The super duper important corporate guys...who never show up.

[excuse me??]

The job security for the managers at my old store only lasted between one visit and the next (which included full time workers as well)

It was always a relief when our corporate visitors didn't show up for a visit, no matter how much we prepared... because no visit=no fault finding

[blas]

We get audits and customer visits at least once or twice a month.

Don't ask me how, but 2nd shift's refusal and failure to keep a clean work area always gets blamed on 3rd shift.

It's so annoying. My boss has bitched many a time about that, because she has very strict rules about keeping your work area tidy the best you can while you're working, she doesn't allow for messes. Perhaps it's because we spend nearly the first hour of our shift cleaning up after them, or maybe it's because anyone who doesn't work a "normal" shift has to be messy, right?

[Food Lady]

I'd say ours show up about half the time. And I don't really care. I'm a peon. I just do whatever project the managers want and go home. If I stay late or get called in, more pay for me. When the people come they aren't interested in talking to me anyway.

[EricKei]

I think it did, because he bitched that we didn't say "thank you for shopping at Glitter Hell", or something.

Because, you know, that totally matters. Give a customer a good experience, and that's all negated because you didn't say "thank you for shopping here...and paying money so that i can have a job, might i also lick your boots?"...
.

It was this way back at GameStore -- On any corp/Inspection visit (often done incognito), they had a big checklist, and "90% or below" score was considered a big fat FAIL. It should be noted that "Greeting the customer properly and politely within five seconds of their entering the store" was ten percent of that score...

In other words, if they showed up for an inspection on, say, Black Friday or a similarly busy day (which they LOVED to do), when everybody was already either helping the customer IN FRONT OF THEM or dealing with the hundredth caller that day who wanted an item we had sold out of several weeks earlier: They could easily give us failing marks because we did not "put the current customer on hold" to greet every single person that came in with "Welcome to GameStore" AND "Do you have any trades for us today" AND at least a passing reference to our current specials. Note that, for obvious reasons, doing this when you already had a customer tended to piss THEM off. Naturally, if you greeted a new person while helping an undercover Inspector, you lost points for being impolite/disregarding the current customers, too. Again, automatic F.

Sometimes, you just can't win.

[brucetiki]

We had this happen to us on Tuesday. Got the tip off that a member of the board of directors was popping in for a visit, with the advice to tidy up and chat with him in the department lunch room (thus fulfilling points 3 & 4 eltf177 mentioned ).

So I made the extra special effort to spend lunch in the main canteen, come back, and turns out he's been and gone with hardly anyone noticing as 'something suddenly came up'. We've been told he'll be back tomorrow...

[mattm04]

At my store the corporate visits seem to be in waves. For say 4-6 weeks we get threatened wit a visit once a week for someone with a particular specialty. Assuming it is a once a week threat, chances are during those 4-6 week we may get one, less likely two visits. When they show up chances are they will lap the store quickly and be gone in less then 30 minutes. Then a 4-6 week lull in visits.

The only real detailed visits they do are just before Thanksgiving and maybe Christmas.