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View Full Version : "Electronic Whip" - Laundry Speed Tracker



iceman559
11-01-2011, 01:13 PM
I haven't see any discussion here about this issue, so I thought I'd start a thread about it. As was mentioned in last week's park update, Disney has been using an electronic tracking system to judge the pace of employees doing laundry at the DLR hotels. The union workers have lashed out against Disney saying it's an "electronic whip" and saying they fear it and that it essentially goes too far.

You can read the article here: http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-me-1019-lopez-disney-20111018,0,6829510.column


Now, for my opinion. I think the union workers are insane. They track you and display it by name, so what? At a hotel, the speed at which they do their jobs can directly affect the hotel's guest service ratings and profit. The five years I worked at Target, I was PUBLICALLY tracked. Anyone walking through the store could see my last few cashier ratings (Green, Yellow, Red) right in big letters on the register's monitor. Guests, employees, EVERYONE. Oh, and a guest taking too long hurt me. Fumble about trying to find your cash or card while I am waiting after hitting total? You just might get me written up for slow scores. Does that mean I should lash out at Target? Sure it sucks, but no. How quick I am directly affects the store's profit. If I go too slow, we may lose a sale. If I go quick, I might make someone come back because of how pleasant their experience is. On top of this, Target also tracked every single employee's monthly cashier speeds, how many Red Cards (Target Credit Cards) we got people to sign up for, total number of transactions we did, how many extended service plans we sold, the number of accessories we sold with big ticket electronics (games with consoles, movies with DVD players, cables with TVs, etc). All of this information was displayed to the side of Guest Service where any employee that wanted to could look at it (and guests if they so desired) all right next to our full names. They also posted ALL guest comments we received through surveys (good and bad) WITHOUT redacting a TM's name. Someone complains about me, everyone gets to see exactly what the guest said about me and KNOW it was me. Not to mention, there were minimums for everything they tracked and if you didn't meet them, you were coached first, and written up the next time.

It's not like what's happening at Disney is totally absurd. Any place that interfaces with the general public is likely tracking employees' productivity. Yeah, so it's displayed for other employees to see. It might suck if your slow and self-conscious, but it's not like having it displayed to them or only for managers will change anything about the possible ramifications.

What's everyone else's take on this?

missm
11-02-2011, 11:38 AM
That's pretty hard core but explains a weird comment from a cashier once. About 5 years ago my boyfriend (husband now) and I went to Target and when we went to pay I put my credit card in the machine upside down and it spit it out. The cashier said "there goes my rating." I asked her what she meant and she told me that since I put my card in wrong her time with us extended and she would get a lower rating. Ever since then my husband and I say "there goes our rating" every time we screw up. I always thought the lady was exaggerating but apparently she wasn't! We used to go to that Target all the time and we referred to that lady as Eeyore. Probably not the nicest thing to admit but she was so much like him!

iceman559
11-02-2011, 12:36 PM
That's pretty hard core but explains a weird comment from a cashier once. About 5 years ago my boyfriend (husband now) and I went to Target and when we went to pay I put my credit card in the machine upside down and it spit it out. The cashier said "there goes my rating." I asked her what she meant and she told me that since I put my card in wrong her time with us extended and she would get a lower rating. Ever since then my husband and I say "there goes our rating" every time we screw up. I always thought the lady was exaggerating but apparently she wasn't! We used to go to that Target all the time and we referred to that lady as Eeyore. Probably not the nicest thing to admit but she was so much like him!

Haha, while that's bad to say, and I'm sure she'd get in trouble if her leads found out, she wasn't exaggerating! The system is pretty sensitive to speed. I just wish it didn't judge US (team members) based on YOU (guest). I mean, people make mistakes. Why should I be punished? There was one time I wanted to flat out punch a lady. She just sat around the register, talking for like two minutes with her daughter about getting a pack of gum. Too bad there was nobody else in line, so I couldn't use the "Ma'am, I have other people waiting" excuse. Things like that hurting our scores are indeed annoying, but I can definitely see why they don't want what some cashiers do at first, and take forever to ring people up because they talk to them and be like "oooh, I got this once! It's great. Here, you should do this" type thing. Oh, and this is also the reason why if someone questions a price and it's such that we have to verify it, we suspend the transaction. It can take a while for it to come back up when the cashier goes to retrieve it, but while it's suspended, our score is unaffected by how long it takes to get a response from the sales floor (which can take quite some time if they are busy trying to prevent themselves from getting in trouble for delays on call buttons, etc.).

But yeah, Target had some pretty strict rules when it came to guest service. Oh, another thing I forgot to mention was that we were also tracked as a store for overall call-button usage (those buttons/phones that send someone to you in 60 seconds). We were judged on how many went off and how many of those went to third request (over 60 seconds - very bad). On top of that, we were judged individually in the "boats" - electronics and jewelry. I worked electronics for my last four years, and each week my team lead would have to go over my service ratings. If the call button went off "excessively" - more than twice per day - we were warned. If that happened too many times, they would move you out of electronics and get someone else. This was really annoying because the lazy guests who just hit buttons because they don't want to turn the corner to find me, or that don't want to wait the 10 seconds it takes me to finish helping another guest. I also had tons of problems with guests hitting buttons RIGHT IN FRONT of me. I'd be looking at them, and they'd walk up and hit the button thinking they were funny. Or one time, I had a group of teens who hit and cleared the buttons themselves like twenty times. We had a good two minutes of constant radio chatter "Fast service needed in electronics, who is responding? The request has been cleared; electronics." Luckily my team lead was there at the time, so she knew it wasn't my fault when she looked at the counts that weekend.

Needless to say, there's worse things Disney could do...at least they're times are all in their hands, not the public's.

Bolivar
11-04-2011, 08:18 AM
Back in 1990 I worked in the corporate offices at Pacific Bell. There was a strike and has a salaried employee, I had to fill in for striking workers. I worked as a 411 operator. I learned the conditions that they normally had to work in. Every call was timed and they had to average something like 20 seconds per call. Try as I might, I couldn’t get anywhere near that. When people called we would say, “What city?” Many people would say, “I don’t remember the name, but I’m looking for that hardware store on Main Street. You know the one next to the…” We covered most of the state and had no idea about the towns and cities people were calling in about. Add to that the really bad system that made it hard to find places and it took a bit to find things. During that strike it took people 20-30 minutes on hold to get through to us. We were staffed HIGHER than normal; it was that we were so slow.

As an aside I’ll tell you about the system. First they didn’t want typing to be a job requirement so they didn’t use a regular keyboard. The letters were in alphabetical order with A where the Q should be, B where the W should be, C where the E should be, etc. Then to look for something you had to first enter the city. All cities has a three letter code. If the city has one word, then it was the first three letters, if it had two words it was the first letter of the first and the first two of the second and if it had three or more it was the first letter of the first three words. Got that? So Anaheim would be ANA; Los Angeles would be LAN; San Francisco would be SFR; etc.

Then you entered the name of what you were looking for and it had to be exact. Take two businesses for example: Payless and Pay Less Shoes. If I was looking for Payless and entered pay less, it wouldn’t find it. If I was looking for the shoe store and entered payless it wouldn’t find it. Think of all the businesses that get cute with the spelling of their name.

Finally, there was a separate data base for business, personal, federal government, state government, county government and city government. It wasn’t too hard for business and personal, but for government no one would know when called for the number of such and such prison if it was a state prison, a county lockup or a city lockup. Or any number of other government agencies people would call about.

And let’s not get into the 2:00 am calls when the bars closed.

iceman559
11-04-2011, 08:41 AM
Dang...that's rough. Just goes to show, though, that productivity tracking is everywhere, especially where you interface with the general public in "real-time". I think these workers at Disney are just trying to find another way for them to get "bad" publicity about Disney. Regardless of if they are the first hotel to do this, they aren't the first company...far from it in fact. If they want to complain about that, maybe they should go somewhere else where they can get a taste of how bad this can really be...

bumblebeeonarose
11-06-2011, 06:37 PM
My first thought when reading that Disney was tracking work speed was, "So What!" Seriously, what's the problem? I think most grocery stores do that. I know they tracked how many items we could scan when I worked at a grocery store. Disney must feel that some employees have more work ethic than others, and they need a way to track down those who are not working up to their perceived potential. It shouldn't be a problem.

I'm a teacher. People want to start basing my pay on how well a student does on one test they take each year. Never mind all of the variances that could affect that test score. Yeah the teacher's unions aren't happy about it either. But it's going to happen. So suck it up and do your job right. That's all anyone can do.

iceman559
11-06-2011, 09:18 PM
My first thought when reading that Disney was tracking work speed was, "So What!" Seriously, what's the problem? I think most grocery stores do that. I know they tracked how many items we could scan when I worked at a grocery store. Disney must feel that some employees have more work ethic than others, and they need a way to track down those who are not working up to their perceived potential. It shouldn't be a problem.

I completely agree!


I'm a teacher. People want to start basing my pay on how well a student does on one test they take each year. Never mind all of the variances that could affect that test score. Yeah the teacher's unions aren't happy about it either. But it's going to happen. So suck it up and do your job right. That's all anyone can do.

Yeah I think that's a crappy way to base a teacher's pay. Teachers are being treated like crap these days. The things I have heard my teacher friends and my mother tell me parents do are just insane. I can understand basing your pay on something under your control, but basing it off of a student's desire to learn, their parents' desire for them to learn, and well, the student's ABILITY to learn, among other things? That's just crazy. You have my sympathy and my thanks for being a teacher! That is definitely not an easy profession...now more than ever!