When I was 25 or so, I had my worst job ever. I was a corporate trainer (not bad) — it was my job to train people how to use their voicemail. Yeah, really. (’nuff said)
The service questionnaire: guess I didn't hold back...
As inane as it sounds, training people how to use voicemail systems (“Press 3 to delete your message, then press 99 to exit the system”) was not the bad part of the job.
What made it bad was the working environment. Here’s why:
- The co-managers did not have well-defined roles.
- The co-managers did not trust the employees.
- The co-managers demoralized the employees, often by telling them they wouldn’t be able to get jobs anywhere else.
- Employees didn’t have the tools we needed to do our jobs well.
I’d virtually forgotten about my short (six month) experience in this job, but found some files I’d saved in a recent office cleanup.
One thing I’d saved was my response to an internal Service Questionnaire. (They’d been recently introduced to the idea of collecting feedback.)
Holy %^&!, I wrote on the back too!
I gave them a “1” (Strongly Disagree) on question 5:
I understand the policies and procedures of this company and have the flexiblity to alter them as necessary to get my job done to the best degree.
and added the following comments:
This is a 2-part question: The policies and procedures of this company are not readily available. When pressed, management sometimes seems reluctant to set policy. This results in extremely flexible, but difficult to understand “policy”.
I gave them a “2” (Disagree) on question 7:
Our company does a good job of recognizing and rewarding staff for excellence in job performance.
and added the following comments:
No policy = no way to measure job performance (other than customer comments) = no reward. Management has voiced opinions (real or sarcastic, I’m not sure) that there should be no “attaboys” here.
Overall, I answered “Disagree” to most questions, and added fairly critical comments to each. This was a hand-written response to an “anonymous” questionnaire that was handed out to less than five people.
In retrospect, I wonder what motivated me to be so honest (was it naivety? or a genuine urge to help? or that I knew I was going to quit soon?)…
I also wonder if anything changed based on my comments.
So to all you manager-types out there, the question is: have you received constructive criticism from your staff, and has it changed how you manage?
And to everyone — what was was your worst job and what made it that way?
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