Incompetent worker problem

[zippy2020]

My only issue with Amazon is if they send something and it doesn't get delivered. They don't have an easy option for that, just for returns. You can't return something you didn't receive. But you can work your way through it, it just takes time and effort.

When we bought our new townhouse a few years ago, DW started buying art to hang on the walls. I forget the company(ies) she was ordering from, but often (at least 1/3 of the time) the art would arrive with a blemish, or a lousy framing job, or something like that. Every single time they told us to keep the picture and they sent us a new one. So now we have duplicate pictures in the basement storage room. I haven't decided whether to try to fix the framing myself, or just give it to the church's White Elephant sale. But the markup on that stuff must be incredible, if they can just toss it away like that.

I don't think you bought the art from Amazon per se. You probably bought it through the Amazon Marketplace. With the # of items that are shipped out by Amazon facilities all over the world, it simply is not worth their time to pay for shipping an item back, entering it in a system, checking for flaws, and either returning it to the shelf or the mfg/seller.

 

[zippy2020]

Anyone here remember using those Susie (Susan B. Anthony) dollar coins which came out circa 1979? They were silver and looked like quarters and were often confused for them.

Some years ago, they came out with those Goldies, dollar coins the same size as the old Susies but at least wouldn't be mistaken for quarters. I still got Susies once in a while as change from vending machines even though those same vending machines (LIRR, right, MarieIG?) did not accept them! When I tried to spend a Susie at the store, the cashier, someone around my age at the time (50s) and who was old enough to remember them, still didn't recognize it and thought I was trying to underpay the tab. I told her it was a dollar coin and she backed down. I imagine younger workers wouldn't recognize them at all.

Interestingly enough, I recently paid for something under $6 with a $20 bill. Got my change, left the coins in the Tip jar, and stuffed the bills in my purse.

A few days later, when I was straightening up my purse (tossing away old parking stubs, etc.), I realized I had those change bills but hadn't put them away properly.

When I sorted them out, there was two $5s, three $1s....and a $2 bill. Haven't seen one of those in years!

 

[HGTVFanatic]

This has nothing to do with COVID or age. I think this is a problem that starts at the top, corporate malfeasance at it's finest. Putting profit before people. Focusing on running the business as cheaply as possible to maximize income with no regard to the customer experience. They treat employees as expendable. They spend as little time as they can training them because that costs money. And the workers, understandably, don't feel valued or secure in their jobs and have no loyalty toward the employer.

You hit it out of the park! Treat your employees right and you will be rewarded.

 

[JoeWras]

Not just a new thing. When I was a kid my dad brought the car to a friend's mechanic shop to have a trailer hitch welded on. On a trip to the beach I was standing up in the front seat, yeah way before seat belts, and asked dad where was our pop-up camper? Dad's friend had gotten distracted and had not finished welding the hitch! Found the camper a few miles back. Mom and I waited at a roadside fruit stand while dad found a welder and got it done right.

LOL!

"Dad, where's our camper?"

Dad: "Oh you gotta be kidding. Billy must have been hitting the bottle again while welding."

 

[Scuba]

whenever im feeling down about incompetent workers, I just go thru the local Chic-fil-a drive through and all becomes right in the world.

Truth!

 

[Scuba]

I had to do a wire transfer at Fidelity today. The rep I talked sounded young, but had the process down cold. I felt very confident that everything would work correctly. A couple hours later the wire was confirmed.

Fidelity is one of the few companies that still offers excellent customer service.

 

[harley]

I don't think you bought the art from Amazon per se. You probably bought it through the Amazon Marketplace. With the # of items that are shipped out by Amazon facilities all over the world, it simply is not worth their time to pay for shipping an item back, entering it in a system, checking for flaws, and either returning it to the shelf or the mfg/seller.

Sorry, made a topic jump between paragraphs without proper explanation. The Amazon issue is one thing. we bought the art from Great Big Canvas, a place that specializes in wall art. Even though the pieces arrived damaged/poorly made, the packaging was serious. 2x3 wood frames, heavy duty cardboard, super heavy duty bubble wrap. I'm sure mailing it back would have cost them a ton. I was just surprised. I hadn't seen that attitude before. I think they said something like "dump, destroy, or donate it".

 

[freedomatlast]

Getting roofing quotes on a detached garage roof. The first guy shows up, doesn't have a tape measure, asks if he can borrow one. Second guy shows up, measures half the roof and provides an extremely low quote. When I look at the square footage he calculated, I see he never multiplied his measurements on half the roof, by two. These two were young guys from rather large, well known companies.

 

[FindingForward]

I do a little vacation coverage work and found out the hospital has had to lower standards to get entry level clerical staff. Unfortunate but that's the way it is. I wish they would automate more

If it were only clerical staff. I hear stories from friends who work at large for-profit hospital systems...they say standards have plummeted for direct care providers like CNAs, nurses, techs, as well as lab and other teams, due to staffing shortages. Scary.

 

[Chuckanut]

Latest “You can’t make this stuff up” report.

At neighbor’s niece was called into work hours earlier than planned on the very busy Mother’s Day Breakfast morning earlier this year. It seems a co-worker had called in sick with a ‘hangover’ on this key day.

 

[Winemaker]

Getting roofing quotes on a detached garage roof. The first guy shows up, doesn't have a tape measure, asks if he can borrow one. Second guy shows up, measures half the roof and provides an extremely low quote. When I look at the square footage he calculated, I see he never multiplied his measurements on half the roof, by two. These two were young guys from rather large, well known companies.

Nowadays you can look up the property on Google maps and use their tool to measure square footage. My roofer has done it 4 times on 4 different roofs, I wondered why he didn't use a tape. Extremely accurate he said.

 

[Sunset]

Nowadays you can look up the property on Google maps and use their tool to measure square footage. My roofer has done it 4 times on 4 different roofs, I wondered why he didn't use a tape. Extremely accurate he said.

Yes, I had that experience as well, pretty useful, yet also can lead a company down a poor quality path, as they didn't even show up.

They just gave me the quite by email. Problem with this is they can miss out on issues of roof deck rot etc.

 

[Al18]

Retire to Nature,
I'd write to Hyundai corporate in the US and complain about the poor service from the Hyundai dealer. Multipoint service includes checking the brake pads. What your received is way below typical service. My Elantra has 85K on the original pads. I specifically asked the dealer about wear and he said they were acceptable.

 

[punkinhead]

Nowadays you can look up the property on Google maps and use their tool to measure square footage. My roofer has done it 4 times on 4 different roofs, I wondered why he didn't use a tape. Extremely accurate he said.

He'd still have to know the roof pitch to calculate the area.

 

[pdxgal]

I think bad or casual w*rk attitudes can trend up during periods of low unemployment. Employers are reluctant to fire anyone, and it's easy to find another job if you do get fired.

+1. Re: OP's comment about veterinary care, unfortunately COVID was the final straw for many independent vets who got burnt out both emotionally and financially. Pet care is increasingly being taken over by corporations whose focus is the bottom line. Primary care for humans is on a similar trajectory, alas (with a resulting negative effect on ERs, which are having to do more primary and less emergent care).

I also suspect some poor CS is simply lack of knowledge and experience among younger workers, now that many boomers have left the workforce, especially in the trades.

 

[freedomatlast]

Nowadays you can look up the property on Google maps and use their tool to measure square footage. My roofer has done it 4 times on 4 different roofs, I wondered why he didn't use a tape. Extremely accurate he said.

Yes, there's one site I went on where you just type your address, confirm the cursor is over the roof you want calculated and it gives you the square feet instantly. And it was accurate by the way. I had another guy use this and I received a quote in a couple of hours. I think some of the companies still want to come out and meet the potential customer and give a spiel why you should use their company for the job. In my two recent scenarios, meeting the company representative turned out being a negative rather than a positive for them. Both of them also wanted to check for water damage in an attempt to increase the quoted amount. Neither of them found any.

 

[Koolau]

Latest “You can’t make this stuff up” report.

At neighbor’s niece was called into work hours earlier than planned on the very busy Mother’s Day Breakfast morning earlier this year. It seems a co-worker had called in sick with a ‘hangover’ on this key day.

One of my direct reports - (but not for long) came to w*rk one day and then went out for lunch at a local watering hole not far from our plant. He called in sick from there.

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

At the old j*b we had a cafeteria where the women handling the cash registers were longtime employees. They knew everybody by name and always offered some pleasantry to each person as they passed through the lane. One of them, "Rosie," was a sweet older lady who had probably been there for 30 years.

They were managed by "Charlie," a dumbass. I still can hear him calling the weekly special, chicken fajitas, "feeyatas." Even though he probably heard it pronounced correctly a hundred times each day.

One day I got a peek at Charlie's management style as a wannabe tyrant. He was yelling at Rosie for some petty infraction. Rosie looked him in the eye and told him, "Shut up!"
He blustered on, threatening to write her up, before he stomped off.

American workplace culture has cast management and labor into adversarial roles. That has become so deeply ingrained that a lot of people are simply unmotivated to do their best.

It's funny, I've read so many posts on this forum from people who couldn't wait to retire because they hated their jobs. How many of them were performing at the top of their game? Not many, I'd bet.

 

[Koolau]

At the old j*b we had a cafeteria where the women handling the cash registers were longtime employees. They knew everybody by name and always offered some pleasantry to each person as they passed through the lane. One of them, "Rosie," was a sweet older lady who had probably been there for 30 years.

They were managed by "Charlie," a dumbass. I still can hear him calling the weekly special, chicken fajitas, "feeyatas." Even though he probably heard it pronounced correctly a hundred times each day.

One day I got a peek at Charlie's management style as a wannabe tyrant. He was yelling at Rosie for some petty infraction. Rosie looked him in the eye and told him, "Shut up!"
He blustered on, threatening to write her up, before he stomped off.

American workplace culture has cast management and labor into adversarial roles. That has become so deeply ingrained that a lot of people are simply unmotivated to do their best.

It's funny, I've read so many posts on this forum from people who couldn't wait to retire because they hated their jobs. How many of them were performing at the top of their game? Not many, I'd bet.

My direct reports tended to think they knew more than I did. No matter how many times I was forced to show them that they didn't know more (when they screwed up) it just wouldn't sink in. I'm sure it's a near universal ego kinda thing. Oddly, I rarely thought I knew more than my boss (except about management issues, but that wasn't important in our group.) I gave good performance appraisals to my people and my boss just sorta brushed over everything and signed the form if I didn't complain.

 

[MichaelB]

One of my direct reports - (but not for long) came to w*rk one day and then went out for lunch at a local watering hole not far from our plant. He called in sick from there.

Sounds like he really was sick.

sick of work, that is …

 

[dknighd]

Incompetent worker problem


That problem will never go away

 

[MRG]

Incompetent worker problem


That problem will never go away

+1
And it doesn't matter what the "work" is.

I remember when I was in the sawmill inspecting lumber. We'd have temporary help from a day labor place. These guys were mostly homeless and couldn't read, but they were hired to stack lumber. They had to match a pattern I put on each board and place it on the appropriate stack. I had a couple of regular guys who helped check the lumber was in the correct place. There were a few guys who really couldn't do that job. It was overwhelming for them.

Later in life, I became a mainframe assembly programmer. A couple of years in, I was teamed up with a lady I started with. We were updating several online systems. We went through formal technical reviews on our code, and it was supposed to be frozen. I learned that she had been quietly changing the locked down code and introduced bugs! The woman didn't understand the difference between a 'L' and 'LA' instruction and changed them around. If you pressed enter on a blank screen, the entire freaking online system died! I quietly found and changed everything back the last week before production. Had I screwed up, it would have been ugly. That lady was overwhelmed being a programmer.

 

[JoeWras]

The woman didn't understand the difference between a 'L' and 'LA' instruction and changed them around. If you pressed enter on a blank screen, the entire freaking online system died! I quietly found and changed everything back the last week before production. Had I screwed up, it would have been ugly. That lady was overwhelmed being a programmer.

L, LA, LDA. It's just a letter or two. What difference does it make? Stop being such a nitpicker!

 

[Koolau]

Sounds like he really was sick.

sick of work, that is …

He had some serious problems - alcohol was only one of them. He was convinced he could w*rk his way through the entire admin staff. He had a good start when he was finally terminated. Of course, he never told any admin that he was married and that did NOT end well. Fortunately megacorp wasn't "big enough" for him, so he went into business for himself (say what!?) Oh, and politics. Eventually he ended up selling "peeler" space to businesses. I lost track of him after that.

 

[JoeWras]

Now if





No if


NoW if we culd onlY fix the imcomentannt subscrBr prolbum heir!