During high school as well as my first year of college I worked at a country club. I would set up weddings, serve food, then clean up at the end. From this job I have several examples of very different types of management and punishment styles, some being completely counterproductive, some not really achieving any at all, and some actually working out in the end.
An example of a counterproductive punishment style came from a manager that disliked seeing employees sitting in the break room. The job as a whole had a 'hurry up and wait' mindset towards everything. We would set up for the entire night ahead of time before the wedding even started, which led to a more fluid evening. This meant that for most weddings we would be ready to go for everything at a moment's notice, but we would have to wait for that notice as the planners were the ones timing us. This obviously led to downtime, and there was only so much cleaning we could do before we legitimately ran out of tasks. Even knowing this, we were reprimanded (from one manager only) for sitting in the break room. This led to people standing around in the kitchen, doing the same waiting as before. When he noticed this he started assigning us different areas to clean, even if they had been cleaned minutes prior. This then led to us not cleaning the areas in the first place, and waiting for him to assign us to clean. This punishment style of assigning cleaning led to more work for him and a less efficient kitchen overall.
If I were to take the place of the manager I would have first asked why employees were sitting in the break room when I assumed they had more tasks to do. This would have led to us either finding out they actually had shirked work, or that they were done with everything needed at the moment. If they had shirked work and I kept finding out they were consistently doing so I would then step to assigning work to those particular shirkers while allowing the rest of the employees to behave as they were, as I know I can trust them.
One example of an overall useless punishment style was when one employee was working too slowly and not finishing all of the tasks assigned to her. This was not because the tasks were actually too large. She had just dropped in productivity from a lack of desire to continue working. The manager said that if she did not increase productivity she would not be able to work the smaller events with only a few staff as she was not holding up her end. She did not increase productivity, and her hours were decreased.
As a manager in this scenario, I would struggle more in finding an effective solution to the problem. I would ask the worker why she was not behaving as her previous self. Based on this I may see if shew ants to try a different job within the kitchen, like moving to busser from server. If I didn't find any solution through conversation I likely would have decreased her hours like the manager did.
Finally, an example of positive consequences through punishment. This one may be more interesting as it was the workers punishing the manager. The manager liked the job of cutting the wedding cake, so he would take that on himself most of the days he worked. However, the way he cut cake would dirty far more utensils and carts than the way of other workers. After he cut the cake he would leave the cart and utensils for the other workers to clean. We spoke to him about this a few times, but he never changed his ways. After we got a bit fed up with this, we formed a plan. When this manager worked we would have someone else pre-emptively cut the cake before he could get to the job. This deprived him of a job he enjoyed doing, making this be a punishment. After a few events, he finally buckled and said he would try to change his ways to make cake cutting be a less messy operation. To our surprise, it worked out. He dirtied much fewer dishes and actually cleaned up after himself when cutting cake.
An example of a counterproductive punishment style came from a manager that disliked seeing employees sitting in the break room. The job as a whole had a 'hurry up and wait' mindset towards everything. We would set up for the entire night ahead of time before the wedding even started, which led to a more fluid evening. This meant that for most weddings we would be ready to go for everything at a moment's notice, but we would have to wait for that notice as the planners were the ones timing us. This obviously led to downtime, and there was only so much cleaning we could do before we legitimately ran out of tasks. Even knowing this, we were reprimanded (from one manager only) for sitting in the break room. This led to people standing around in the kitchen, doing the same waiting as before. When he noticed this he started assigning us different areas to clean, even if they had been cleaned minutes prior. This then led to us not cleaning the areas in the first place, and waiting for him to assign us to clean. This punishment style of assigning cleaning led to more work for him and a less efficient kitchen overall.
If I were to take the place of the manager I would have first asked why employees were sitting in the break room when I assumed they had more tasks to do. This would have led to us either finding out they actually had shirked work, or that they were done with everything needed at the moment. If they had shirked work and I kept finding out they were consistently doing so I would then step to assigning work to those particular shirkers while allowing the rest of the employees to behave as they were, as I know I can trust them.
One example of an overall useless punishment style was when one employee was working too slowly and not finishing all of the tasks assigned to her. This was not because the tasks were actually too large. She had just dropped in productivity from a lack of desire to continue working. The manager said that if she did not increase productivity she would not be able to work the smaller events with only a few staff as she was not holding up her end. She did not increase productivity, and her hours were decreased.
As a manager in this scenario, I would struggle more in finding an effective solution to the problem. I would ask the worker why she was not behaving as her previous self. Based on this I may see if shew ants to try a different job within the kitchen, like moving to busser from server. If I didn't find any solution through conversation I likely would have decreased her hours like the manager did.
Finally, an example of positive consequences through punishment. This one may be more interesting as it was the workers punishing the manager. The manager liked the job of cutting the wedding cake, so he would take that on himself most of the days he worked. However, the way he cut cake would dirty far more utensils and carts than the way of other workers. After he cut the cake he would leave the cart and utensils for the other workers to clean. We spoke to him about this a few times, but he never changed his ways. After we got a bit fed up with this, we formed a plan. When this manager worked we would have someone else pre-emptively cut the cake before he could get to the job. This deprived him of a job he enjoyed doing, making this be a punishment. After a few events, he finally buckled and said he would try to change his ways to make cake cutting be a less messy operation. To our surprise, it worked out. He dirtied much fewer dishes and actually cleaned up after himself when cutting cake.
Do I gather form this story that the other employees were like you either high school students or college students? What about the managers? Were they permanent employees? I don't know this to explain your first two examples, but is it possible that the manager(s) had some resentment against people with a college degree, and hence felt negative to college students as well? I may be fishing here, but as that sort of resentment seems present in explaining some of our national politics, one wonders whether it might be at play here. If it was at play, I'm not sure how to address it. I gather there would have been some age difference between the managers and the other employees. So socializing with them outside of work might not have been in the cards. Absent that, I'm unclear of what the remedy might be.
ReplyDeleteIt seems in prior posts you wrote about subsequent work experiences you had. So I'm curious what made you choose this earlier experience for this post. Was it a better example to fit the prompt? Or is it just easier to write about?
There were several high school students, a few college, and then the remaining half were age 30+. The more relaxed manager had a college degree, while the more uptight one did not. They were both just under 30. I don't know if the resentment toward college students idea holds water in this case because older employees were punished equally. However, thinking back on the job, I do think that the uptight manager may have had resentment toward college students as he did not pass out of college.
DeleteI chose this work experience because in my other ones I have not seen any employees get punished. The teams were small enough and workers were responsible enough that everything just worked out.