Other than myself, there is only one other employee at the shop that has been there the whole year and a half that I have, so you could say that we are on the top of the food chain. As for the others, most of them have only been working there for about three months. Many of these kids were hired within days of each other, but you can bet that if you ask them the order in which they were hired they will recite with ease. Now to them this order is very important for whoever was hired last usually gets to do the "shit" jobs. These jobs include but not limited to: cleaning up spills, unclogging toilets, helping customers first, taking out the trash, and the worst case scenario, cleaning up a little kid's puke.
This method of seniority reminds me of high school when I played soccer and all the new girls (freshman) were responsible for picking up all the soccer balls after practice which all of us older girls would conveniently kick as far and scattered as possible when we were finished. Pretty much the same situation applies at work, we show no mercy.
I find a flaw in this system. Just because a person was hired after someone else should not automatically put them at the bottom of the totem pole. The employee food chain should be based off of performance. Sometimes its difficult to bite my tongue when I see a lazy person tell a not such a sloth employee to do something just because they are "newer."
Is this issue present in most work settings and does it impair the efficiency of the business?
If you're going to work at our store you better step your nose game up.
I work at the tutoring center here at WCU, and even though I've been there longer, I don't have the "luxury" of ordering anyone around. We're all equal. Because I'm a higher level tutor, I do have more responsibilities, but I don't think it's fair to put someone on a lower level just because they have worked there for a less amount of time.
ReplyDeleteI work at a pizza shop in town in WC and we have quite a high turnover of employees, so I can see where your coming from. I don't think it's necessarily unfair to put the new employees at the bottom of the totem pole at first. I consider the first couple of weeks to be a sort of proving ground for new employees. It seems like it's the new employees that will do the "shit jobs" with a smile just because they're new that seem to work out in the long run. But like I said after that 2 or 3 week session where they prove their worth there's really no reason to discriminate anymore.
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