Resist the urge to punish everyone for one person's mistake
sivers.org
sivers.org
I have seen people very wrong-headedly trying to apply rules to all employees because of one misbehaving person, under the misguided notion that this is somehow "fair". For example, a long time ago there was a person in the admin group that was basically a slacker - came in late, left early and didn't work very hard. Management got really annoyed by this and made a "Everybody in by 9am OR ELSE, no exceptions" rule. Well you can imagine how that went down will all us geeks who were slaving 14 hours a day till the witching hour to fix problems. They managed to piss off the most productive people in the building, instead of standing up to one person and saying "you will be in by 9am, because that is when your manager needs you, and if you're not, you will be fired".
So, unless you are managing an organisation that is so large, and you trust your middle management so little, that you can not address problems on a case-by-case basis, then stay away from sweeping rules. I'm with the OP on this one.
Lasted about a week before the MBA in the building pulled me aside and told me that wasn't going to work. The reason: the customer support guy also lived a long way out and he thought it wasn't fair that I was doing this.
Of course, one of the very reasons I was drawn to programming in the first place was the flexibility it came with as a job. I could be productive from almost anywhere... and why shouldn't I be? From my perspective, if he didn't like it, well he should think about a career change.
Now this was early 2002, which some might remember was a terrible time for actually finding jobs... so I reluctantly gave in. My commute went from roughly 30 minutes each way to 1-2 hours. I was miserable. That all changed after about a year as the company grew and I gradually slipped back into a better driving schedule.
It's still something that sticks with me today. Now that I own the company, I promote a results oriented environment that gives everyone the flexibility to come and go as they please. Sure we sometimes have to get everyone together for meetings, but it's hardly been an issue so far.
My cat has enough self respect to hold his feces if we accidentally close the door to the laundry room for a while.
I think the notion that these people are like characters in the Sims where they tried super hard to get to the nearest city-provided restroom or various public restrooms like the ubiquitous McDonalds in SF -- yet they could not make it in time so they reluctantly pooped on the sidewalk is very naive.
Granted, it could be long lines -- I don't have the data either.
Sorry, but that's an argument that you have to prove, with actual facts. You can't simply assert your worldview to be true.
Could the homelessness problem in SF be caused by excessive social services? Sure, I suppose it could. But it could also easily be caused by the incredibly moderate weather (which makes it possible to live on the streets year-round, without fear of freezing to death -- many cities with moderate climates have similar problems). Or, for that matter, the homelessness problem could be due to the absolutely insane cost of living, and a lack of social services.
I don't know the cause of the problem, but I'd still wager that it's a bit more complicated than a simple-minded theory involving the politics of the city government. I also question the premise of any theory that assumes that the homeless and mentally ill (neither of whom are highly mobile populations) are packing up and heading west explicitly to take advantage of the "liberal" social services in San Francisco.
http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/lhcb/homeless_count/...
People there are more centrist/republican leaning. So Weather is not the reason bums come to SF. But the lunatic support the city gives to the homeless. Last time they counted, 2/3 of the homeless were not from California at all. SF, is like a homeless mecca.
http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-12-16/news/the-worst-run-big-ci...
I do not live in San Diego, and "there" implies that neither do you. So let's look at facts before making points through assertion?
The top 5 hits for "homeless san diego" yields the following organizations: http://www.sdrescue.org/ http://sdhomeless.org/ http://www.alphaproject.org/ http://www.rtfhsd.org/
And the latter two provide immediately accessible numbers. Alpha Project "is a nonprofit human services organization that serves over 2,000 men, women, and children each day." The Regional Taskforce for Homelessness in San Diego published a 2009 overview (PDF, http://www.rtfhsd.org/pdf/PITC09.pdf) indicating at least 7892 counted within the San Diego area, at least 4338 in San Diego City.
Those are facts, and they took one minute to acquire. If your point was that there were less per capita, I cannot argue with that as I do not have comps.
Also, the article he linked had absolutely nothing to do with homelessness. Even if we assume San Francisco to be a horribly governed place, it doesn't automatically mean that the social services lead to homelessness.
One main thing we've learned in the past couple months: Social media marketing may be the talk of the town these days, but you just can't beat basic SEO for bootstrapping yourself to some sales.
I also posted an item here on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1100662 Upvotes would be appreciated
None of the things were unreasonable. Some seemed a little unnecessarily precise, but if it had been a more crowded weekend could have been more critical. Most were intuitive. But it made me uncomfortable. I'd expected to be able to settle in and find my own place there, but I just felt in the way due to all the signs. And anything that wasn't explicitly allowed by a sign I wasn't sure about.
Also, I got a massage there. And when it was over the guy just stormed out without saying anything. I found out later that it's a style for ending massages, not saying anything to ruin the buzz of the massage experience. But I was very startled by it and thought I'd done something wrong. They should have had a sign about that.
A starting point is raw statistics: if you have 1000 customers, and 1 has this problem, should you fix it? Then, account for consequences: how serious is that one problem (what is its cost to you, to the person, to the community)? Finally, what are the knock-on effects, looking at the big overall picture: will addressing this problem improve your business overall, or undermine it? (sometimes, that 1 in a 1000 problem is a good excuse to fix something, or a signal to grow in that direction).
Then, you can think about the best way to address the problem. Nasty prohibitive signs probably don't help; even nice prohibitive signs probably don't help either. Sometimes, you can reorganize how you do things so that the problem cannot occur (e.g. when training animals to not do something, you can train them to do something that is incompatible with the undesired action; e.g. floppy disks are shaped so that they cannot be inserted in the wrong way).
The owner of a prominent software respository site told me that no matter what you write on forms - or how you highlight it - people will simply not read it.
BTW: Sometimes the sign has underlining and exclamation marks added in a different colour, apparently upon second and third infractions. Exasperation marks.
Offtopic: It's a small world. I went to the same little school as Derek, albeit much later. Now I know why we could only drink water at lunch.
First of all, you get the pissy customers who come in to take every one of life's problems out on someone who can't retaliate for fear of losing their job. Secondly, you get the customers who blatantly try to steal; they'll order ABC at $2.79 but when it's being made, they'll say they ordered DEF at $4.79 and that they're making the order wrong. The time to speak up isn't when you've paid and it's half-way made, it's when you visibly see them enter it wrong, however these people know it wasn't entered wrong.
From time to time, you'll occasionally get a variant of type 1, who'll come into the store and order their coffee wrong (ex. they want a black coffee, but they'll order 'coffee, no cream, no sugar', which means you'll get coffee one cream, one sugar, because a black coffee is a black coffee and isn't said any differently anywhere in the anglosphere, don't be different), they'll then proceed to swear at the staff in front of a line of customers. As a customer, I've had to tell these people to leave before and I've seen several others who've had to do it; it's flat out being a bad person and when these people have shirts and ties and company logo's plastered on their vehicles, they deserve to be fired because I'll never use their company. I expect more out of someone in a business suit, and I frequently see worse language and behaviour than anyone else.
I know for a fact that if I ran my own cafe/coffee shop, I'd have those exact rules. I wouldn't have them plastered on the wall, but they'd sure as hell be enforced on any jackasses who don't know how to behave in public. Life has rules and boundaries, and far too many people don't understand this. I was taught this in childhood, I assume everyone else was, but mature fully grown adults don't seem to grasp this.
I've seen this behaviour in convenience stores and supermarkets, in the lobbies of companies and in high-end restaurants, and all of their responses are: please leave the premises, and in the case of the swearing psycho's they've had the police called on them. I've heard even more stories about this going on. So why a small diner can't enforce the same rules is well beyond me. I've seen at dentist offices that they'll kick out the people chatting or texting away on their blackberries for no other reason than it's annoying to both staff and the others waiting.
There's an established etiquette in the world, just like there's an established etiquette on HN and anywhere. I don't go into a full-out swearing tirade against PG for some perceived wrong caused by myself, no one else does either. Why people believe they don't have to follow the rules is beyond me, and I believe these people should be punished to the full extent the law allows because the law is there to punish those that don't follow societally established rules and boundaries, AKA societal etiquette.
If I try to rip you off, I expect you to deny me service. If I swear at you endlessly, I expect you to deny me service. If I'm misusing your property, I expect you to deny me service.
I'm sorry, to me these are a given and don't need to be up on a wall. For way too many people, it's not a given.
At CD Baby, we had thieves with stolen credit cards every single day.
We'd usually catch them through a quick real-human scanning process we'd do before packing any orders. (Is it out of character? A $1000 order going to Nigeria? Etc.)
About once a week, someone got away with it. We'd constantly improve our methods, but always behind-the-scenes, never making shopping hell for the honest. Just made it our responsibility to deal with the thieves without bothering the rest.
In your coffee shop example: if someone is stealing or screaming then yes of course you deal with that person when it happens.
But no need to accuse everyone and make coffee hell for everyone else.
Besides, no plastic sign will stop the immoral or insane.
I'm generally a nice person, however I typically follow a one-strike and you're out rule. I don't expect second chances, and I've typically worked in industries where second chances are rare to come by when you make a mistake personally or professionally. I choose not to work store-front or public relation jobs. I can handle a person, I can't handle a hundred. I know if I owned a store or food place, I'd likely have rather draconian rules even if they're not on the walls.
It sounds like the diner owner in question may be of a rather anti-social disposition, but he chose the wrong job for it. I had the luck of being in jobs where my attitude rather helped, I remember having to tell one person that what they wanted was illegal (against the building code), that I wouldn't touch it and if they found another guy to do it that he'd be liable and the customer would, at best, have to pay out thousands to have the job redone when they went to sell the house, and at worst could be prosecuted too. Telling that to someone got me their respect, if I'd basically said the same Go F Yourself to a customer in a store, I'd have likely lost their service.
(ex. they want a black coffee, but they'll order 'coffee, no cream, no sugar', which means you'll get coffee one cream, one sugar, because a black coffee is a black coffee and isn't said any differently anywhere in the anglosphere, don't be different)
Are you saying that "coffee, no cream, no sugar" will be understood as "two coffees: one without cream, one without sugar"? That seems... unexpected. I can easily imagine myself making that mistake.
In any rate, it doesn't matter at the vast majority of places where I order coffee because they won't even add cream and sugar for me if I ask for them-- I have to add them myself from a side counter.
I've mainly ordered coffee in west coast cafes where you add your own milk/cream/sugar. I see the efficiency of saying "black coffee", but it's never been a habit -- I say "small coffee" and expect to get it black. In NY or Boston, this has sometimes led to disappointment.
I've noticed here it's typically worse with the older staffers in stores, which only forces the behaviour onto younger employee's. In downtown Toronto or Hamilton some of the Tim Hortons are barely different from a vending machine. I've seen lines 30+ people long.
It sounds like a request not to have cream or sugar!
Here's the basics for here: Black Coffee, gets you a black coffee. Adding 'regular' gets you 1 cream and 1 sugar, 'double double' gets you two of both, 'triple triple' and 'four by four' respectively get you 3 of both and 4 of both. If you add 'with milk', you'll get the respective amount with milk and sugar, similarly if you add 'with sweetener' you'll get it the respective amount of artificial sweetener. If you use these words, it'll never be your mistake.
Tim Horton's (the biggest coffee shop chain in Canada) teaches their workers these words, and they have specific buttons on their tills to ring it in like that. McDonalds and anywhere else that serves coffee teaches their workers the same here. Starbucks might be different, I wouldn't know through the faux-italian crap.
When you can say in 2 words exactly what you want, you shouldn't be using 5.
I'm quite aware of the psychology research that's been done and discussed here recently regarding cashiers operating on auto-pilot and reflexively asking "You want fries with that?" after a customer orders fries. These kind of mistakes are common, and to be expected. That doesn't change the fact that you're being paid to not make those mistakes, and if you don't have the mental discipline to catch those mistakes, you aren't fit for the job.
Right, because human beings should strive to be as efficient as possible and throw anything that isn't as efficient as possible. Love? Too inefficient! Socializing? Not getting enough work done! 5 words instead of 2? I'm so embarrassed that that seppuku is the only option!
> When a worker hears "Coffee, no cream, no sugar" what they're actually hearing is 'Coffee' 'Cream' and 'Sugar',
So you're saying that the workers aren't paying any attention to what the customer is actually saying, and that it's definitely the customer's fault for not knowing the 'secret code' of the coffeeshop?
"black coffee" -> This is coffee without any thing added ( that's what the 'black' part means )
but
"black coffee, no cream, no sugar" -> is confusing because it is redundant. Sleepy baristas and dinner waiters/waitresses will hear that and think: "coffee with cream and sugar" because, why would you order "black coffee, no cream, no sugar" it makes no sense.
Tim Hortons here in Canada holds ~70% of the market share (IIRC), compared to Starbucks' 7% in second place. You can literally order and have a coffee in the time it takes you to pay (one person is on the cash, the other is making your order by overhearing). Today the store close to me made over 300 breakfast sandwiches (bagel/tea biscuit, bacon/sausage/egg or any combination) in 4 hours.
Including redundancies in your order causes complications and the ability to induce error. Why this isn't simple to understand for so many people here, I don't know.
Coffee here in Canada is always served black. Stating 'no cream' or 'no sugar' sounds like 'one cream' or 'one sugar' to the person making the drink (note: NOT the person you ordered from). The person making drinks can have to deal with upwards of 100 coffees during a 10-minute rush, this means less than 6 seconds per coffee. When they get a pre-work rush at 6am, and the staff serving you have been working since 10PM, there's no chance in hell they'll spend 6 seconds listening to you order your coffee when it takes them that long to make it. That 10-minute rush will be backlogged to taking 20 minutes.
I'm not even discussing the people that order like that through a crackly 10-year-old drive-thru intercom and expect their order to be interpreted properly.
Perhaps it's an American thing that orders take needlessly long to be served and are needlessly complicated. I can't order a drink at Starbucks without being forced through an impossible discussion, or listing off a grocery list. Similar happens at McDonalds here in Canada, a simple 2-item order can take a solid 10 minutes to be dealt with. I've seen orders at Tim Hortons of >20 items be processed and served within 2 minutes.
I live in Finland. The cliché about Finns is that they are stolid and quiet... But the upside of the "default silence" is that people generally pay attention when someone is talking. It feels very foreign that I would accidentally get both milk and sugar in my coffee because the person behind the counter wasn't actually listening to me, but instead just detecting keywords in my speech.
- It's not you. The first thing I was taught was that my customers have just spent an hour dragging two screaming toddlers around the store, they're approaching my checkout like an unexploded bomb. Part of my job is to defuse that, greet them with a smile. If they complain or snarl, listen reasonably and respond professionally. 99% of people who come across as jerks are just having a bad day, and often snap out of it with the right treatment. On the other side, if someone doesn't, don't feel bad, they don't even see you, it's all stuff in their head not anything you did.
- Quarantine. If someone is being abusive or swearing, have someone to escalate it to, and move it to a corner or other area away from the customer flow. Let them rant, try to listen to what they're saying, and offer to do something about the issues with concrete steps. Give them a coupon, but make certain you get down their name and address.
- Fire your worst customers. Once you have those names and addresses stored, when a new complaint comes up, check back. If someone's filed three complaints, give them a call or a letter explaining that you're really sorry they're having such a consistently bad experience at your store, maybe they should consider these alternative places to shop?
The trouble with the rules you posit is that they're recipes for escalation, and involve treating every customer with suspicion. There's the occasional true psycho that you end up calling security or the police on, but in almost all cases you can bring customers back to reasonableness. The only cost is to your own pride, but that's where the shield of professionalism comes in. You're treating them extremely well because that's your job, not because you like them.