Future Shop Guelph - 631: Grand Opening

I started working at Future Shop just about 4 months ago. It seems like much longer than that, but that’s definitely not the case. It didn’t take me long to start standing out in my department as someone who has their head screwed on properly and can accept more responsibly without compromising their performance. I loved working at Future Shop. I loved that I was working for a store that had values and guiding principles all set out for the employees so that we all knew we were walking into a company that really cared… here are some of those guiding principles and values?

- have fun while being the best

- learn from challenge and change

- respect and integrity

- begin with the customer in mind

There are others, but I can’t remember them all right now. I keep speaking in past tense. This is because it was up until yesterday that I loved working at Future Shop. Sure I had my down days when I didn’t want to be there - but that’s only because I work on the floor and I think I’d have made a much better customer service specialist.

At Future Shop we offer something called a Product Service Plan. I don’t sell a whole lot of product service plans, because I personally see them as a rip off for some customers. When you’re buying a $99 camera, it’s hard to see the reasoning behind getting a service plan that is $30… 1/3 the price of the camera, to protect a camera for 4 years that will be more than obsolete in 4 years. It doesn’t make any sense. Anyway… I had had a few meetings with my managers about needing to get my psp up, which I understood. It’s hard to keep the companies numbers up and look good when your full timers aren’t selling the products.

What I didn’t know is how heavily this PSP weighs in on our job. Yesterday I was pulled into the office and told that if I didn’t have 10% PSP on Saturday and Sunday that on Monday I would be relieved because there would be no place for me on my managers team. (The company goal is 8%…)

Huh.

I’m down right pissed off about it. Using scare tactics to get me to sell something… and the only reason they want us to sell so much is because the company makes so much damn money off the things. I don’t think that this method was going to help me have fun while trying to pump out my best. I also don’t think it upheld any sort of integrity or respect. And I definitely don’t think it began with the customer in mind. Instead it begins with the number in mind. I spend all morning avoiding customers terrified that they weren’t going to get PSP.

I later decided to just have fun with it and started skewing my numbers by walking customers who weren’t getting PSP to the front so someone else would ring them in and just ringing in accessories, none of which are eligible for PSP, thus wouldn’t bring down my percentage. … I ended the day at 29.1%, but made a point with that… I can get any number they want me to do. Hell, I could have gotten higher than that, but I didn’t shitty quality sales on my daily sales, and horrible customer service.

Tomorrow I plan on following the program, ringing in all my sales, and just seeing how it goes. If I don’t get 10%… then I don’t get 10%… I’m just going to see what naturally happens. But I sure am angry. This was a company that I stood up for on a daily basis telling people that it wasn’t like other companies… that they actually care. That because my managers and I are best friends, then it must be different. I would tell all my hippy friends that it is a great place that isn’t 100% focused on the capitalistic nature of the world, but it is. And that really makes me quite sad.

Someone needs to mention to our managers that their employees aren’t sales. The use the same technique on us. They make us their friend, gain our trust… try and make us believe that they actually care about what we need to do our jobs, try to make us believe that they are actually qualifying us for the positions that we’re in… and then they ask for the sale (the 10%) and if they don’t get it, you’re not even worth their time anymore.

One thing that really bothered me, was when my manager brought me into his office for the initial “you’ll get fired” meeting he drew a graph. On one side he listed what Future Shop gives me, and on the other what I give future shop. He listed about 11 or 12 bullshit things on the Future Shop side (like 30 million in product to sell and a community…) and only listed four on my side.

Why did this piss me off? I spend ounce of energy, time and creativity that runs through me on Future Shop. I helped plan the Christmas Party, I’ve slowly become the leader of our community outreach board, I merch my department, I keep my guys in my department on top of things and organized, I trained our new hires, I have more product knowledge than most people… I bring so much in there every single day - but because I don’t have 10% PSP… I’m not worth the company’s money.

Here’s an interesting article about Microsoft’s attempts to improve the job interview process. As part of “Job Interview 2.0″, Microsoft’s interviewers didn’t just ask questions that would test an applicant’s ability to perform her duties and get along with her co-workers. They also asked a series of brain teasers, such as, “how would you determine the weight of a Boeing 747?”

Unsurprisingly, Microsoft found that these questions were completely useless when it came to determining which applicants would perform well for the company. But that’s not the end of the story:

Unfortunately, Microsoft’s realization came too late: a whole mini-industry has spawned around the concept of Job Interview 2.0. If Microsoft did it, it must work, right? There are books written on brainteasers in the interview, consultants who will help your company annoy the hell out candidates with your very own custom brainteasers, and now, everyone from small software firms to big ole’ banks are asking stupid riddle questions.

***

Back when I was the sales manager at a rental car location, I thought of a way to improve the job interview process. We used a two-stage process, in which I would interview an applicant, and then the applicant would talk to the general manager. After interviewing all of the applicants we’d called, we’d decide who would get the job.

Here was my improvement: I would determine some basic sales skill that the applicant lacked (I encountered a grand total of one applicant who had every sales skill I was looking for). Sometimes, they didn’t use my name when addressing me. Sometimes, they didn’t make enough eye contact. Sometimes, they would respond to questions like, “what makes you the best applicant for this job?” with answers like, “maybe I’m not the best applicant.”

I would pick one skill and tell the applicant that the general manager would only hire her if she had that skill. For example, I would say to a woman who looked didn’t make eye contact, “Ken (the general manager) thinks that the most important quality for a salesperson is making eye contact. If you don’t make more eye contact when you talk to him than you did when you talked to me, he will not hire you.” Then I’d talk to Ken at the end of his interview and see if the applicant took my suggestion.

Clever, huh? We get to see immediately who is willing to learn, and who isn’t.

But there was a problem: almost no-one would take my suggestion. If I told a guy to speak up, he would mumble all the way through his interview with Ken. If I told him to say that his self-confidence made him perfect for the job, he’d walk into Ken’s office and say, “maybe I’m not the best applicant.”

We hired about a dozen agents during my tenure at that office. One already had everything we were looking for. Two went out of their way to incorporate my suggestions into their interview with the general manager. Those three made plenty of money for themselves and for the company. The other nine performed about as well as you’d expect. And guess what? The three that performed well all would have been hired anyway, if we had just used standard interviewing procedures.

Toward the end of my tenure, Ken and I did come up with a way to improve the hiring process. Instead of giving a better interview, we’d get better applicants.

Because of restrictions from the national office, we were completely handcuffed as to the money and benefits that we could offer, so we changed the wording of our newspaper add. We added this line:

Management Experience Preferred

That didn’t get us a whole lot of applicants with management experience, but it did get us a whole lot of applicants who aspired to be managers. Suddenly, we had more quality applicants than we knew what to do with.

Same job, same benefits, same pay. Same interview process. But the addition of one line to the newspaper ad solved our personnel problems overnight.

(via reddit)

(cross posted at appletree)

In the past 5 years the amount of wasted food coming out of restaurants, hotels and food manufacturers in Hong Kong has more than doubled. This food accounts for 1/3 of the 9 300 tons of waste that go to the landfills every day in Hong Kong, in the US 12 % of the waste is from food. The landfills are starting to fill up - and they obviously have a maximum capacity, not to mention the food in a landfills gives of methane.

The solutions in Hong Kong have been the following: setting up experimental composters which will transform 4 tons of food waste a day into soil conditioner, convincing hotels and catering businesses to truck their waste to recycling centers, charging people for leaving leftovers and installing “digesters” in their basements.

The machine, a large stainless steel chest, is maintained at a steady 37 degrees Centigrade (98.6 degrees F.), and fed three times a day with leftovers and a handful of rice husks impregnated with enzymes that speed up decomposition. Every hour, a set of turbine blades churns the food up for a minute and by the time the process is over 100 kilos of noodles, croissants, green vegetables, meatballs, crispy duck, you name it, has been reduced to five kilos of sludge, several liters of water and a puff of CO2. The sludge then goes to the dump.

That is not just wasteful; it is unprofitable for restaurateurs. One restaurant charges HK$5 (US64 cents) per ounce of leftovers.

“All you can eat” sushi joints also have a problem with diners who pile their plates high and then simply eat the raw fish off the top, leaving the rice. One sushi restaurateur, according to local media, charges HK$10 (US$1.28) per leftover sushi.

There is something so fundamentally wrong here. Where other countries are striving to find just enough food to feed their families Hong Kong is having to charge people to finish their food.. People will actually pay to walk away from food that others would die for just to have it sent to their families. Wouldn’t it make more sense to limit the amount of food being given? Eliminate “all you can eat”s and just give people reasonable portions that they will be able to finish.

The gap between the affluence of countries never ceases to amaze me - and the greediness of those in the affluent countries is just disgusting. We wallow in our own food filth, piling it in landfills and letting it excrete methane into the air - while others starve to death. Sickening isn’t it?

(source)
(cross posted at appletree)

My sister drinks a lot of diet coke, it’s probably going to kill her (yes I’m aware that a. I am a horrible photoshopper and b. my sister is my polar opposite).

Today I got an e-mail from the ecologist informing me of the top 5 foods I should be avoiding, amongst those top 5 was good ol’ diet coke.

Coke has come up on this blog a few times - so I thought it was about time that I started to look into what all the fuss is really about… I’ll attempt to figure out why I tell my sister not to drink it, my mom refuses to buy it and why I was disgusted to see tons upon tons of cans of “coke zero” up on my landlord’s counter.

Diet Coke in particular started distribution in the states in 1982… Now… there is New Coke, Caffeine free, C2, Coca-Cola Zero, Coca-Cola Cherry (also in Diet), Coca/Diet - Coke with Lemon, Lime, Vanilla, Cherry Vanilla or Raspberry, Coca-Cola Blak and TaB.

If you’ve never heard of the web-site Killer Coke, I suggest you check it out. It looks at the coke factories world wide and exposes some of the unfair treatment of workers, deaths and other injustices that surround the distribution and production of coke. Workers were apparently killed by “thugs” out side of their factories and it also tracks all the negative news reports put out by the media over 2006… there is a TON of it.

In short here are some of the iffy things about coke. …It’s flat out not healthy. If you’re drinking coke excessively, or giving your child coke as a substitute for something healthy you’re not getting proper nutrients. Kids, for example, will drink coke instead of milk, which will contribute to a higher change of osteoporosis. (Don’t tell me that kids don’t drink THAT much coke - because they do.) Regular soft drink consumers get a lower intake of not only calcium but also magnesium, ascorbic acid, riboflavin and vitamin A. When I vocalized my disgust for the excessive amounts of coke upstairs my roommate made a very valid point “it’s called an addiction…” caffeine my friends. physical dependency.

Why care about not getting enough of that schtuff? …Well, here is what I know - and I’m not even a nutritionist…

Calcium: calcium deficiencies will affect bone and tooth formation. Long term deficiency will lead to osteoporosis deteriorating your bones and increasing the risks of breaks and fractures.

Magnesium: needed for over 300 different bio-chem reactions in your body. It maintains normal muscle and nerve functions, keeps bones strong, steadies heart rhythms and is essential to a healthy immune system. It regulates blood sugar and helps keep blood at a normal pressure. It fights against and helps prevent hypertension, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Ascorbic Acid - Vitamin C: seriously. ya’ll should know why vitamin c is important… Its important for the effective absorption of iron, structural component of blood vessels, tendons, ligaments and bones, it helps heal wounds and keeps you good and healthy from colds and other such annoy crap-o-la.

Riboflavin (B2): it is required for …a lot of cellular processes, keeps energy metabolism high and is required for the metabolism of fats, crabs and proteins, a deficiency will result in cracked lips, inflamed mouth and tongue, mouth ulcers and sore throats.

Vitamin A: aka - THE most important vitamin a woman should take - reduces the risk of breast cancer, helps with PMS and lowers bloating. So if you have a shitty time of the month with your period -take vitamin A, yo. Don’t give in to all that midol crap.

So those are just some of the things that excessive cola drinkers are shown to be missing out on. But getting lots of phosphoric acid, high fructose corn syrup, pesticides in the bottles and benzene! Woo! What does that mean? Well, again osteoporosis, the sugar level has DIRECT links with obesity and diabetes, cancers and a breakdown of the immune system. In any given bottle of coke you’ll be likely to find such toxins as lindane, DDT, malathion and chlorpyrifos. This originally concerned the public enough that the sales of coke went down by 15% in 2002, and in Kerala (the Indian success story) Coke was banned all together. If you think you’re skipping out on that sugar by drinking the diet versions - you’re getting saccharine instead - aka introducing cancer to your bladder.

Personally, I’d be most worried about the aspartame. It is linked to brain tumors, blindness, breast cancer, insomnia, chronic pains…and breaks down into formaldehyde. Sick, yo. Watch this movie. Seriously.

So these are the health risks - but here is what disgusts me even more; people who stick coke bottles in their 4 year old’s mouth, schools who plaster their hall ways with coke vending machines, parents who keep bottles upon bottles of this liquid candy stocked up in their closet… The fact of the matter is we are living in a country that has the easiest access to fresh drinking water - and what do we do instead? We start sucking back a liquid that kills workers, kills our bodies and contributes to the consumeristic economy.

Think about it…

Mild dehydration will slow down your metabolism by as much as 3%, and over 75% of Americans don’t drink enough water in a day and this is the number one cause for daily fatigue. A single class of water will shut down midnight hunger pangs for over 90% of dieter. A drop of 2% in body water will screw over your short term memory, give you trouble with mathematics and slightly blur your eye sight at times. Simply drinking 5 glasses of water a day - which we ALL have readily at our disposal - will decrease the risk of colon cancer by 45%, breast cancer by 79% and bladder cancer by nearly 50%.

In contrast.…

That myth that you can put a penny in coke and it will disintegrate? True. Same for nails and a t-bone steak. Some states even carry coke in trucks to remove blood stains off of highways. Need to clean your toilet? The acid in coke will remove the stains. It can be used to loosen a rusty bolt, clean corrosion, and removes grease from clothing….

…Right, so instead of drinking a resource that countries would literally kill for… that people die due to a lack of… we drink a liquid that literally rots our insides. Makes real sense. Really.

Sarah - please, drink water instead of diet coke.

Greenpeace International has been busy in the past two years finally producing a study which says for the past three year Congolese village chiefs have been giving humongous expanses of the Congo rainforest to European and U.S logging companies. Each tree can bring in about $8 000 but rather than this direct money they were offered buildings of up to $20 000 which rarely materialized, sugar, salt, tools and beer.

Rainforests are extremely important carbon reserves. Their preservation ensures a more balanced global climate. The DRC alone accounts for 8% of the carbon which is stored in forests - more than any other country in Africa, and the 4th highest in the entire world. 40 million people in the area depend on the forest to provide food, medicine and timber products.

25% of greenhouse gas emissions come from the clearance of tropical rainforests being converted into pastureland and agricultural plantations. It is estimated that by 2050 the deforestation from the Democratic Republic of the Congo will released 34.4 billion tons of CO2 - which to put into perspective is equal to the UK’s entire emissions over the past 60 years. A chunk of rainforest the size of Spain is currently under control by logging companies, 30% of this has been signed over after a 2002 moratorium on new contracts.

There have been increased infrastructure, the increase in roads has led to an increase in poaching due to the enhancement of access. These roads being placed throughout the rainforest are just as horrible as deforestation as they lead to fragmented ecosystems. This area is the home to our closest relatives the bonobo, and it is also the second largest rainforest on earth covering 172 million hectares of land, of which 8.5% is protected.

The newly founded government in the DRC and the coming of peace have created a whole new opportunity for international development and exploitation of the country. The world bank has originally suspended finacial aid to the DRC when the war had broken out over natural resources. At the time timber production was at a stand still, but about 43.5 million hectares of forest came under the control of logging industries. It wasn’t until 2001 that the world bank finally resumed lending to the DRC lending $4 billion worth of loans and credits by August 2006.

In 2002 the World Bank suspended new logging entitlements and renewals of current entitlements - 163 contracts were canceled, all of which were mostly dormant anyway. This was followed by a proud statement by the World Bank that they were slowing deforestation and doing a great deed for the world… you know, canceling those contracts that weren’t being used anyway. Regardless of the moratorium 107 new contracts were made after the suspension.

The world bank says they are currently “looking into” the new contracts. But Greenpeace beat them to it finding serious lapses of governance, hardly any institutional capacity to control the forestry sector, widespread illegalities and social conflicts, as well as clashes with established conservation initiatives. The companies Danzer, ITB, NST, Olam, Sicobois and Trans - M have all signed treaties that should have been prevented by the world bank and have greatly benefited from the World Banks inability to ensure enforcement.

In addition to the new contracts, there was also a finding that only 40 of the 156 contractors has been paying taxes. Nearly half of them are being conducted in areas critical for carbon storage and wildlife protection. But, 1.7 million hectares can’t be examined because the maps are not made publically available. On third of the contracts are inside areas that are are “ideal spots for conservation” as defined by greenpeace, and 20 of these contracts are directly within a critical bonobo habitat. Another third of the contracts are in areas with the afromosia, a protected tree.

Violations Galore

The companies took over areas that were canceled by the World Bank in 2002, meaning that the rights were taken away from those who were not using the area and were given to those that would actually use the areas.

• NST companies and Danzer both altered contracts after the 2002 moratorium, but the exact changes can’t be described because again, the maps are not available for public use.

• ITB “appears” to have more land than they did before the 2002 moratorium.

• There are no payments to the forest officals

• Subcontracting is happening

• Payments have been made to rebel-held administrations enhancing war time issues

• Political “protection” paid off to certain companies

Greepeace’s conclusion?

The World bank has so far failed in its objectives of controlling the expansion of industrial logging and improving governance of the sector. In the absence of enforcement, the moratorium has been a cover for behind-the-scenes jostling for valuable forest holdings.

The taxes that haven’t totally been collected are supposed to be going to communities for community development and services. However, not a single dollar was collected between 2003 and 2006 and are even more heavily avoided through smuggling operations. Wood that has been extracting in communities is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, of which the community might see $100 and no follow through on the promises of infrastructure, schools and hospitals. Sodefor would distribute a “gift package” with 18 bars of soap, 4 packs of coffee, 24 bottles of beer and two bags of sugar in exchange for rainforest access, builing wharf’s in fish breeding grounds and logging caterpillar tress.

The logging practices are a huge threat to biodiversity and the global environment. The impact of all the logging infrastructure is HUGE but is never calculated into global figures. The emissions will “probably” be from 170 000 hectares of land - again, hard to figure out without access to maps. What is scary about this? …This giant hunk of land WAS NOT part of the calculations in the latest IPCC calculations.

For the future?

Stop the logging. Take responsibility. Public pressure on the World Bank to do it’s job. Develop viable policies and funding. Stop being jerks.