How to Not Make Money
Be the Post Office. That’s probably the easiest way to not make money.
But if you want a more sophisticated answer it’s have an attitude of “it’s not my job.”
I get paid to bring change to organizations. That’s my job. And I love it. There are very few drawbacks to that line of work. But one of the biggest is the fact that I can’t read a story about something without noticing organizational culture at work.
Such was the case with a post written by the Mailchimp Blog talking about a Twitter-based promotion of free T-shirts. Apparently their office manager ran into a problem with the post office not allowing her to mail more than 15 packages at a time. This meant that as she mailed out a 1000 packages, she had to mail 15, get back in line, and repeat the whole process.
Or as Mailchimp says, “The real hero in all of this is our office manager April. She developed what you might call a rather special relationship with the employees at the post office down the block. Apparently they have a rarely enforced rule that you can only mail fifteen parcels at a time. And since April was a “chronic offender,” she had to endure dirty looks and lots of attitude while spending hours at a time standing in line.”
In one, throw away sentence, Mailchimp captured the typical customer experience at the post office. “dirty looks and lots of attitude while spending hours at a time standing in line.”
Who among us doesn’t have a story like that about the Post Office? Is it any wonder they are hemorrhaging money?
Even my individual mail carrier has gotten into the act. After delivering mail they dislodge the locking mechanism on my (apartment controlled) mailbox. I didn’t notice this for two days and when I checked my mail I received an angry note from the mail carrier demanding that I keep my mailbox locked at all times. Because, you know, I always like to keep my mail accessible to random people.
Everything about the Post Office epitomizes the “not my job” attitude. It wasn’t the Post Offices job to help April deliver Mailchimp products (1000 packages is a lot of money for a company losing billions). After all, it’s not like she was buying 16 first class stamps. And it wasn’t the “job” of my mail carrier to shut and lock the mailbox – but it was his / her job to leave me an angry note apparently.
If we spent less time being angry and giving dirty looks, we’d find our organizations would run more smoothly. But that, my friends, is a post for another day.
photo provided by flickr user dbking
[...] there’s also a group of people who have legitimate complaints. They are rightly upset at poor customer service or disappointed in receiving a bad product. What do we do with them? How do we respond to their [...]
Leave your response!