Archives for posts with tag: employees

The Parable of the Eggless Omelet

November 17, 2023 //
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Chef 1:- I just… I don’t think it’s fair (talking to Chef 2)

Kiki: Chef!

Kiki: Chef!

Chef 1: Yes, Kiki, what is that?

Kiki: A man on table six wants an eggless omelette. He wants an egg…

Chef 1: Kiki you can’t have an eggless omelette, can you?

Kiki: Why do we not have any?

Chef 1: No, they don’t exist, do they? Because there’s no… Breadsticks, what are they made of?

Kiki: Bread.

Chef 1: Bread, very good. OK, take away the bread, what are you left with?

Kiki: Sticks?

Chef 1: No, Kiki! (Sprinkles a few herbs on an empty plate) There you go, that’s an eggless omelet.

Kiki: Okay (takes plate)

Chef 1: No, don’t take the plate, Kiki, what are you doing? Please!

Chef 2: Kiki, just ask the nice man if he’d like his omelet made with whole eggs or just egg whites. (Kiki smiles and goes to leave)

Chef 2: You can leave the plate.

When I was first shown this scene from the British restaurant-based sitcom “Whites” I found it amusing like I’m sure most of you did. How we can laugh at how silly Kiki is being and how she lacks all common sense. And the scene is funny, but it reflects a real behavior that we see every day, admittedly pushed to extremes.

But this is an attitude that needs to change. Just like to scene where the security guard gets humiliated for not stopping the scruffy young man from entering the fancy building and not recognizing that he in-fact owns the building and is ultimately is the security guard’s employer. The poor guard is just doing his job. Just because you walk around like you own the building does not automatically mean you actually do. We’ve all seen the videos that prove you can get it almost anywhere if you are carrying a ladder. Employees, just like clients, can suffer from being of the loosing end of the curse of knowledge.

The curse of knowledge is where we humans can’t understand that others may not have the same life, education, and training as us and therefore may not know the same things. What is obvious and, in that most awful of phrases, “common sense” may not in fact be widely known or common sense. For more on my hatred of “common sense” you can read this post.

But yet we do this all the time. The client who does not know to vaccinate their new puppy. The coffee drinker who does not know that Starbucks calls its large “Venti” or a regular coffee an “Americano.” There is a whole video just about that too.

With employees a lack of knowledge is a teaching moment. Of course, it can be frustrating and if we find ourselves teaching the same thing over and over again we have a different problem, but we can’t criticize, or worse snap at, for a lack of knowledge – even when we think employees should have this knowledge. In any other environment, we would recognize this behavior for what it is; bullying.

Recognizing that teams need be able to express when they don’t know something helps to create a safe space for learning. Teachable moments should be embraced for what they are – a chance to get better, to improve. Its also just the decent thing do to. There can also be more going on than just not knowing something.

New employees, for example, don’t know the limits of their knowledge yet. So while they may not of heard of something does not mean that it does not exist. We don’t want them to guess – so employees ask. They need to praised for checking and confirming that what we think is obvious is actually not. We all need to be better about this. I for one know that I can be bad at this but, as with most things, recognizing when you have a problem is the first step in fixing it.

The Kiki’s of the world deserve that we try.

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Categories Leadership, Management, personal development, Staff Meeting Resources

Book Review: Predictably Irrational by Dr. Dan Ariely

December 3, 2022 //
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Why would we be offended if someone offered to pay us after we invited them to Thanksgiving dinner? What is the cost of zero, and why is it far more expensive than $0.01? Do we really need to tell our waiter our order in secret if we really want to feel that it is okay for us to have our first choice from the menu?

Subtitled; “The Hidden Forces that shape our Decisions,” Dr. Ariely’s superb book has the potential to change dramatically how we think about business and our personal lives.

With the use of subtle yet easily understood experimental data, Dr. Ariely exposes humans as often acting against our own interests due to societal or market norms and that we just do not understand our own personalities and the role that emotion plays in shaping decision making – spoiler its usually for the worse.

So why would we feel offended if someone offered to pay for Thanksgiving dinner? Dr. Ariely not only explains but also shows with examples and experiment data that we humans have social exchanges and market exchanges of behavior. Social exchanges we use with friends and family. They are the norms that govern daily life and allow us to bond with other humans. Market exchanges are, as they sound, the exchange of money for goods and services and also the money we receive in exchange for our labor in the form of our working lives. When one offers to pay for Thanksgiving dinner were mixing social norms with market norms. We are indicating that we are rejecting the social acceptance of those who may be friends or family in favor of an exchange that we could expect to have with a stranger. A commercial transaction. What becomes interesting in breaking these social norms is that we find it is difficult to go back. Trying to pay for Thanksgiving dinner may never get us invited back because a social exchange has been turned into a market exchange. Employers who do not have social exchanges with their employees may find that employees therefore treat the relationship as a purely market exchange and leave for an employer who offers a better market exchange – usually more money or better benefits.  This also explains why employers who do embrace a social exchange in their workplace culture become frustrated and angry when an employee uses only market norms in their decision-making process to leave.

Likewise, when companies use a social exchange to bond with clients they may find when they resort to a market exchange when it suits them – policy over the relationship with the client – they have unleashed a Pandora’s box of problems with someone they once may have considered a friend of the business. Business can’t have it both ways, and if we try to, we are storing up trouble for ourselves.

Debunking of personality testing, without mentioning personality testing, is in this book with a discussion of priming and setting expectations. There are also volumes of data showing that making something free rather than reducing a price – even if the reductions are the same, can make a dramatic difference in the uptake of an offer. Buy one get one free really does work!

There is also a highly disturbing chapter on the affect of sexual arousal and decision making and morality. While I will spare you the details here it is difficult as a guy to read this chapter without recognizing oneself and feeling ashamed of the implications. This chapter does not give guys and excuse; however, it should make us pause and understand that we have the capability to be highly irrational in the right circumstances.

And that is really the crux of the book.

By recognizing that we can be irrational beings and what triggers that irrationality, we can know ourselves better and make better decisions. It also allows us to spot irrationality in others and how that has come about.

I can’t recommend this book enough.

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Categories Books, Business, Customer Service, Leadership, Management, Marketing, personal development

Employee Theft Prevention Strategies Part Three: Inventory

June 23, 2018 //
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In this ongoing series we look at ways of preventing employee theft. In part one we looked a cash handling methods, in part two we looked at credit card theft, in this part we take a look at best practices for preventing theft from inventory, and in part four we look at time theft.

As with credit cards, and particularly cash, inventory control and theft prevention are a matter of sensible precautions, double checking, and never allowing any one person too much control. Video cameras are also a prerequisite for any kind of inventory theft protection. The deterrent factor alone makes them a worthy investment. It is important to consider placement with video cameras, however, and to consider this when placing items in storage that are more likely to be stolen.

inventory6

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Risks

Identifying the high-risk items that desirable to a thief is an important first step in any prevention strategy. What makes items desirable to a thief? High value, small size, and / or easy to sell or use themselves. In a veterinary practice, controlled substances would be at the top of this list for obvious reasons, but pet food and treats would also make the list as they are routine supplies for any pet owner. Any establishment that sells alcoholic beverages, needs to consider just how easy, and desirable, it is to steal them – particularly hard liquor. It is informative to walk around your local grocery store and check out the different levels of security in different items and then apply those to your own business. Alcohol, of course, has additional measures in place in a grocery store, but so do razor blades (due to their expense and small size) and movies (due to their small size and ease of resale.) High risk high value items should have significantly higher levels of security and scrutiny than other items. That means that only key people will have access. This will make things more complicated for their handling, but the alternative is no security at all.

Certain items are always at risk of theft due to their ubiquitous nature: toilet paper, stationary, and cleaning supplies. Keeping an eye on reorder quantities is really the only way to ensure that a problem with theft is not missed; however, just watching the cameras on the employee entrance/ exit can often be enough.

Businesses that have significant issues with employee theft, will often ask to look in employee bags before as they leave the premises. While this can seem overly intrusive, it is important that your employee handbook contains language to make this a possibility if required.

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Image courtesy of Pixabay

Ordering & Receiving

Ordering in any business needs to be controlled. The person that is responsible for ordering, should not be the same person who is responsible to receiving goods and ensuring that what was ordered has indeed arrived. In addition to having multiple people involved, there also has to be a paper trail. When an item is ordered, the order has to be logged through a purchase order record of some description. When the item arrives, it should be received by someone other than the person who ordered it, the packing slip should be signed off on (or a packing slip created if the goods did not come with one) and then forwarded to accounts payable.

The packing slip should be matched to the purchase order which it turn is then matched to invoice. When things are paid for by credit card, it should be indicated on the purchase order, and then the credit card bill should be reconciled against packing slips and purchase orders.

The above may seem over the top for most small businesses, but the question that has to be answered is what is to stop an employee ordering an item from a supplier, destroying any paperwork, and taking the item home? Is your accounts payable person, assuming that they are not the same person who has been ordering, going to be able to find that one uncounted for item in amongst everything that is ordered when a supplier’s statement comes in weeks later?

On a side note, it should be made abundantly clear to all involved with ordering and receiving that “free product” or “gifts” from suppliers belong to the business, not to whomever receives them. There is sometimes the impression that because items have not been ordered, or have been nominally given a $0.00 value, that they are free to anyone who wants them. This cannot be the culture in your business.

Items which arrive outside the hours when they can be received properly, and by the appropriate members of staff, should be locked away unless there are serious reasons why they should not be (items that need to be refrigerated for example.) This prevents well intentioned, but misguided attempts to “help” and also more nefarious outcomes. It also prevents the frustration of knowing that an item is in the building but being unable to find it due to it being put away somewhere other than where it should be.

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Image courtesy of Pixabay

Stock

In order to sell products, employees need to have access to those products. That does not mean; however, that all employees need access to all products, at all times. A limited amount of non-high risk non-high value items should be placed on employee accessible shelves. Your main stock should be under lock, key, and camera. The inventory manager, or a supervisor, should be the only one who moves stock from one location to another. For high-risk high-value items, senior members of staff should be the only persons who can have access, and they themselves should have a strict protocol (a log book at minimum) which they have to follow when retrieving an item.

inventory7

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Counting

Inventory has to be tracked. If you order 10 widgets and have 5 widgets in stock your inventory system should be able to tell you that after you have received your new widgets that, yes you can fill that order for 15 widgets.

The reality, of course, is rarely that simple. When it comes to inventory control you get out what you are prepared to put into it. An accurate inventory management system, where you can spot that five items are missing almost as soon as they are gone, only happens through hard work and effort. Good systems that are easy to use will work well, but they have to be maintained and repaired. Not just so that the system is correct, but so that the faith of employees, and managers, in the system is maintained.

High risk items should be counted once or twice a week. Discrepancies should be resolved or reported. All inventory items should be counted once or twice a year and the running count in the inventory control system reset. Constant shortages should be investigated as to whether it is shrinkage (theft), orders in process, or the mis-selling of items.

This level of effort put into inventory control can seem expensive and wasteful; however, you cannot track what you do not count. And you cannot know what is going on with inventory unless you count it.

inventory2

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Auditing

In addition to counting, there is another way to see if items are walking out of your premises and not being accounted for. At the beginning of the year you bought 100 fidget spinners. You look up the invoice from Fidget Spinner Inc. and confirm that you were billed and paid for 100 units. At the end of the year you have 10 fidget spinners on the shelf. You run a report from your sales software on how many fidget spinners you have sold. Hopefully, it says you have sold 90. But what if it says you sold 80?

The inventory control side of things says that there should only be 10 in stock, which there are, but you have not sold 90. The problem could have been in the number that were received originally from the supplier, or whomever received them, or someone with access to the inventory control system has manipulated the system to make it appear that 10 fidget spinners are not missing.

You’ll notice in the above example, that it does not rely on inventory management to find that there is a problem; but it does allow for the problem to be narrowed down. This can really only ever be used for spot checking, but it does provide a backup system to the general inventory control system.

inventory3

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Employee Sales

Sales of items to employees can be tricky to navigate from a theft prevention standpoint. An employee leaving the building with a bag of dog food from the vet’s office looks identical to an employee stealing a bag of dog food from the vet’s office. Having a strict protocol in place for sales of items to employees so that all items can be accounted for is essential. Do not allow employees to process their own transactions; there is just too much opportunity for issues to arise. All items should be billed for at full price and then a senior member of management should handle any discounts.

Inventory can be difficult at the best of times. Employee shrinkage; however, can be a serious problem and significant inventory controls will not only serve the needs of the business, but protect it from those should have its interests at heart.

Next week we will look at Time Theft.

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Categories Business, Management, Regulations, Theft, Veterinary

The Self-Reviewing Manager

April 1, 2017 //
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As a manager, you are never going to please everyone.

Some might even argue that if you do, you are not doing your job correctly. You will be called upon to discipline and even terminate employees, some of whom you might consider friends if you no longer had to manage them, and who may already consider you a friend. That is until you fire them – no friendship survives that.  Moreover, a portion of your job is to stick your head above the parapet wall and take the pot shots that people send your way: customers and employees alike. You may well take the wrap for decisions that other stakeholders, and even the courts, have made and the people you work with will almost certainly never know about the arguments that you have won to protect their interests.

If you are someone who values internal culture, like I am, then you have the added concern of trying to make any piece of feedback positive. Gone are the days, for the most part, of managers losing their tempers and yelling at the people the work with. I won’t say that I have never lost my temper at a member of staff but I have made sure to apologize afterwards and I have always felt that loosing one’s temper is counterproductive: If it actually hurts what I’ve trying to achieve then what is the point? Management is hard, we are all over worked, underappreciated, our hands are often tied, and the goal posts are always shifting. However, the rewards make it worth it: financial, recognition of your peers, and the sense of achievement when you see both people and businesses grow.

And then there are things like this:

“I loved the actual job here. Worked here for almost a year. If you could rise above petty back-stabbing and the fact people would be super nice to your face, and cut you down in a heartbeat behind your back, then it was a great job. Hospital chief administrator suffered from Little Big Man syndrome and needed to be avoided at all costs – unless you wanted your day ruined, as he was always incapable of saying anything nice, and preferred to berate – even if praise was his intention! Some of the doctors were difficult, but most were really great to work with. Overall, if you have thick skin, this was a good place to work – but no benefits other than an employee discount for vet services.”

Ouch.

Other than the obvious of “what else would you expect a terminated employee to say?” What else can be learned from this from a management perspective? What can I learn from this since I feature so prominently?

Well yes, I am short – well spotted. Not much I can do about that. I guess you could argue that as someone of limited stature I have to be additionally careful to not appear angry so as to not play into the stereotype. As noted above, this is actually in my own interests anyway but a helpful reminder that I need to live up to my own standards.

If I am to be avoided, then that is actually pretty difficult. I try very hard to check in with every employee on both shifts every day and I am obviously sorry they felt this way. I think the comment of being “incapable of saying anything nice, and preferred to berate” is a little harsh. We, as an employer and I personally, have put a number of programs in place to improve and celebrate employee recognition. However, I will admit, that I do need to praise more in person than I currently do. Most managers do suffer from this and it is probably one of the more difficult aspects of the job. It is particularly hard when you have an employee who is not doing anything particularly wrong, but also not doing anything particularly exceptional. Since the above quote is from an anonymous post it is difficult to know for sure anything about this former employee, but as a general takeaway I think this rings true.

A “reading between the lines” insight, and backed up by some feedback from former employees who are now friends (see I’m not all bad) is that there is perhaps a lack of trust at times. A feeling that I did not have the employee’s “back.” This is probably a feature of trying to make customer service central to what we do. If a customer complains about an employee or the service they delivered, unless the claim is outrageous, I will probably try to make to client happy. This can certainly be interpreted as taking the side of the customer instead of the employee. It shouldn’t – I’m trying to protect the business and therefore indirectly the employee. If I feel there is an issue to be addressed with the employee, I will address it separately; however, it is easy to see how this issue arises and perhaps I need to do a better job of dealing with this unintended tension.    

As a final note, it is interesting that this former employee felt that discounted vet services was all the benefits that were on offer. I would take away from this that I needed to do a better job of explaining the other things that formed our benefits package.   

I don’t want a lot of reviews like this – nobody does. But the same rules apply to bad reviews about yourself as to bad reviews about your business. They are an opportunity to get feedback that you would not otherwise be able to receive. And while anonymous former employee reviews are even more unfair than anonymous customer reviews, due to the legal issues involved, a little self-examination is not a bad thing. If nothing else, it hopefully made for an interesting blog post.

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Categories Business, Career Advice, Leadership, Management

Movie Review: Moneyball

January 28, 2017 //
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I have been reviewing books for a number of years now; however, movies have always been my passion and on occasion I have used movies in staff meetings for the accessibility of the message. I decided that it was time to share some of these.

 (Clicking on the image above will take you to Amazon where a tiny percentage goes to help my movie and book buying habit.)

 

Moneyball, based on the excellent book by Michael Lewis of the same name, follows the real life story of the Oakland A’s baseball team. In particular, Moneyball documents the Oakland A’s struggles of trying to be successful with a budget a mere fraction of their competitors. The realization of their manger, Billy Beane – played by Brad Pitt, that they either have to “adapt or die” is one that many businesses can relate to. The solution that Oakland A’s adopted was to look at the data about players, which informs hiring and firing, objectively rather than emotionally.

Looking at a problem from outside the box and understanding what a problem actually is, not what you have always thought it was, is a huge lesson for most managers. It is also one that is difficult to teach. However, the lesson of being prepared to do what others will not is one that many from the business world will be familiar with – or at least should be. Overcoming the objections, and down right obstructionist behavior, of those who have not bought into your ideas should also be familiar territory for most managers. The movie treats these issues with respect, and although there is an obvious “good guy / bad guy” dynamic, it is easy to overlook this and see the issues being discussed from both sides.

Since the publication of the book, the statistical approach to fields that have previously been lacking such analysis has become know by the colloquialism “Moneyball.” And although the initially baseball was dramatically changed by Billy Beane and the Moneyball approach, there are signs of it falling out of favor.

However, it would be a mistake to dismiss the book, or the movie, because of this change in the idea’s fortunes. Indeed it actually signals a misunderstanding of the limitations of the approach and of statistics in general. As is stated in the movie: “The first person through the wall always gets bloody.”

The movie does break some of its own rules for dramatic effect; however, these are minor sins given how excellent the movie is as a whole. Interestingly, the movie also has two of the best scenes I have ever seen about terminating an employee. New managers could do a lot worse than follow Brad Pitt’s advice on the matter that can be found in Chapter 8 at the 1:00:00 mark explaining the right and wrong ways to go about a termination. Chapter 10 at the 1:18:00 mark actually shows Jonah Hill”s character putting that advice to use and it is a highly accurate and realistic portrayal of how a termination should be done.

As a management tool, Moneyball is a great business story cloaked in a sports jacket. Both the good and the bad of analytics are on display here, as well as the difficulty of being a pioneer and trying to overcome entrenched ideas whose only validity is “that’s the way we have always done things.”

You may not like baseball, but this is a smart story, based on a smart book, about smart people. It also has the added advantage of being highly entertaining.

You could do a lot worse.

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Categories Books, Business, Leadership, Management, Movies

Learning to Live with Yelp

September 3, 2016 //
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By Mike Falconer

The most popular post to date on my site is: “Why I hate Yelp (and you should too!).”

I still do by the way; and everything is that post still stands today three years later; however, I have grown to accept it as part of the daily life of being in business and feel that, a few road bumps aside, I’ve made my peace with online reviews and even with Yelp.

That mighty sound a little contradictory, but the bottom line is that reviews are here to stay so we all have to deal with it.

“Scott, we have a Yelp problem. We keep getting these horrible reviews what can we do about it?”

” – Build a better product.”

Scott Stratten @unmarketing

There is no strategy or tip that I, or anyone else, can give you that will fix your business and your online reviews overnight (those that promise to do so are scamming you). If you are a horrible business the chances are you will have horrible reviews online.

Now you can write your own reviews, and risk the wrath of companies like Yelp or Google which are filled with people smarter than you or I (sorry it’s true) who spend a lot of time and energy trying to foil the attempts of those gaming their systems. If you are really unlucky you could also find yourself the subject of a FTC investigation and slapped with a serious fine. It has happened a few times already to those trying to buy or reward those for reviews (many thanks to he great Mike Blumenthal @mblumenthal for this awesome nugget of info and indeed for solidifying my thoughts on Yelp, and online reviews, in general) and expect it to happen a lot more when the government figures out how prevalent it is and how much money can be made. But why bother? It is simpler, easier, and better for your business to just fix the problems in the first place.

Think Yelp or Google (or whatever review site you feel tortures you on a regular basis) does not accurately reflect what your clients think of your business? Prove it! Survey your clients. Make it easy for them to complain and give you feedback. Have a policy to deal with complaints. And, of course, read, learn, and above all, reply to your reviews. If your survey results really are different from what you are seeing from the review sites then publish the data and be honest about what people were complaining about and what you are doing to fix it.

When I started reviewing my business’s clients what I found from the was that they wanted to respond. The feedback I got was overwhelmingly positive, and it allowed me to fix issues, even minor ones, quickly before they blew up online. It also provided real data about what problems we did have and where we were excelling.

A splash page with links to review sites helped make it easy for those who already reviewing us privately to review us in public. As a rule I and not a big fan of asking for reviews – particularly when companies just try to flood one channel. (400 reviews on Google and 10 on Yelp just makes you look shady.) However, a simple splash page with three or four links is tasteful and is the least spam-like way I have found and does not seem to offend anyone.

Unhappy clients will, of course, still happen. How you respond to them is all important, not just for the client, but your future clients who will read your response and see how you deal with complaints.

Apologize – it costs you nothing.

Try to resolve the issue – D’uh!

If you can’t resolve the issue – apologize again!

Do not get into a protracted fight online – would you rather be right or have an unhappy client, a bad review, and maybe worse? Genuinely apologize and try to make things right.

And never, never ever, send, say, or do anything that that you are not completely happy with being splashed all over the Internet. “If you take your review down we will give you your money back” means you care more about the bad review than the unhappy client. If the client deserves their money back – give them their money back!

I am a big fan of responding to even positive reviews – a simple thank you goes a long way. The interesting thing about responding to every review and trying to keep clients happy is that it is not just new clients that notice. Potential new employees use the tools available to them when researching their potential new employer. Those tools are Yelp and Google.

While I still hate Yelp – it really is a flawed product. It exists because customers used to basically be powerless. The balance may have shifted but I know at my business we try to solve issues, I know that we sometimes succeed and sometimes we fail. We are not perfect, but we have not stopped trying and I think even those that view us on Yelp can see it.

And I can live with that.

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Categories Business, Customer Service, Management, Marketing, Search, Uncategorized

In Defense of Being Nice

June 15, 2013 //
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There is a bad joke / semi serious statement amongst veterinary practice managers; “no good deed goes unpunished.” And while I see the reality in this, and have even said it few times, I ultimately do not subscribe to the point of view. What is wrong with being nice?

I get it, I really do, being nice is hard. But being polite and showing respect for your peers,  those you interact with, those who report to you and those you report to is not only the right thing to do, it is in your interest.

Since being a manager, and someone who hires and fires, I have always been shocked at those who felt that just not turning up for work, and refusing to communicate was an acceptable way to hand in one’s notice. Despite the obvious impoliteness and unprofessional behavior of leaving your co-workers in the lurch, there is the added inconsideration of those who feel at least partially responsibility for your well-being. Stories abound, and I have personal experience of, employees with limited family in serious trouble at home which is only discovered when an employer starts inquiring after their well-being after they fail to show up for work. I never even considered doing this, and I’ve seen this behavior from young and old so the generational clichés don’t offer any answers.

As I discussed in another post, the superstar employee who feels they are above the general rules of behavior in the workplace is another example of a failure to be nice. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for this kind of behavior and generally find it to be counterproductive – the exceptions being just that and not proving anything.

And then there is the Dunkin Doughnuts Lady…

The following video is pretty offensive but it does prove a point. A customer feeling that they have been wronged videos herself claiming free food from the day shift of a Dunkin Doughnuts  after she feels her receipt was not given to her in a timely manner the night before. While all the time informing anyone who will listen that she is filming the encounter, and that she is going to post it on Facebook, she delivers an avalanche of racial slurs, abuse, and is generally obnoxious. The employees, to their extreme credit, keep their cool, try to make the customer happy, and are professional throughout despite extreme provocation.

(WARNING: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS VERY OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE )

The story of the video however, does not end with the video. After being posted online last week it went viral, but not in the way that the original poster had hoped. A tirade of negative comments about the behavior of the customer led her to delete her Facebook account and one can only imagine the personal repercussions – the least of which is finding out that the majority of people do not think the way she does.

This incident also shows of the worst side of social media, where someone tries to leverage it for their own ends and as a shield for their own bad behavior or sense of being wronged. This can also be called the Yelp Effect. I am not a Yelp hater, but I do think it is a flawed system and one that rewards bad behavior from both businesses and customers with little recourse. The Better Business Bureau had its flaws but at least there was an attempt a resolution.

In the veterinary world, an often heard phrase is “you don’t care about animals” often paired with “it is all about the money.” Although uttered by people in difficult circumstances, and born out of frustration, it is still extremely hurtful for anyone who has choose to make their career working with animals and has caused more than a few sleepless nights for a lot of deeply caring people.

We all have difficult customers, employees, and colleagues – it is how we deal with them that counts and makes a difference from one business or organization to the next.  The bottom line is that doing the right thing, being polite, professional and, I guess for want of a better word nice, is the only way to behave for your interest and for everyone else. It is the only way to guarantee that things will not get worse.

And you never know, it might rub off on to someone else.

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Categories Business, Customer Service, Leadership, Management, Social Media, Veterinary