly low.  So low to the point that by the end of a day, daytime employees averaged around 60% or better, while I was constantly in the drain with about 30% (or even lower) on average.

However, to the dumbass managers like Shawn Nichols, this not only was unacceptable, but found it to be punishable, to the point of writing me up several times and eventually was a probable cause of my termination.  Every time I was written up, I questioned whether they was able to look at an hour-by-hour breakdown of my numbers to prove my point that the numbers dwindled by the type of customers that came in at night.  Either the manager was not interested in doing so or was unable to do it.  I believe the former was the excuse, not the latter. 

Since I worked the same type of shift during my entire employment with Staples, it was only Shawn Nichols who really had a real issue with these numbers. Other managers in the past expressed some concern, but after I explained everything about the types of customers, the managers backed off and didn’t discuss it again. It was quite obvious that Shawn Nichols had more axes to grind than just the card numbers.

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One thing I want to point at this time is that it was that the rewards cards was used as the excuse as to my termination. This excuse cost me my ignorant lawyer as he did not wish to pursue the case because of this flimsy reason. I will have more to say about this in a future post. Ironically, Staples later used other even more hysterically funny lame excuses as to reasons for my termination.

Up Next: Quotas – We Got That

Selling the FREE Staples Rewards Card (or not)

Back when I first started at Staples, the company had just within the last couple of months had changed the way the company was doing business.  No longer did the company have a membership program where if a customer was a member they would receive a discounted price on merchandise.  This membership program was changed to what was called “Staples Dividends” card.  The last “s': in the name was actually a “$” to indicate the money you would get back from the card.  And YES, you REALLY got back certificates that could be used like REAL money.

The original program was a straight 2.5% back on purchases with the exception of gift cards, computers, and postage stamps.  Although these items did count toward your yearly total.  When a customer reached a $1,000 purchasing threshold, the customer was raised to the “Gold Level” card.  The benefit of this card added free shipping and on occasion other special perks.  When a customer reached $5,000, they were raised to the “Platinum Level” card.  This card increased the return to 5% and double back occasionally on copy center orders.  The largest certificate I ever saw was for $1200!!  This was because the customer was using the copy center a lot and certainly took advantage of that.  It was this type of customer that gave inspiration and a selling point to make signing people up for the card easier.

Given these fairly good returns, it was somewhat easy to get customers to sign up for this free program.  Even someone like me got up to the gold level card and would get back about $25 back a year.  Not bad for what little I was buying with the company.  At that time, most customers had a rewards card and some fortunately (or unfortunately had multiple cards.  I remember one employee who was so stupid that every time she lost her card she would sign up for a new one.  At one point I checked the system and she had accumulated 15 cards!  With customers like that, sign-ups were very high. 

All went well for the most part until April 2007. This is when the program changed. Not just a small change, but a radically different direction. Instead of three levels of cards, there would be only one level of cards. Instead of all products counting for the amount given back, the program was limited to ink cartridges, paper, and copy center services. Suddenly, the usage of the rewards cards dropped. Not just a little, it dropped like a boat anchor taking the boat with it. Customers stopped using the cards as they stopped seeing the benefit in them. They were angry and trying to convince them to still use the card was almost impossible. Out of the mouths of every customer was almost like a chorus of anger and it was pretty much all the same “I don’t buy ink cartridges often, nor do I buy a lot of paper, and I certainly NEVER use the copy center for anything!” With that being heard constantly, it was hard (read impossible) to get anybody to sign up for the card much less use the card they already had. A few months later, the company added ink recycling credits to this new card as well. Even with this addition, the card was still a very difficult sell to customers. I will have more to say about Staples ink recycling program in a future post and for those who think that this is another scam then you are very right. With Staples, scams breed scams. It appears in the last year, after my termination with the company, that Staples has added the concept of special sales pricing of certain products in their ads with usage of their rewards card.  It seems that this is just desperation that the card still isn’t going over as well as the company had expected.  No surprise to me at all given its limited value. 

However, the biggest issue of selling/signing up customers to the card is a matter of timing or should I say “time of day”.  This is the subject of the next post as we have fun with statistics or maybe not so much fun after all.

Next Up:  A Statistical Game of Cards and Lies.