So Sunday night, I’m all psyched up – Mars is supposed to be the closest to Earth that it’s ever been. At 12:30a.m Monday morning, I run out onto my balcony, where it’s supposed to be right next to the moon and I see…the moon. How disappointing.
Then yesterday I learn from the good folks at Snopes that this is an urban legend that goes around every August.
Not only that, but Mars getting close to Earth isn’t even a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence: it happens about every 15 years. Last time was in August 2003!
How sad.
So I’m probably in for a talking to at my night job…
Yesterday the Ottawa Citizen ran a piece on call centres (I’m quoted in it about the horrid nature of the work) but more interesting was this companion piece on employee turn-over.
The article cites a study that claims turn-over rates at companies are directly linked to how much power employees have.
Workers who are heavily monitored are less likely to stay. I’d never thought about this before, but it’s true. After reading it, I realized my biggest complaint about working in a call centre is the amount of scrutiny I’m under when I’d figure that after a year, my supervisors would know I can be trusted to do my job.
But no, instead of sitting there and letting me work, I have to deal with being lectured about having a closed bottle of coke on my desk (company regulations do forbid drinking anything but water while at our desks, but the bottle was closed and I was clearly NOT drinking from it.)
That’s just one example. I’ve have other menial jobs like delivering pizzas and door-to-door sales that I hated less and I realize now it’s because of how much freedom I was given. If the restaurant I delivered for had say, stuck a GPS tracker in my car then had the manager critique my choice of delivery routes, there would’ve been a problem.
So in a nutshell to businesses: don’t hire everyone who walks in off the street, train the people you do hire well and turn them loose. Most of us will perform quite well with limited supervision, possibly better and now there’s research to prove it’ll help retention rates, too.
Published on
August 12, 2007 in
musings.
One of the rules of blog writing is to never write posts apologizing for not posting more often…therefore…I make no apologies.
However, since I’ve recently scored myself a regular gig writing about blogging, I suppose I should make an effort to do some myself. As they say, “write what you know.”