Here's another one of those fabulous emails that landed both Jay-Gag and myself in Dr. Ice's office today..
I've run the Auto report and keep noticing several Purchase Orders which still have not been ordered.
VENDOR NAME has gone unordered since 09/22 for the 4 Foot PRODUCT NAME.
I've asked Jay-Gag about this since he has been the one to issue the last few VENDOR NAME orders and he stated that he only handles the Drop Ships for VENDOR NAME; Huckleberry Hound handles the rest.
The Vendor list I have suggests that I'm supposed to do it, yet I have never placed an order VENDOR NAME.
If it were mine to handle then I would also issue the Drop Ships.
VENDOR NAME is clearly being miss-handled; should I resolve this and continue dealing with it as one more of my vendors to order from moving forward?
Also,
VENDOR NAME #2 has a two Purchase Orders for the same product which tells me that the PO keeps getting canceled for the PRODUCT which has not been ordered yet.
VENDOR NAME #3 has a few Purchase Orders for the same product not yet ordered either.
~ The Voice
Voice-
The only reason I handled the drop ships is because it's a special kinda deal where we use our credit card and I'm use to working with the guy. That's it! If you want I can teach you how to do the drop ships, but I figured I would help you out and just continue to do them.
If it says it's your responsibility then handle it. What all the fuss about???
Lastly, I don't order everyday therefore I handle special orders differently than normal but bottom line I order correctly and efficiently.
I don't have time for Email Wars so let's not make this a big deal, just let me know if you want to handle the whole vendor including drops ships or just regular ordering.
~ Jay-Gag
*** Replied to all including managers ***
FYI,
In the future please do not give Jay-Gag VENDOR NAME orders to handle.
I will handle all the issues for VENDOR NAME moving forward.
The less involvement Jay-Gag has with any vendors that are supposed to be assigned to me the less likely it will be that things will get mishandled.
I am very aware of how to issue Drop Ships for all of our brands being that I'm the one who has given the instruction on how to do so including those that require a credit card.
Thank you,
~ The Voice
If you handle things so well, why are we all having a conversation about your vendor?
~ Jay-Gag
Because you were asked a number of times to handle VENDOR NAME.
As usual you only bothered to do half the job and ignore the rest.
When I asked you who was taking care of this last week you said Huckleberry Hound handled VENDOR NAME.
I just received a few emails from him saying he told you to handle it or get with me about it and you still did nothing.
All this time I was under the impression that one of you were taking care of it; now I look like the idiot because of you.
VENDOR NAME is not a SPECIAL product; so Huckleberry Hound would not be involved with it and that is probably why he asked you to do it or get with me.
You did neither; except point the finger back at Huckleberry Hound.
My frustration is the there's more finger pointing and less resolving of the problem.
I do not want your help unless I specifically ask for it; you create more work for me when you "help" than if I just did myself.
Above discussion was deemed inappropriate and we had a sit down with Dr. Ice and we were forced to apologize to each other; neither one of us really meant it though and the issues about Jay-Gag not being helpful went unresolved.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
“Allow Me To Retort" Dr. Ice Responds
So it only took a day for the "Ice Man" to respond in regards to the scathing email sent to all the employees recently.
As you can imagine the response is typical of a CEO on the defensive.
Dear Fellow EMPLOYEES -
As some of you know, a letter was sent to people within the company that painted an unflattering picture of the company and some of its employees including me.
It certainly made me sad when I read it as I do not feel it fairly characterizes the hard work and effort that most people within the company put fourth.
I pride myself on being an open manager, meaning my door is open 90% of the time, my phone extension is listed on the directory, my email is published, etc.
I am generally easily accessible (to both customers and employees) and have had the opportunity on many occasions to listen to concerns and ideas from employees in all departments of the company.
In many cases I have been able to make changes or help create better understandings between people or situations.
Helping fellow employees, helping improve processes and working to make COMPANY a better place is, and has always been a priority to me.
Every person (including all management) who works in this company has made financial sacrifices and most have stepped up with increased responsibilities – to all, I say thank you.
Again, please remember that I am available for employees to discuss their concerns.
If you would like to sit down to talk about an issue, please call me or email me so we can schedule a time that allows your concerns to be heard.
Dr. Ice
As you can imagine the response is typical of a CEO on the defensive.
Dear Fellow EMPLOYEES -
As some of you know, a letter was sent to people within the company that painted an unflattering picture of the company and some of its employees including me.
It certainly made me sad when I read it as I do not feel it fairly characterizes the hard work and effort that most people within the company put fourth.
I pride myself on being an open manager, meaning my door is open 90% of the time, my phone extension is listed on the directory, my email is published, etc.
I am generally easily accessible (to both customers and employees) and have had the opportunity on many occasions to listen to concerns and ideas from employees in all departments of the company.
In many cases I have been able to make changes or help create better understandings between people or situations.
Helping fellow employees, helping improve processes and working to make COMPANY a better place is, and has always been a priority to me.
Every person (including all management) who works in this company has made financial sacrifices and most have stepped up with increased responsibilities – to all, I say thank you.
Again, please remember that I am available for employees to discuss their concerns.
If you would like to sit down to talk about an issue, please call me or email me so we can schedule a time that allows your concerns to be heard.
Dr. Ice
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Employees Be Informed !!!
The following is an email sent to all employees at "The Day Job".
Items in bold have been changed or removed, everything else remains in tact.
I also happen to agree with most (not all) of the statements made by the anonymous email sender; and possibly soon to be ex-employee.
To Whom It May Concern,
We wanted to contact you to ask a very important question, and to let you know why the company is the way it is.
To put it in simple terms, we no longer care about the company or the companies well being. Your sales staff is the most underpaid and overworked part of the company.
Not only do we do more work than Customer Service and Verification combined, and get paid the least, we are the heart of your company.
From Quality Assurance to Answer-box, we continue to do more and more work for you and the pay stays the same.
As a result, we no longer strive for the best.
We can all care less about customer complaints, orders shipping on time, and getting through verification in a timely manner.
If customers knew the real COMPANY, they would no longer buy from you and yours!
"How can we show our customers "Value", when there is no value for the employees?"
-COMPANY Sales Staff
Let's start off with the mindset that we are fed, coming into this company.
We are led by a Sales Robot, which continuously tries to make us seem that we can get rich here. There is absolutely no money to be made here, unless you have Commercial Accounts or have the top spot on your Cue within the phone system.
There are too many reps here that treat this company with the up most respect and do everything that is thrown at them, that only make minimum wage.
At a business perspective, you're doing a great job. Screwing the people that due your dirty work on the front line and paying them the least you can that is legally possible. And you save the company from any activism by continuously recycling us and feeding the newbies the same info that we were fed.
Well you know what, your last class you hired, guess why they're all gone, because we will no longer stay quiet.
We will make sure that every person that steps onto this sales floor, will know the shady business that goes on here, even the new hires as of September.
Until all of us are discharged or re-evaluated on a better pay structure, this will continue to happen.
From the held up orders, to verification issues that we deal with, and even to our phones that seize to ring when were close to good numbers, we will guarantee that this will in the end, come back to affect the company.
On top of all that, your verification department is by far the biggest struggle here.
To sum it up, they are over worked, understaffed and led by an individual that makes nothing but problems for us.
From orders not being verified right, to being held up because of ridiculous reasons.
They affect this company horribly.
We all have orders everyday that we have to deal with, after the call, because of the verification managers' dilemmas.
Orders and sales were so much easier when the Verification Manager was gone!!!
In the end, this company will only be able to cater to the low end, mobile DJ.
COMPANY will never be a True competitor to [COMPETITOR NAMES REMOVED] simply because you are built on a platform of unhappy employees, and you hire individuals that are not professionally involved in the business to portray the title of, " The Professionals". Let alone seize to have items in stock on a regular basis.
It is to be said that a crew is only as good as it's Captain (CEO).
Well you know what, we don't really know our Captain.
Our Captain does not communicate with his crew; our problems are in one ear and out the other, and then on to the next one.
Many people that give this job their all, receive the same pay check of those that don't care at all. There is no incentive at all within the company for us to strive to sell, to strive for commission or to strive to make sure the customer receives the overall experience that they deserve.
Why would we want to make the company money, and none for ourselves?
Why would we want to do the job of four people, and get paid at the rate of minimum wage?
Why would anyone want to work for a bad morale company with horrible ethics, and screw people over?
Entry-level employees at McDonalds get paid more than us!
Treat us fair, and we shall treat the company fair!
The Top 10 Characteristics of An Effective Leader
1) Be Truly Humble - Lead to Serve
2) Be Non-Judgmentally Observant
3) Face and Solve Problems
4) Ruthlessly Improve
5) Be Fiscally Conservative
6) Invest in the Business
7) Communicate Consistently, Clearly, Concisely
8) Give Clear Direction
9) Aggressively Evolve
10) Have a Sense of Humor
-This Company's Leader carries none of these Characteristics!!!
The way you treat this letter, should be a characteristic of how you treat your employees!
Sincerely,
Your Concerned Employees
Items in bold have been changed or removed, everything else remains in tact.
I also happen to agree with most (not all) of the statements made by the anonymous email sender; and possibly soon to be ex-employee.
To Whom It May Concern,
We wanted to contact you to ask a very important question, and to let you know why the company is the way it is.
To put it in simple terms, we no longer care about the company or the companies well being. Your sales staff is the most underpaid and overworked part of the company.
Not only do we do more work than Customer Service and Verification combined, and get paid the least, we are the heart of your company.
From Quality Assurance to Answer-box, we continue to do more and more work for you and the pay stays the same.
As a result, we no longer strive for the best.
We can all care less about customer complaints, orders shipping on time, and getting through verification in a timely manner.
If customers knew the real COMPANY, they would no longer buy from you and yours!
"How can we show our customers "Value", when there is no value for the employees?"
-COMPANY Sales Staff
Let's start off with the mindset that we are fed, coming into this company.
We are led by a Sales Robot, which continuously tries to make us seem that we can get rich here. There is absolutely no money to be made here, unless you have Commercial Accounts or have the top spot on your Cue within the phone system.
There are too many reps here that treat this company with the up most respect and do everything that is thrown at them, that only make minimum wage.
At a business perspective, you're doing a great job. Screwing the people that due your dirty work on the front line and paying them the least you can that is legally possible. And you save the company from any activism by continuously recycling us and feeding the newbies the same info that we were fed.
Well you know what, your last class you hired, guess why they're all gone, because we will no longer stay quiet.
We will make sure that every person that steps onto this sales floor, will know the shady business that goes on here, even the new hires as of September.
Until all of us are discharged or re-evaluated on a better pay structure, this will continue to happen.
From the held up orders, to verification issues that we deal with, and even to our phones that seize to ring when were close to good numbers, we will guarantee that this will in the end, come back to affect the company.
On top of all that, your verification department is by far the biggest struggle here.
To sum it up, they are over worked, understaffed and led by an individual that makes nothing but problems for us.
From orders not being verified right, to being held up because of ridiculous reasons.
They affect this company horribly.
We all have orders everyday that we have to deal with, after the call, because of the verification managers' dilemmas.
Orders and sales were so much easier when the Verification Manager was gone!!!
In the end, this company will only be able to cater to the low end, mobile DJ.
COMPANY will never be a True competitor to [COMPETITOR NAMES REMOVED] simply because you are built on a platform of unhappy employees, and you hire individuals that are not professionally involved in the business to portray the title of, " The Professionals". Let alone seize to have items in stock on a regular basis.
It is to be said that a crew is only as good as it's Captain (CEO).
Well you know what, we don't really know our Captain.
Our Captain does not communicate with his crew; our problems are in one ear and out the other, and then on to the next one.
Many people that give this job their all, receive the same pay check of those that don't care at all. There is no incentive at all within the company for us to strive to sell, to strive for commission or to strive to make sure the customer receives the overall experience that they deserve.
Why would we want to make the company money, and none for ourselves?
Why would we want to do the job of four people, and get paid at the rate of minimum wage?
Why would anyone want to work for a bad morale company with horrible ethics, and screw people over?
Entry-level employees at McDonalds get paid more than us!
Treat us fair, and we shall treat the company fair!
The Top 10 Characteristics of An Effective Leader
1) Be Truly Humble - Lead to Serve
2) Be Non-Judgmentally Observant
3) Face and Solve Problems
4) Ruthlessly Improve
5) Be Fiscally Conservative
6) Invest in the Business
7) Communicate Consistently, Clearly, Concisely
8) Give Clear Direction
9) Aggressively Evolve
10) Have a Sense of Humor
-This Company's Leader carries none of these Characteristics!!!
The way you treat this letter, should be a characteristic of how you treat your employees!
Sincerely,
Your Concerned Employees
Monday, October 4, 2010
Introduction: AKA "The Day Job"
"Chronicles of a Cantankerous Co-worker" is my personal way of dealing with the Bullshit Office Politics, Unbelievable Employer Favoritism and Overall Stupidity of certain co-workers that I encounter on a daily basis when I'm at "The Day Job".
I call it "The Day Job" because it's nothing more to me than just a place I go to during the weekdays from 7:00 am to 4:00 pm that keeps me from the things I enjoy doing more in life.
Some of the reasons why I stay at "The Day Job" is that it supports my share of the lifestyle that I'm accommodated to, as well as being less than 5 miles away from home and being able to purchase merchandise at a discounted rate not available to the general public.
These Chronicles are my actual accounts of events that have taken place during my employment at "The Day Job" either by my own recollections or by email exchanges I've been apart of and have re-posted here for your amusement or social commentary.
To protect the identities of all the co-workers I come in contact with, who may be in some way involved in these Chronicles, I will only use their employee appointed nicknames or job titles if no nickname is available.
I will also replace the actual business name with "The Day Job" wherever need be; everything else is open game.
To better help you understand who the players are in this cubicle cohabitation I should start off by identifying the people that correspond with their nicknames or job title.
The CEO (Dr. Ice)
The CFO (The Nut)
The Sales Floor Manager
The Product Managers aptly nicknamed: Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw
Product Managers Assistant Jay-Gag (this is were most of the "entertainment" comes from.)
Then of course there's me... The Voice
Should any others need introduction I will deal with that when the time permits.
Here's the first of many samples to come taken from an email just a few days ago:
Product numbers CMK-003 and CMK-005 are officially discontinued.
The skus are still active; should these be removed from the system?
~The Voice
Dr. Ice, Huckleberry and I have a plan for this and the other cables.
Hang tight these should be handled within a couple days.
-Jay-Gag
Ok, does that mean you will contact the sales reps to let them know these are discontinued if we end up taking on back orders since these have not been removed from the system yet?
~The Voice
No, lets not over think this, and we shall cross that road when we get to it.
Huckleberry, do you agree?
There's nothing to over think here Jay-Gag.
I'm trying to plan ahead in order to minimize the extra unnecessary work in the future.
I'm concerned this will not get handled in a timely manner and get put on the back burner as many thing have before when they are not considered a big enough issue. Before you know it we'll have 10 or more back orders and have do extra work to move clients into the new version or a replacement.
If you are going to take care of this then I say you can handle it all; including contacting the sales reps when we take on back orders for these skus.
We had been selling 10-20 units a month of the CMK-005 sku and now we don't have any in stock.
The CMK-003 is not as big of a mover compared to the 005.
~The Voice
I said Dr. Ice was involved and we will handle it as soon as we can. You over dramatize everything!
This is not my project to begin with I'm just helping out, let me repeat I'm helping YOU out! "And not sweeping under the rug"
If we all work as a team and do our parts this will work smoothly, so take a deep breath and relax.
Love,
~Jay-Gag
Some help you are Jay-Gag; it's like having a rusty nail driven through my scrotum or a blazing hot poker shoved in my pee hole whenever to come to the rescue with your kind of "help".
OVER DRAMATIZE EVERYTHING!!! What do you mean by that?!?!
Fine, whatever...
I call it "The Day Job" because it's nothing more to me than just a place I go to during the weekdays from 7:00 am to 4:00 pm that keeps me from the things I enjoy doing more in life.
Some of the reasons why I stay at "The Day Job" is that it supports my share of the lifestyle that I'm accommodated to, as well as being less than 5 miles away from home and being able to purchase merchandise at a discounted rate not available to the general public.
These Chronicles are my actual accounts of events that have taken place during my employment at "The Day Job" either by my own recollections or by email exchanges I've been apart of and have re-posted here for your amusement or social commentary.
To protect the identities of all the co-workers I come in contact with, who may be in some way involved in these Chronicles, I will only use their employee appointed nicknames or job titles if no nickname is available.
I will also replace the actual business name with "The Day Job" wherever need be; everything else is open game.
To better help you understand who the players are in this cubicle cohabitation I should start off by identifying the people that correspond with their nicknames or job title.
The CEO (Dr. Ice)
The CFO (The Nut)
The Sales Floor Manager
The Product Managers aptly nicknamed: Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw
Product Managers Assistant Jay-Gag (this is were most of the "entertainment" comes from.)
Then of course there's me... The Voice
Should any others need introduction I will deal with that when the time permits.
Here's the first of many samples to come taken from an email just a few days ago:
Product numbers CMK-003 and CMK-005 are officially discontinued.
The skus are still active; should these be removed from the system?
~The Voice
Dr. Ice, Huckleberry and I have a plan for this and the other cables.
Hang tight these should be handled within a couple days.
-Jay-Gag
Ok, does that mean you will contact the sales reps to let them know these are discontinued if we end up taking on back orders since these have not been removed from the system yet?
~The Voice
No, lets not over think this, and we shall cross that road when we get to it.
Huckleberry, do you agree?
There's nothing to over think here Jay-Gag.
I'm trying to plan ahead in order to minimize the extra unnecessary work in the future.
I'm concerned this will not get handled in a timely manner and get put on the back burner as many thing have before when they are not considered a big enough issue. Before you know it we'll have 10 or more back orders and have do extra work to move clients into the new version or a replacement.
If you are going to take care of this then I say you can handle it all; including contacting the sales reps when we take on back orders for these skus.
We had been selling 10-20 units a month of the CMK-005 sku and now we don't have any in stock.
The CMK-003 is not as big of a mover compared to the 005.
~The Voice
I said Dr. Ice was involved and we will handle it as soon as we can. You over dramatize everything!
This is not my project to begin with I'm just helping out, let me repeat I'm helping YOU out! "And not sweeping under the rug"
If we all work as a team and do our parts this will work smoothly, so take a deep breath and relax.
Love,
~Jay-Gag
Some help you are Jay-Gag; it's like having a rusty nail driven through my scrotum or a blazing hot poker shoved in my pee hole whenever to come to the rescue with your kind of "help".
OVER DRAMATIZE EVERYTHING!!! What do you mean by that?!?!
Fine, whatever...
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