Strangling Company Communications and He Also Has Spies

The flow of open, two-sided and clear communications between a company’s associates and it’s management is an important underpinning of any functional organization. As I typed in those last few words I realized that in the Uzzi family company there is no such thing as functional so this post might just be non-applicable. None the less the communications between people in an organization is vital to its success and I can not think of anyone who would disagree with this premise – oops I just did think of someone.

Okay Uzzi has got me on that point but I will still continue writing about the importance of good open company communication practices and how the terrible ones stifle an organization in this post. In most organizations communications flow in an open and unobstructed manner. Ideas are exchanged, opinions voiced and other views considered. Feedback is a good thing not something to be scorned at or belittled. In the end a problem is solved, a decision or strategy is arrived at and the organization moves ahead better for the effort. Yes ultimately someone has to make the final decision however by taking advantage of multiple viewpoints and other relevant positions the company wins. In addition the company employees feel part of the decision-making process as well. Seems like a win-win situation to this observer but not to an Uzzi type manager.

When communication between the companies associates are constantly choked off like crab grass sprayed with Round Up then low morale and a general malaise within the company is bound to be prevalent. I must admit that I have never been involved with any type of organization where communication is stifled like it is at the Uzzi family company, very strange indeed.

Uzzi is at best a micro manager and at worse he is a control freak. He must know about and be part of every decision that is going on in a store or the company as a whole no matter how small or trivial that it may seem to others.

Here are some examples of Uzzi communication practices as a manager/owner:

– Why did a store manager tell an employee that they could be scheduled off for a Greek Orthodox holiday 3 weeks in advance? Did the manager do it because the employee is a devout Greek Orthodox? Of course they did but Uzzi sees something dark in a decision like that. Mainly Uzzi wants to know why he wasn’t contacted or consulted on this decision to permit the employee to celebrate this important religious holiday?

– Why did a produce manager decided to put some delicious looking red apple’s in a farmer style basket for a display in their department? Why would the produce staff want to do this? Well to sell more product that is why. No not in a store where Uzzi must be asked for his approval on any merchandising issue.

Uzzi must be in the loop on anything and everything – nothing is to small or petty for him to be the final decision maker on. In addition Uzzi demands, through his caustic mannerism, that no idea can emanate from any associate, read his slaves or minions, within “his” company unless it is his idea. If you say or suggest something than you are automatically wrong or he tells you that you do not know what you are talking about. However later that terrible idea of someone else, his label not mine, will reappear but this time it will come from Uzzi’s lips and it will be put out as a revelation from on high.

These words are not coming from some bitter underling frustrated that they are not getting the credit for their ideas rather they are the plain and simple truth stated by many associates who have experienced the Uzzi ego in action. Some employees just shake their heads or chuckle about his controlling personality – sociopath and or narcissistic who knows which one, but deep down they wonder how someone like this got into a position of ownership of a company. Well the answer to that question will be blogged on in a later post and believe me it is something that happens in a lot in family owned businesses.

As I have said in a past post thank goodness there is a prescription plan in the organization, if the impacted associates get health care insurance at all, although his in-laws have probably not paid the policy premium so the employee will get a bill for their medications later.

Anyway back to our post’s topic of company communications and spies, Uzzi is a master manipulator and a pretty fair judge of whether a person he has just met can be manipulated by his sly although obvious sneaky mind control or not. If you are an easy mark then Uzzi goes to work on you from almost the first time that you meet him. He sizes up how you will fit into his network of informers and what type of information that you can deliver to him. What position do you occupy within the company and therefore what tasty morsels of gossip and innuendo can you bring to him on a regular basis. Will you be the type to call him at home and report that you think so and so did not see to it that the bathrooms were cleaned that evening. Can you rat out a night closing manager for not walking around the store and checking each thermostat on the collection of vintage product cases that the Uzzi family had acquired in the last 5o years but has never updated. Can you squeal on the mentally challenged cart person for sipping a bottle of water by the grocery carts in 100 degree weather when they were on the clock and working outside? Well can you? Uzzi needs to know that you can do these dastardly things while being loyal only to him and no one else including his extended family.

Forget things like working together as a team where everyone communicates with each other to make things run better as well as keeping the dialogue open between all facets of the company. No the communication must come through Uzzi and it must be the tasty stuff please.

Can you feed Uzzi distorted facts and out of context observations about someone who works in a particular store including personal information? Uzzi loves to hear about personal information. This can be used later so that they will do his bidding. Do you posses a low sense of self-esteem so that he can manipulate that personality quirk to serve the greater good – Uzzi’s? This is the power that he possesses like that of a Jedi Knight in a Star Wars movie and how they used their mind control powers on other weaker beings or life forms. Well Uzzi is no Jedi Knight however he is a master at manipulating people to serve him.

Uzzi has placed a vast collection of mostly honest but weak-minded individuals in all of the key locations within his families retail empire. These lemmings report to him on a regular basis and even communicate with each other from location to location within the companies domain hoping that they can rise to the rank of chief spy and informer – Uzzi’s number one spook.

For the most part the Uzzi-grams, as some refer to them as, are worthless idle gossip along with trivial information that can be used for individual attacks on honest and for the most part hard-working company associates. For some reason these victims somehow found themselves on the “Uzzi Black List”. Possible reasons for getting on this list include requesting family health insurance coverage to which they are entitled, going out on disability for a major injury or the worst offense making more than $8 an hour and receiving health benefits! Perhaps they asked for a raise since they had not had one in 6 years. This is not something that you want to ask of Uzzi because it will only get you labeled a non-loyal employee and you will end up on the black list.

Of course some company associates get on the feared Uzzi list just because he feels that they should be on it for some past petty transgression. Uzzi uses his amazing powers of recall to remember how a particular employee failed to stay and work in a store for 14 hours straight during a snow storm because they had to go home and look after their children. Far be it from Uzzi to remember that it had snowed like heck the night before and that this employee basically walked through snow drifts for hours to get to work on time that day. Forget that the employee worked for 12 hours that day when they did get in, on time, and that it would take them another 2 hours to get home that evening. Forget that the employee was scheduled for 8 hours that day and that half of the other employees called out because they could not get through the snow to make it work.  Those things did and do not matter to Uzzi because now this worthless employee is on the black list. Believe it or not this particular example of sub-par employee loyalty could have happened 10 years ago however Uzzi will always remember it especially when an opportunity presents itself for him to get back at that associate. Those of us in the world of reality would probably call this type of behavior vindictive but if you have been with Uzzi for a while you will  just call it normal behavior for him.

Uzzi prides himself in listening to everything that emanates from the family stores and then uses it to his advantage. If a customer mentions that a competitor has a cheaper price on chicken then Uzzi takes that customers word as fact and proceeds to call up the chicken buyer and then berate them for not buying cheaper chickens. The funny thing is that the chicken buyer is his in-law. Uzzi plays no favorites!

So remember that Uzzi does not just use these dogmatic statements from his clan of spies against company associates, he also uses them against his extended family as well. After all Uzzi in Hebrew means my power and in the end that is all that Uzzi cares about – his power.

AB

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories

Blackberry’s Are Not in the Produce Department and Can You Wait for Just a Minute I Have to Make a Call

Someone recently said that cell or smart phones are not the reason for a perceived increase in rude and ill-mannered behavior by some people in public. The fact of the matter is that these types of people act selfishly and rudely with or without the use of technology. We do not need to use a cell phone to explain why people today exhibit bad manners in public places because behavioral traits like these operate without the need for an electric charger.

Wander through the aisles of your local Supermarket and you will see, what appears at first, to be people talking with themselves. Then upon closer examination one realizes that these people are actually speaking to someone else on their cell phone through some sort of ear piece device. Cell Phones are a handy way for one’s wife, husband, significant other or elderly parent to get in touch with a shopper to ask them to pick up this or that since they are already at the store. If only this were the case in reality.

Listening to people talk on their cell phones in the supermarket can be an insight into our social norms or possibly a case study of conversations at a mental health clinic. For one particular group of shoppers, sorry young ladies, being at the Grocery Store seems to be the time that they can catch up on the gossip of what their fellow girl friends are doing and in some case doing it with. In the case of the busy 30 something male it is a chance to catch up on voice mails from the office or planning for the next sporting event. Every social group that I have observed talking on the cell phone in the Grocery Store have their own particular subject matter that needs to be talked about as they pickup the sodas, chips and frozen food. Why is this? Sociologists I am sure will have an answer and the statistics to back up a study on this type of behavior. Psychologist will have their perspectives on this subject and most of the rest of us will still go around scratching our heads as to why people feel the need to talk about things so loudly on the cell phone in public.

In the interest of full disclosure I own a cell phone or smart phone as they are referred to today. I have never really felt the need to wander through some public place and carry on a conversation with someone else at the same time. Remember though so far I have only been writing about customers using their cell phones in public at the Grocery Store.

So who says that Supermarket employees should be excluded from exercising a little bit of narcissistic tendencies on the job as well. I know for myself that they do so regularly and see it just about everyday or every time I go into a supermarket.

Let’s briefly go off the current subject matter for a moment so that I can provide some background as to why this socially rude and unacceptable behavior of using a Cell Phone at work in the Supermarket has been allowed to grow roots.

Technology is a wonderful thing in most cases. Technology allows for one to be more informed, in touch and have access to the volumes of the accumulated wealth of man. Years ago in many American business, not just the Retail Food industry, computers perpetuated the reduction in numbers of mid-level management positions in an organization. In older businesses the executives would set policies, then area directors would package them for use by the managers who in turn would supervise those policies implementation and adherence to by the line employees. Whether this was a manufacturing, traditional office or service operation mid-level management were the supervisory Bee’s in the business colony.

Technology, namely computers of all different sizes and capabilities, allowed executives to monitor productivity and the operations of a business at all levels. In the interests of cost savings and organizational profitability it was determined that there was too much mid-level management in place. More managing could be done with less management and more technology. Executives could have their finger on the pulse of an organization all of the time. Anyway this change in the organizational thought process worked its way through every industry in the United States even the humble Supermarket Business.

Depending on the size of a particular Grocery Store the organizational structure use to include a store manager, assistant managers, department heads, office personnel, inventory clerks, front-end supervisors, cashiers and perhaps someone to load your purchases into your car. Well to the owners and executives of the Grocery Stores this was just too many people to have on the payroll. Right Uzzi? After all the owners and executives now had the technology to manage every aspect of the business. They did not need someone else interpreting results for them or even carrying out some policy because they could do this themselves or through others further down the organizational chart. In addition the age of hello e-mail good-by personal visits by a mid-level managers was dawning.

So the Supermarket Industry went through an organizational change at store level. First store managers, through the use of technology, could do more to monitor the different areas of their stores. They did not need 3 or 4 assistant managers to help in the running of the store, now they just needed a couple of assistants. The need for multiple department heads was no longer needed either because technology has proven to the owners that the Dairy Department Manager can also be the Frozen Food Manager. Instead of having a pseudo bookkeeper at the store the computer would keep track of things and flag any exceptions which now the store manager must look into first. Front-end Supervisors became more and more extinct in most stores. Instead an office type person can help the cashiers or attend to the odd customer inquiry now and then. Cashiers can be cashiers or Self Checkout Registers can even eliminate the need for the number of cashiers as well – more on this in another post. The store can now reduce their over all store payroll by two to four percent. Considering that a Grocery Store can have a payroll of 7 – 14 percent of its total retail sales the savings are huge. So fewer eyes and more technology was the answer to a store’s profit and service be damned just ask the Holy Grail of retailing Wal-Mart.

So now we can better understand why in some cases no one is watching the proverbial store anymore – other than the closed circuit cameras that are for the most part not being monitored just recorded, the store is on its own as are the customers.

The other day I was in one of the Uzzi Family company stores and I noticed that a cashier, a young man, seemed to be fidgeting with something or with himself while he was waiting on a customer. Of course my thoughts were that perhaps the customer is really a robber and threatening the young cashier. However upon closer observation I saw that the cashier was still checking out or scanning a customers order it was just that the customer was not really putting the products on the check stand with any particular sense of speed. Heck there was not even a rhythm to this process for this customer was just slow putting things on the checkout belt.

This cashier apparently felt that he could use these snippets of 10 or 15 seconds between the groups of products being dug from the customers cart to carry on a Text Messaging conversation with someone who he knew. How’s about that? This cashier certainly practices some type of extreme time management if you ask me.

In the past I had noticed that even at my own local supermarket younger cashiers almost always seemed to have their cell phone or smart phone within close proximity to where they are working. Occasionally I would hear a ring tone similar to a Lady Gaga hit single or some other current R&B or Hip Hop artist going off in the employees pants pockets or purses that were placed under the counter of their workstation. I also noticed that if an opportunity presented itself either after the customer had finished checking out or before the next customer’s order was completely placed on the Checkout Belt that the cashier would reach for the phone and see either who it was that called earlier or what the Text Message said that just came in. There have been times where I have seen the cashier either respond to the Text Message or make a quick phone call before checking out the next customer.

I must be sensitive to this type of behavior now because I see it more and more in the retail stores that I am in. The points that I would like to make here with this post is that rude behavior and poor manners do not need technology to bring it out into the open. If people acting like this today were allowed to do these things and act like this growing up it certainly was something that the parents failed to communicate to their children as to what is acceptable and what is not acceptable forms of behavior. It is not up to the schools or businesses to be surrogate parents and teach their employees not to be rude however the businesses should always provide good examples of proper behavior. However it is up to the schools and the businesses to let their students or employees know what the rules are along with the consequences of not following them. Hello kids do you want fries with that order.

The second point that I would like to make here is that with the lack of supervision in more and more Supermarkets today it is not surprising to see that this type of rude behavior and employee malaise can occur. Store owners and management have an obligation to their customers to provide food products in a clean and sanitary environment with efficient and effect service at a reasonable price. No more and no less. Without proper supervision and periodic associate reviews that include addressing behavioral traits these forms of rude behavior will continue to find fertile ground in the supermarket.

As an aside it is not just the cashiers who are using their cell phones whenever they want to at work it is also the cart person, the meat cutter and the person behind the deli counter. At times I have heard more colorful language emanating from behind the counter from my location on the sales floor than I have heard in some bars.

Quickly to give Uzzi some credit he has a very strict policy on the use of cell phones in a store while an employee is on the company’s time or as he says his time. This policy requires that the employee not use their cell phone when they are working or on the sales floor only when they are on break or leaving for the day. Of course you always see Uzzi when he is in any of the stores with his cell phone at his ear but I guess that he is using it for company business – yea right.

It was only 10 years ago or so that if someone mentioned or used the word Blackberry in a Supermarket one would think of a particular type of fruit berry in the Produce Department. Today one’s first thought is of that famous type of smart phone. Oops I have to run now because I just got a Tweet from Paris Hilton and I want to read it right away.

AB

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories