What PR vs. Management vs. the Front Line Worker says

Inevitably, in a large organization, front line workers’ pressure to perform and/or apathy results in a public relations nightmare.

What PR Says:

• Our values are above such behavior.
• Our employees have a much higher standards than this behavior.
• Such behavior is repugnant to all of our employees.
• These is a rare bad apple that will be sought out and dealt with.

What Management Says:

• We have goals to hit.
• You are prohibited from doing the 1,002 things on this list.
• To prevent you from doing the above 1,002 things, you must follow these 37 procedures for everything you do.
• If anyone screws up due to being in a rush, we will add an extra 4 hours of annual training on this and add it to the mandatory weekly meeting agenda.

What the Front Line Worker Says:

• You pay me a fixed or minimum wage. As Chris Rock said, if you could pay me less, you would.
• You cap my pay at a wage that prevents anyone competent enough to do a good job from actually staying around to do it.
• In your interest in getting rid of a worthless employee that you didn’t have the guts to deal with individually, you also fired two workers who knew what they were doing.
• Breaking the rules as a last resort becomes a more common occurrence with every layer of ass-covering bureaucracy you add and every shred of competence you take away.
• The only way you’d last one *shift* in the field is if you hid in the manager’s office for the duration.