• Weight: 280
• BP: 128/74

Dear Miss:

Today was the day the President and COO (Chief Operating Officer) was supposed to visit your boy’s place of employment.  This visit had been known for about a week, and there was considerable effort being put into sprucing up the store, and making the place look perfect (or as perfect as possible) for his visit.  Over the last month or so, there’s been a considerable effort on the part of the corporate arm of the company to pare back hours, and everyone has been feeling the pinch.  With the visit of someone so prestigious however, even with fewer hours, there’s been a big push in making the store look very nice.

Apparently however, there was some sort of need for this person to stay at corporate headquarters, and the visit was rather abruptly cancelled yesterday afternoon.  Even so, no one bothered to contact all the people that had been scheduled to come in early today, so when those that had been off Wednesday showed up for work this morning, expecting a corporate visit to occur….they were finally informed it wasn’t happening.  One wonders why no one thought to make the effort, since it was so damned important over the last week to have them work harder, longer and on shorter hours (except for the full time employees, they’re going to get their 40 hrs regardless).

Your boy has been working in retail for the last 30 years.  In every company he worked for, the same thing happened every time there was someone expected that was considered to be a ‘suit’.  An over the top expenditure of hours and effort ensued, to create what amounted to be a false image for whoever was showing up.  Your boy always wondered what the point of all that was?  The corporate person that’s being shown this pristine facade had to know they were being sold a bill of goods.  Or at the very least being shown one, but they go along with the charade anyway.  If they’re not being shown things ‘how they are’, then how can someone know what’s broken in order to fix it?  Or don’t they actually care?

When boy was working for the previous company (that went bankrupt and whose assets and debt were acquired by his current employer); a CEO had the idea of sending in associates that weren’t expected, so that they could get an idea of how things were when the stores were unaware that ‘company was coming’.  The CEO managed to get a detailed report of where the strengths and where the weaknesses were.  As boy recalls, it had a positive effect for awhile, even though soon after the company went bankrupt for the third and final time. The idea was still sound; at least in boy’s mind.  Getting a false sense of how your business is doing solves nothing, and these CEOs and upper level management types should know that.  Or maybe they just don’t care.

Your boy

This is a Holidailies post!