On Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:43:48 +0000, Cynic
wrote:
>On Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:45:33 +0000, MM wrote:
>
>
>>>It is only common sense if you work on the basis that prices are only
>>>ever created once for a given item.
>>
>>No, it's common sense the first, second, third, nth time, however many
>>prices an item goes through in its lifetime. Take Heinz beans. They
>>have been sold in British supermarkets for donkey's years, but the
>>price today is not the same as it was ten years ago. Each time a price
>>label needs to be placed the first time, or updated on subsequent
>>price changes, any store should provide the staff member with a list
>>of prices. If the list is WRONG, then that is due to carelessness.
>>Someone cocked up.
>
>Exactly. Haven't you *ever* made a mistake in your life?
Of course I have. And then I have been dealt with, even threatened
with the sack in once instance. It was a salutary lesson to take even
more care in future. Nowadays I expect no one can get the sack because
they'll scream "unfair dismissal".
> Have you
>*never* cocked up? Mistakes happen, it's a part of human nature. You
>read the number "32" and copy it as "23". You may only make such a
>mistake once in every 1000 numbers you copy - but that would equate to
>at least one pricing error in a supermarket that sells over 1000
>different products.
Well, surprise, surprise, ASDA, for example, have tightened up their
act no end. They used to be a major culprit, and in those days they
refunded the WHOLE price AND you got to keep the goods. Very generous.
I can even recall receiving a £2 gift voucher as a token of their
apology. And then head office must have said, "Well, it's a bit
ridiculous to be spending all this money unnecessarily when all we
need do is ensure our staff members do the job right," because now
ASDA pricing errors are far fewer than Tesco's.
>> They didn't make a mistake, they cocked up.
>
>And what is the difference between "cocking up" and "making a
>mistake"?
"making a mistake" sounds to me like it was beyond their control. It
wasn't really a mistake, but it just, kinda, happened. Well, it didn't
"kinda happen". It was a cock-up due to carelessness. What about that
plane that almost crashed in Hamburg recently, when the wing tip
actually struck the runway? Was that a mistake? Of course not! That
plane should never have been given landing clearance in such extreme
weather conditions. It was a cock-up of gigantic proportions.
>> Just
>>like today at T5. A very major SNAFU. Every wrong price label is a
>>SNAFU. It's common sense.
>
>No, it's *one* thing fouled up, not all.
>
>>>The FIRST time a price is put on the shelf for an item, I agree that
>>>it is very little more effort to put out a correct price than a wrong
>>>one.
>
>>Not: "very little more effort", but NO extra effort, not one iota.
>>Zilch extra. Just do it right first time. Airline pilots have to, else
>>people die. Oh, and tell Cynic you agree with me, okay?
>
>Perhaps in that case you could tell me why airlines waste all that
>money on checking and often double checking every important action?
>It's surely easier to check that a door is closed than to check that
>the price you have put on a shelf is correct. So perhaps you could
>explain why *3* different people check that a commercial aircraft has
>all its doors closed before it leaves the stand for departure? And
>that's in addition to door switches that bring up a warning in the
>cockpit should any door be unlatched. And even with those
>precautions, there are occasionally (*very* occasionally) cases of
>aircraft taking off with an unsecured door.
Ah, you now want me to treat seriously your comparison between
applying a shelf price label in a supermarket with checking the
aircraft doors before take-off. Yeah, riiiiigggghhhhtttt......
>If a professional pilot can make a mistake over a simple operation
>that puts his own life in danger, how can you possibly believe that a
>minimum wage teenage shelf-stacker is at all likely to do a boring job
>without making a single error?
Who said anything about teenagers or on minimum wage? You imply that
teenagers or those on minimum wage cannot be expected to do a proper
job. Not much point employing them, then, is there?
>>>But when prices change it is very easy to miss putting a new price on
>>>something (say you dropped one label without noticing, or one was
>>>stuck to the back of another you put out).
>
>>It is only easy when the staff member is being careless, a condition
>>that would render the employee unemployable in my store, if I had one.
>
>And how much salary would you offer your staff in return for
>completely error-free work? When you were working for a living
>(assuming that you ever did), do you believe that you should have been
>fired for any trivial mistake you made?
I do not see applying a wrong price label that favours the store as
trivial. Thousands of pounds are being stolen from shoppers' wallets
and purses every week due to wrong price labels and people not having
the time to check their receipts. And trivial is a matter of opinion.
A typo could be trivial in an internal report, but not when it appears
in an advertisement or a contract.
>>If you dropped the label without noticing, then you're being careless.
>>It is YOUR job to take care! The store is paying you to behave
>>properly and take every precaution to do the job you're paid to do -
>>which in this instance is affixing price labels to shelves. Hardly
>>rocket science, fot God's sake!
>
>If you are expecting staff to take that amount of care, you would have
>to pay them a *huge* salary. and allow them at least twice as long to
>complete every task they are given to do.
Again, you seem to believe that applying the correct label is orders
of magnitude more difficult than applying the wrong label. I say that
the effort is exactly the same, and therefore, why not do it right?
What's so hard to comprehend? Why continually favour the
lackadaisical, the sloppy, the don't care?
>>>In order to be sure this has not happened, you would need a second
>>>person going around with a list of all the changed prices, making sure
>>>that the new prices were all there.
>
>>No, you do NOT need a second person, for, based on that argument, who
>>would check the second person? You gonna send around a third person? A
>>fourth?
>
>If the consequences of a mistake are serious enough, yes, that's
>exactly what is done.
No wonder, then, that Britain is such an expensive place to live, if
we are such a bunch of unreliable workers that our every move has to
be monitored. Maybe you're thinking of CCTV and that it's a good
thing?
>If you do not know by now that it is *commonplace* for people to make
>mistakes, I have no idea which planet you have lived your life so far.
Your attitude is the reason why people are leaving the country in
large numbers.
MM |