Paid Not To Think!
By Jim E. Reames (01/22/04)
After our shopping cart was empty my wife and I waited for the clerk to complete her duties with the customer ahead of us. All went well until the last item was scanned. Now came that all-important question. Should the store honor the one-dollar coupon? Or should the consumer collect a rebate from the manufacturer?
What followed was a brief (friendly) debate. Ultimately the clerk summonsed management. Just about then another…and then a fourth…customer arrived, but management did not. So we all waited. And waited. And we waited even more. Meanwhile, other lines around us filled up fast.
After about five minutes a fifth customer approached us, saw the delay and as quickly re-navigated. By now I was starting to regret having placed our entire foodstuff onto the register’s conveyer belt.
After about six minutes a middle-aged woman finally showed up. She was briefed. Then of course, she read the tiny print on that tiny coupon. After that the debate continued.
By now, a full eight minutes had elapsed as my wife reached for another nearby magazine. I, in turn, decided to eavesdrop. The store, after all, was wasting valuable human resource. On top of that other customers were showing signs of irrigation. How would this dilemma be solved? Would the customer receive her one-dollar discount? Or would she be directed to the road “Three Rs?”
I’m not referring to “Reading”, “Writing” and “Arithmetic.” Well, maybe I am. For now “Three R’s” refers to “The Real world of Retail Rebates.” You’ve been down that pot holed road. It is a freeway crowded with the added expense consisting of time, required receipts, and your own postage. I call it “The road R3 to the third power” where in this woman’s case nearly 40% of the rebate will be eaten up by postage. Tack on about ten cents for an envelope and half of her rebate is consumed. Never mind the cost of human resource or the cost associated with rebate refusal follow-up.
I did not know who to feel more sorry for, the customer ahead of me, or all the people being made to wait in line. Most of all I felt sorry for the humbled retail clerk who had been deprived the authority to make a simple point of purchase decision for one lousy dollar. This whole thing seemed about as asinine as my having to wait for a red light to turn green at an empty intersection, at 5:00 a.m., with no other traffic in sight, except for that small town cop hiding in the shadows.
We Americans didn’t use to be this way. Forget the red light! There used to be a time when labor was considered part of the team, an important element of business success. I can remember having been given more work place dignity loading box cars at a lumber mill back in the 1960s than was being afforded this poor woman. I was also paid better. Rather, I was permitted to keep more of what I earned back then.
What became more pathetic was the inability for the floor manager to make a quick decision. It was a very sad sight. Deep down I wanted to intercede and suggest…with a loud voice, “Maybe someone should call the White House for a decision.” But that would have embarrassed my wife so I restrained the urge.
Those of us in line began to envision yet another rung of management being called as a verbal volley between the floor manager, the retail clerk, and the shopper evolved. I swear, it was like a debate between Rush Limbaugh, George Bush, and Hillary Clinton. The United States Supreme Court gets petitioned for things like this. The wrong answer, after all, could in real life, result in a civil law suit against “The Store.” A recent and pending civil suit of $30,000 because of broken toenails as the result of a broken shopping bag immediately comes to mind (refer to my last guest opinion).
The crescendo was the floor manger’s inability to decide.
Finally, it was mutually agreed that the customer should contact the manufacturer directly. I shook my head at the stupidity of it all. She was actually elevated to the level of R3 by a floor manager who was unable (rather not permitted) to think.
Once in the privacy of our car I commented, “…how degrading it is where certain individuals in the work place are paid NOT TO THINK.” This social trend is far more common than one might first imagine. Think about it. How many of us are paid NOT TO THINK? It’s not because we don’t know how, but rather, because policy and procedure has siphoned away all room for common sense, especially when it comes to working with the public. There are certain professions that seem to deliberately “down dumb” the worker until, over time, the worker becomes institutionalized to the world of indecision. They become poor applicants for other jobs. Government employment is notorious for this, as are most of today’s service related positions. This phenomenon is not reserved for minimum employment, either. I know of people who earn six digit incomes who get treated about the same as I saw the retail clerk being systematically treated. That’s sad. It is very sad! In fact I’d venture so say most people in today’s work force feels they are treated (by someone above them) as being unauthorized to make common sense decisions. It seems that hardly anyone can do anything anymore without bring in the chain-of-command, unless you own your own business.
If such is the future of all human interaction in the work force then we can say good-by to a society that produced great leaders like Neal Armstrong, General Patton, Dwight Eisenhower, or John F. Kennedy.
The question to ask is how did America get to this state of affairs? I blame it on too much television, controlled by a media elite, and the movers and shakers of politically correct philosophies. America’s failed legal system has a lot to do with this, too. My wife who owns a small retail store (She thinks for herself!) attributives a lot of it to the world of corporate downsizing combined with the rapid expansion of too much computerization – IE. Automation. But ultimately it all boils down to how much a failure our public school system has become, bringing us back to the three Rs which, in turn, is a spin off failure due to broken and dysfunctional families. Was America better off when women stayed home as wives and mothers? Maybe not for the women, most of whom were financially enslaved to the men. But was America better off? Most mothers at least saw to it their children were taught to think and to demand respect and to be treated with dignity. Children growing up were at least taught to think prior to entering adulthood.
I’ve written it before in earlier articles, and I do so again. There is something desperately wrong in these United States of America and it isn’t George Bush or Howard Dean or Hillary Clinton. We Americans are becoming a nation that lacks class! As a modern society we are abandoning common sense and sound judgment. When I use the term “God Bless America” there is reason why.
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