Politics
Out of context: Reply #6279
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- tommyo0
Just a little personal insight into the inner workings of one American corporation I'm intimately involved in.
My family owns a restaurant chain, of which I'm pretty involved in. We have around 800 or so employees. Last year at this time we had an extremely large turnover percentage, I'm talking about triple the industry average. We were losing and hiring 2 people per store on average every pay period (so, four per month). This was a problem we inherited from the previous owners. The culture they maintained was to hire very young employees, pay them very low wages and give them little to no training. While serving the community by giving kids an easy first job, it did little for the company in the long run. The stores were overstaffed by unmotivated employees. My sister and I saw the issue and worked to fix it in what most people would think a slightly unorthodox way. We gave every employee, who deserved it, a substantial raise. Those who didn't meet criteria were given the reasons why they didn't receive the raise and were given an opportunity to fix these issues and be reevaluated in two months. If they still didn't fix the issues, they were gone. The release of the 'bad' employees thus cut labor and paid for the raises for the 'good' due to less labor hours. Here we are merely a year later and the guy we hired as a new employee trainer and liaison is 'bored.' Employee turnover dropped so sharply that he's now working on more enrichment programs where we hope to train employees on other things such as leadership and personal finances. The old owner recently mentioned how great the customer service has become. We sincerely hope that the employees we let go learned something from this experience. They were given an honest chance to improve and didn't take it. Something that I feel is rare in life - an honest if you do ___ then you will get ____.
See, at least in my limited knowledge of business, this is how it works. Real people in deciding positions discuss issues and solutions with a genuine concern for everyone involved.
I think our corporation is indicative of what most businesses deal with on a day to day basis. Which is essentially leveraging the aims of the business against the aims of the employee and finding good solutions to both. Did we lose employees, yes we did. Did the employees we kept get a better life because of their hard work, I think so. In a way we rallied behind a concept called 'responsibility' and we're winning. We're also not offering 'value' based meals like Subway (our main competitor) and our sales have increased over last year by quite a bit - definitely due to the economy, but also because of our new customer service and our superior product. We're basically kicking Subway and Quiznos in the balls right now and we don't have national advertising, actually ... our branding is pretty dated but we're fixing that too. ;)
I'm extremely proud of this company. The old owners did some amazing things to build it's foundation. Some things I love that you crunchy liberals would love too are: We employ mentally handicapped people for positions company wide, including cashier positions which no other company I've ever seen does. We're one of the largest, if not the largest recyclers in our city. We win awards all the time for our social involvement and charity work which raises a substantial amount of money I'm talking about the range of half a million per year.
On top of all of this, we make a decent profit.
This is why I guess I feel like some people are a tad disconnected in their views of the 'rich' and the 'evil corporations.' I know a lot of the friends my family has made during the 25 years in this industry and most, I'd say 4 out of 5, come from extremely poor backgrounds.
Anyways I thought I'd share a perspective most people don't get to hear in regards to American businesses. And a little side note, I'm not rich nor have I ever had access to any money that I didn't earn myself. Everything I've made I've done on my own just the same as every other person in my family. Just incase any of you wanted to level some unfair stereotype upon me. I'm self made. :)
- Your family runs a Quizno's?TheBlueOne
- haha. Btw, have you seen that new ad of theirs where the guy and the oven have a sexual relationship? They're reachin.tommyo
- That disturbs me to no end. I do like their honey bourbon chicken sandwich though.TheBlueOne
- haha me too. I think they're hurting bad. I never eat there though, they're the enemy. :)tommyo
- what is the name?********
- Sorry morilla, I don't want to dish that out. I'll probably add some branding pieces when I build my new site. I'll let youtommyo
- If it's Blimpie you owe me like 15K!********
- know then. I don't usually talk about it to be honest. Makes dating a little hard trying to explain traveling when I don'ttommyo
- tell the girl about the business. hehe. Just don't want people to get the wrong impression about who I am.tommyo
- http://www.originalt… ?BattleAxe
- haha! Man, that is by far the best chili burger ever. I fucking wish we owned that place, I'd be pushing 300lbs with a smile.tommyo
- well, I know it is somewhere in LA ;)********