Everything Or Less and it's mostly less service in Retail

Everything Or Less, originally uploaded by ⓅⒶⓎⓅⒶⓊⓁ.

Retail is funny because on one hand the Customer must be served. On the other hand, production goals, whatever those may be, preclude the customer from getting the best of service. Employees of retail and any customer service related business are forced to meet ever changing "Performance Metrics". To meet these and keep their jobs many employees are forced to cut corners and do low quality work. Management tends to look the other way because production goals will then be met.
If you don't cut corners and try to do a good job both for the store and for the customer, you are deemed "slow" and may not retain that retail job for very long. So instead, you do things on the quick-quick, not taking the time to do the job right, cut off the customer on the phone or in the aisle and hope to see another day and another tiny paycheck.
True, there isn't much profit in retail. Markup on most items for the store is about 5 percent. There is a lot of competition for that small piece of the pie. Managers get a bonus at the end of the year for meeting production goals. This is an incentive to sharp practice. Not all retail is Wal-Mart, where in some stores managers force workers to work off the clock so they can meet those production goals. There have been about 10 lawsuits on that matter in the past 10 years. Nonetheless it's mostly less that the customer gets. It's less service, less information and less quality products. Am I being too unreasonable to want everything and more?

Via Flickr:
Everything Is Less Than Zero.
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