Each moment of incivility in a business is a cut that creates a loss. 1000 cuts create 1000 losses. Some losses are more expensive than others. All losses together can kill a once thriving business.

 

Seasonal Catalog Company

Because of my childhood spinal injury, I had difficulty earning money as an adult. After finally hearing the correct diagnosis and getting the correct treatment, I applied for a temporary seasonal job to test my employment wings. I started as an order taker, then moved to customer service representative (CSR.) I worked for the company for 10 Christmas seasons.

Seasonal Catalog Company began as a business in the founder family kitchen. Their first product was cheese. Eventually, Seasonal Catalog Company also became known for its sausages and food trays and nonfood gifts. Customers from across the country bought its products, including famous people. After decades of running the business, the family sold it to a national corporation, the first in a series of corporate owners. When I worked at Seasonal Catalog Company, it was in the middle of the corporate owners.

1000 Cuts For Employees

Executive Incivility

The corporate leaders during my time practiced incivility towards permanent employees. Some of those permanent employees were then rude to temporary employees.

One supervisor refused to look me in the eye as we passed each other and I said, “Hello, K—-.”

The chairs for our desks ranged from comfortable to falling apart. Supervisors told us to not move chairs around, even if no one was using the desks with the good chairs.

Inadequate Training

Order problems happened because training was minimal and ineffective. One young man was having difficulty, so a middle supervisor took him into the training room for about 15 minutes to show him the correct way for a specific order action. He thanked her. An upper supervisor reprimanded the middle supervisor by telling her the company didn’t have the budget for ‘extra’ training.

Supervisor Insults

Because of the inadequate training, order takers and CSRs frequently had to ask questions. Floor supervisors in each shift had the responsibility for answering those questions. Two of the floor supervisors preferred ignoring questions. One of them took her anger out on employees who just wanted to know how to do their jobs. The other one made a habit of insulting employees. She once responded to my question with an insult, then walked away. I had to get the answer from a different floor supervisor who took the time to listen to my question. The customer waited on hold throughout my effort to learn what to do.

Note

Insulting Supervisor became the source of my 15th unimagined success. I took positive control in an unpleasant workplace situation with moments of dignity and moments of passion. In a different situation, Former Insulting Supervisor responded by giving me more than I asked for. Soft skill strategies are powerful.

1000 Cuts For Customers

Order takers and shipping staff who endured incivility were often rude to customers. As CSR, I solved some of the problems they caused.

Purposeful Incivility

A woman who had been estranged from her family decided to try reconnecting with a food gift from Seasonal Catalog Company. Buyers could have messages put on the label of their gift boxes. This woman gave the order taker a heartfelt message seeking reconciliation. Instead, he wrote an insulting message meant to increase the difficulties between the woman and her family.

Some shipping staff enjoyed placing Bonsai trees upside down in the packing boxes. I took several customer service calls with this complaint.

Executive Ordered Lies

When customers called to ask if their order would arrive by Christmas, we could look at the estimated delivery of their order. Many times, the packages were scheduled to arrive after Christmas. Supervisors told us to say the packages would arrive on time. Since executives wanted us to lie to customers, we knew they were lying to us. An untold number of employees responded with sabotage.

Executives allowed the sabotage to continue by ignoring the number of late deliveries.

Executive Ordered Cheating

Executives also expected us to cheat customers. When customers called back to delete an item from an order, the rule was to never tell the customer if the shipping cost had decreased. We were supposed to leave the S&H cost higher than it should have been. Since executives wanted us to cheat customers, we knew they were cheating us. An untold number of employees responded with sabotage.

Executives continued to invite employee sabotage.

Executive Indifference

When I took calls that revealed the intentional sabotage of order takers and shipping employees, I reported them to supervisors. One day supervisor K—– was the supervisor I flagged down to report sabotage. She approached me and asked,

“Who are you getting in trouble this time?”

No supervisor or executive thanked me for doing my best for customers.

Customer Reactions To 1000 Cuts

Seasonal Catalog Company profits probably started declining in the early years I worked there. About halfway through my 10 years, executives decided to have some employees call former customers to ask why they had stopped buying. I told another CSR they would get more honesty from asking us what customers said to us. She agreed. Customers told us exactly what upset them and why. Not every customer would take a call from Seasonal Catalog Company and not every customer would answer honestly.

These were the three most frequent complaints I heard:

1) Late delivery

Order takers would give a delivery estimate based on the executive assumption that the shipping department would send out the orders quickly instead of sabotaging orders.

2) Items not ordered

Order takers were required to offer specials at the end of each order. They got a bonus for each one they sold.

Customers complained when they received special offer they hadn’t ordered, which meant they paid for special offers they hadn’t ordered. The company profits dropped with each refund for an unordered special. Employees kept their bonuses.

3) Product misrepresentation

Food items looked big in the catalogs, but arrived as tiny products customers considered overpriced.

The corporate owners of Seasonal Catalog Company overpriced the tiny products to make honest customers cover the fraud other customers committed. Seasonal Catalog Company had an order replacement policy. Customers could call and claim they hadn’t received their orders 3 times and have their orders reshipped 3 times.

I took a call from a woman who wanted to report her neighbor for fraud. Her neighbor would call after receiving an order to say she hadn’t received it. She took full advantage of the 3 replacements policy.

Profits Down From 1000 Cuts

For 7 of my 10 years with Seasonal Catalog Company, the front of the catalog announced:

“Order by December 15th for Christmas delivery”

The sharp increase in shipping for Christmas delivery was buried in small print at the back of the catalog. On December 15th when I took an order call, I would ask the customer if they knew about the shipping increase. Most of them didn’t. Many hung up.

After I discovered another employee was asking customers the same question and getting many hangups, I decided to keep track.

I asked a friendly supervisor how many seasonal order takers it had in its 3 call centers. I started counting the number of hangups per hour for each of my shifts. 4 hangups. I did a calculation based on a $50 order (a smaller order amount), the number of order takers, and the number of hangups for one 8 hour daytime shift and came up with this loss amount:

$1,000,000

Seasonal Catalog Company had been losing at least $1,000,000 in orders the week before Christmas for all of the years I had worked there. Its 1000 employee and customer cuts had cut millions of dollars in profits.

The 4 hangups an hour lasted through the next Christmas season. The following season, Seasonal Catalog Company executives put a notice about increased shipping costs on the front cover, but did not name the exact shipping cost. Hangups dropped to 2 an hour, but that was still 2 hangups an hour.

A few years after I left Seasonal Catalog Company, I read that it had again been sold. I wrote a letter to the new CEO. It’s possible that he wrote me back and the post office failed to deliver his letter. USPS had failed to deliver many other letters. I doubt that the CEO appreciated my wisdom, though. Two years after I wrote that CEO, he closed Seasonal Catalog Company for good. It had lived for almost 4 decades.

Business death by 1000 cuts.

© Paula M. Kramer, 2024
All rights reserved.