carpediemracing 

I'm a believer in trying to fix things from within first, and I've tried, for many years. I would log tickets in the system to report broken things (via the help desk), which is the standard operating procedure. But it can take months, or, in the case of a few things, it's been 2 years with no resolution.

So, for example, the website for the location where I worked said we closed at 8 (all our sister stores closed at 7). We really closed at 7. They updated a few of their websites but they missed one. We consistently got people calling us at 6:50PM saying they had a flat and can we please fix it before we close at 8. I opened a few help desk tickets, but the response was the same - the website is run by someone else. One woman broke down on the phone, crying, etc. It was horrible, but I had no techs, and so I couldn't help her out.

That night, after we closed, I sat in the office and dialed every internal and external help number I could find, on the store's four lines. While I was on hold I submitted the "contact webmaster" forms repeatedly because I know they generate a trouble ticket for each one. I probably submitted 100 forms before I got a hold of anyone on the phone (it was something like 9 PM by then - I was getting voicemail things so trying to get someone live so just hitting buttons and seeing if the system would accidentally connect me to someone).

Eventually I got through to someone - in a sister company's credit card department (because, you know, it's important to have people be able to use their credit cards). I told them I was trying to find a contact for the website. And the helpful soul she was, she escalated to her supervisor, etc, and I got a hold of someone. They promised to escalate to the right people tomorrow when corporate opened. That was all I could do.

I went home.

The next day, as soon as I came in, the store manager asked me if I'd called someone last night about the website. I told him briefly what happened. He told me to check the store email.

There was this HUGE email chain where a lot of corporate types were emailing each other about the gazillion help desk tickets opened the prior night. Somewhere in there, in all caps, someone wrote "HE'S ONE OF US!!!!!".

Once they figured out I was an employee, they figured out who I was (easy.- I was calling for one store and there were only six or seven of us that worked up front). Then they absolutely hammered the area manager (who is in charge of 10 stores so maybe close to 200 people). "You have to keep your people in line." blah blah blah

So he came to me and told me that he had gotten a lot of heat and that next time, just text/call him.

I pointed out that the website hours, which were wrong for 9 months, for at least 3 calls to the help desk, was corrected by the time I got into the store that morning.

He admitted that that was the case - apparently the credit card company supervisor person only had the top level people in corporate, so they escalated to someone that never got their hands dirty with this kind of stuff, and everyone got really mad at corporate, as evidenced by the email chain.

Fast forward a few years. The area manager knows I'm not afraid to use the system. I escalate things to him, he generally takes care of them.

We have plastic face sleeves that hold the work orders, keys, small parts, stuff the customer wanted us to save, etc. They get pretty beat up but they last a year or so. The new batches we got lasted maybe 2 weeks top, some would sort of explode after one or two uses. The clear plastic part was super thin, super fragile, so if you put anything other than paper in the sleeve (like a car key) the clear plastic fragmented. Like you get a new sleeve, put the work order in, put in a sort of big wad of keys, and the plastic just split and the keys dropped to the floor. It was horrible.

So like a good boy I contacted the area manager. Asked him a bit sarcastically if corporate is making more money off the stores since they're selling them new sleeves every 2 weeks instead of every 12 months. He told me he'd look into it.

Maybe a week goes by. "Aki, call for you."
"Hi this is Aki"
"Hi, I'm Whoever, director of sales at Dow Corning (or wherever, it was something like that). We produce the work sleeves. I was told there was a problem with them?"

hahahaha Apparently he was in charge of the account for 2200 stores, so if someone complained to him, he had to handle it. So I sent him pictures (I saved the last few weeks worth, maybe 20 or 30 work sleeves, usually enough to last a solid year). That was maybe a year ago now? Maybe 9 months? Haven't heard back.

Anyway, I told the area manager that there are so many things broken in the company, so many broken steps in the point of sale system, that someone at the ground level has to be involved. You pinpoint problems, fix them, and move to the next problem. Ideally such a position would be successful enough to eliminate itself.

So I asked him if there was some kind of position like a "problem assassin" who would focus on the small but significant issues. If we have 2200 stores, 30-60 work orders per day per store, and you make maybe 1 or 2 changes on half the tickets, and each change requires 6 or 8 unnecessary overrides (like VIN number)... that's a LOT of wasted time. Or the online scheduler that can't figure out if a store if available or not. Can't put higher weight rated tires on a car (so if a car needs tires rated 98 for weight, and we have a tire that is 99 rated, the system won't allow you to put them on the car without doing some unofficial work arounds).

He laughed. "Aki, if there was someone like that, he'd basically be telling everyone that they're failing at one part of their job. No one at corporate would ever approve of a job like that, because that person will highlight every person's failures".

So, yeah. No.