Signs, signs, nowhere are the signs

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Today, when I went up to my manager's office to give her the completed furniture pull tag report, I noticed she had made a new sign, which basically said:

If you take the last piece of an item out of a backstock location, you must delete it on a scanner. If you put something in backstock, you must scan it to see if it has a location. If not, you must scan it into a new location

I was thinking "About damn time!" We are having huge problems with items being put on shelves without being located so they don't come up on pulls and we don't know we have them, as well as items having locations even though they are no longer in that location, so they get deleted and then that ends up on a report that has to be worked each day.

I told the manager "Great! I was hoping to see a sign like that! Now all we need to do is make copies and blanket the backroom with them."

Manager's response: "Oh...I was just going to post it by the time clock."

Great. Signs posted by the time clock rarely get read, and if they do they're usually forgotten by the time a person gets down to the floor to work. So once again we seem to be pretending to address a problem.

[Becks]

But management is trying!!

[XCashier]

But management is trying!!

Yes, they certainly are! (Though not in the way they intend!)

[Jester]

But management is trying!!

Yes, they are very, very trying.

[Becks]

Cool. You guys got it.

[greensinestro]

Signs are great, when you post them all over the building. My current job had a few posted everywhere, and it seemed like the bathrooms were the place they would make the most impact. Wrong! It was better found in the break room, on e-mail, and even on bulletin boards where others would post babysitting jobs, notary ads, etc. The sign said, "All employees are required to wash their hands before returning to work from the restrooms!" These signs would be right in front of them, yet they would just do their business, then go back to work.

One sign that I created really pissed off management. When I was at Bellsouth, they were having a hey day writing up employees for their sales, and less stress was being put on other areas of performance. I created this sign that said, "With all of your great auto quality results, you have done everything possible to offer services and pull your own weight. As a reward, we are giving you this B-form for not being able to force customers to buy our products, and being unable to maintain your unreasonable sales objective in four minutes or less." I made up about 100 of these, and employees posted them everywhere, from the mirrors in the restrooms, on the stall doors, elevator doors, etc. They were everywhere. Managers would go in and rip these signs down, and a few minutes later, someone would go in with a new one and plaster it back up. The tactic worked, because management was forced to remove the write ups due to threats by other employees to call the labor board, and the attorney general for unfair practices. The managers were sore at me for it, but I didn't care. I made more friends with that from my peers.