What are some of the stupidest things, that your company does?

[powerboy]

• The owner of my company puts to many anime posters in the window of the building.
  
• He doesn't want to advertise, because it cost money too.
  
• He keeps telling us to undercharge the customers. If we do that, then we are breaching the contract we have with our suppliers, and if they found out, then we would be in deep shit, since they always send out a spy.
  
• He doesn't want to spend the minimum amount for the products, as the contracts says too.
  
• He comes in and bitches about everything, when we have customers.

[AirHostess]

Expects us to have 25 minute turnarounds.

Expects us to never be sick.

Makes us wear ugly uniforms.

But I'm leaving soon!

[draggar]

My company has so many I could write a book, with volumes.

[Melxb]

I'm a civil servant. I work for the "government." Where do you wanna start?

[BusyBee]

Everything must go by The Planogram. The Planogram is God. Even when
- It looks stupid.
- Things don't fit right.
- Things are put where they will get in our way and hinder our work.

Money saving techniques that only directly relate to not paying the workers, including
- Only one person on at any time, except for 2 hours during the 2 busiest nights of the week.
--> Which results in the full-timers often having to go without a lunch/dinner break, even when they'll be missing half an hour's pay for one.
--> Which also results in only one person on in the last hour of being open, meaning that one person is, for example, supposed to be out the back getting stock for the fill while at the same time manning the counter.
- No more cleaning shifts allowed, though we still get told off by the inspectors when they find dirty shelves.

I hate Head Office's . Yay for leaving soon! And grats to you for leaving soon too PrincessKatie

[Foxglove8778]

... given that not all of it is the Company's fault... but still....

we are no longer allowed to just fix mistakes, the form has to be completely redone and submitted by the provider for reconsideration... even if it's as simple as reversing two letters...

if they have signed up for the secure internet access, we are not allowed to give the routine information that they now have access to... although we are allow to help them find it if they are willing to log into the website while on the phone.

"I cannot release the information you seek, but I can confirm if what you have matches the file."

HIPAA.

[Gurndigarn]

- Only one person on at any time, except for 2 hours during the 2 busiest nights of the week.
--> Which results in the full-timers often having to go without a lunch/dinner break, even when they'll be missing half an hour's pay for one.

Which is quite illegal. Are you in the US? I'm sure someone out there has the department of labor's phone number handy.


EDIT: unless they're salaried. In which case they're out of luck. But if you're paid by the hour, and you don't get paid for time you're working, that's a rather hefty fine your company faces.

[powerboy]

Everything must go by The Planogram. The Planogram is God. Even when
- It looks stupid.
- Things don't fit right.
- Things are put where they will get in our way and hinder our work.

Oh how I hate doing Planograms. They are the true form of It looks good on paper...

I hate how my bosses does not put it as how I drew it out on the planogram, and how it would actually look perfect. Noooo, they just put them onto the shelves any which way.

Once when I was working at OfficeMax, I had to do every planogram. Someone came down to check out the store, and of course the one planogram that I could not fit anything right, got me bitched at. That shot my birthday all to hell that night.

[BusyBee]

EDIT: unless they're salaried. In which case they're out of luck. But if you're paid by the hour, and you don't get paid for time you're working, that's a rather hefty fine your company faces.

I'm pretty sure the full-timers are salaried. But yeah, if they have an 8 or 12 hour shift, they'll be getting paid the same if they get to have a lunch break or not.
In any case, I'm a casual part-timer there, and if I'm not getting paid for the full time I'm there, I'm not working the full time I'm there If the full-timers have a problem with their lack of dinners, they'll have to bring it up, cos I can't do it for them =|

While I was at work I thought of a couple more.

Their ideas to bring in more business. Such as
- The free popcorn (when you hire x movies). We have to make it in-store, it's nasty as, and I'm certain noone comes to us because of the popcorn - either they refuse or they go "free popcorn? really? wow!"
- Sending out letters to customers that haven't hired with us in a long time, and letting them know that their late fees have been wiped. There are several possible outcomes here. The people will come back, see our prices, and flee. The people will come back once or twice, and then go back to not getting movies out again. The people won't come back at all cos they found a better place to rent movies. Or best of all, the people come back, promptly rack up $50 in late fees on their account (again), and never return.

Never ever ever ever ever repairing anything.

Oh btw... regarding The Planogram. We don't even get to do it to fit our store. Some guy in head office, who's never even seen our building, has the dimensions of the store and plans The Planogram from his office, and we just get his decrees via fax.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

At my store, when the planograms are screwed up (and they always are), we just adapt them. Nobody even notices. It's not like the suits whip out the planograms during their visits and look at them to see if anything is out of place. Basically, if every item on the planogram is respresented on the floor, then everybody's happy.

[Shironu-Akaineko]

Refunding food that we don't sell (Not just the hairy cakes here) like chicken labelled clearly from the rival supermarket (We advertise 2 free chickens if you don't like yours, apparently we hadda specify where the chicken came from!)

Sending managers on trips halfway across the province for training that lasts 10 minutes if you can read a piece of paper. Works the other way around, sending a manager from montreal by plane for a 3 minutes training on a totally DUUUUH product.

Taking supersized orders but forgetting to tell the Bakery. We look smart when the customer arrives on the due date wondering where her 3000 tortillas are... She returned 700. AND WE TOOK THEM BACK!

Stacking tons of sh*t in the "hallway of Doom" where we put our boxes. This hallway is for supplies, NOT for your godbang old signs, you got a giant closet for those!

[Delphae]

We are supposed to take anything back, even from our rivals, or the container is completely used.
As for planograms, the seasonal ones we can fudge, but regular ones must be done to plan. Most of the time it is okay, but sometimes there is a wrinkle in the fabric of space and time and they just don't fit! Once I even mesured everything and added it up. It should of fit in 4 feet of shelf but wouldn't. Another time the pictures were clearly not to scale. No wonder the wing panel looks so stuffed.

[Dragonlover]

Most of the planograms at the garage actually fit the shelves, apart from the occasional product that had to have one row instead of two. The exception here is the promotional shelving. The planograms that got sent through every month assumed that we had 5 shelves on each end unit, when in actual fact it was 3 on one and four on the other. This lead to it taking twice as long to put out the promotions due to trying to work out the best way of displaying the 8 different types of Cadburys we were selling (or whatever the promo was that month).

Another good one from the garage... they changed the air conditioning in the middle of summer, which meant that every single chocolate bar melted. They lost about 3 grands worth of stock.

Dragonlover

[iradney]

Have all our work-related servers overseas so that when something goes belly up over a weekend, nothing can be done to fix it...like today. *weep*

[AFpheonix]

1) Putting out system updates without actually making sure that the damn updates work properly.

2) knee-jerk changes to the data base that end up hampering me more than helping me (ala the removal of customer notes, and then replacing them, but not as a pop-up, which was really a nice feature)

3) Not planning ahead for individual state law changes, like the sudafed law here, and making it profoundly difficult for us to procur sudafed products. Not only will DC not send them with any kind of regularity, corporate also has restricted us from ordering them through Cardinal, so we're up shit creek without a paddle. I have referred MANY people to the complaint line, but apparently corporate is ignoring it.

4) Cardinal auto-ordering system placing orders for items we can get more cheaply through DC, and then yelling at us when we receive products like that. Well...maybe make it so we can shut off the auto-order and that sort of thing won't happen.

5) Edicts from on high that won't let us fire some of our notorious problem customers.

6) Coming and pestering us, the highest revenue store in the district, instead of going and working on some of the under-performing stores. We're your gold standard guys, we don't really need a whole lot of improving.