Professional Incompetence

Professional incompetence…..it permeates our society, and it drives me “abso-fucking-lutely” crazy. How DO these people get these jobs? More importantly, how do they KEEP them?
You know what I’m talking about, we encounter it every day. The people who are in positions of responsibility, and do not have a clue. Retail is a breeding ground for these incompetent souls, but we find them in all aspects of our daily lives. Often, they are right out of college, and put in positions of responsibility with little or no practical experience. Others find themselves promoted beyond their capabilities, by some other incompetent boob. They slip through the cracks, becoming experts at shirking responsibility for their decisions. Often times protected by higher ups that are afraid their own poor judgment in promoting these idiots will be discovered. These incompetents are placed in positions of leadership, when they have none. They are placed in positions that require common sense, when they have none. They are placed in positions that require skills they do not have. They make decisions that affect our lives, and I am getting sick of it!
I’m going to pick on CVS a bit here because personally, I think they represent the evil empire, but that is just my opinion. They are supposedly a customer service based organization, but instead, seem to be bent on maximizing profits, customers be damned. Mistakes have been made a number of times with my prescribed medications, I have been shorted pills on occasion, and generally receive poor customer service at their pharmacies. I consider walking out of a pharmacy with the wrong medication, a fairly serious issue that may have a direct affect on my well being, so therefore, they have my attention. The fact is though; they by no means have a monopoly on professional incompetence. You can pretty much walk into any major retail operation and find incompetence anywhere, from the lowest compensated employees, all the way up the ladder to top echelon executives. CVS recently enacted some new rules regarding how customer service is handled in their pharmacies. For instance, in those pharmacies that have drive up service, they have instituted a rule that service must be initiated within 21 seconds for drive-up customers, regardless of what you may be working on. In other words, a tech could be reviewing something with me, and have to put my concerns or questions on hold, to go address a customer who was unwilling, or unable, to walk in the pharmacy and pick-up their medication. Even though I was there first, even though my issue could be an issue of some importance, the staff person needs to interrupt what we are doing, to address this drive-up customer. Who dreamt up this little customer service gem? This is not a condemnation of the employee, they are simply trying to perform as directed by management, but come on…..talk about creating opportunities for mistakes to be made. Even more absurd is the “21” seconds. What the hell is THAT all about? Not 20 seconds, not 22 seconds, but 21 seconds. It is obvious to me, having done a lot of customer service work, that this is something cooked up by someone who has never worked in a high volume, customer service environment. I would bet they also pulled the “21 seconds” thing out of some group of statistics that realistically, don’t amount to squat. Obviously, some mid-level corporate schmuck came up with this misguided attempt at instituting a customer service level, and dressed it all up nice and pretty, with some meaningless numbers. YOU CANNOT DROP ONE CUSTOMER MID-STREAM TO GO TAKE CARE OF ANOTHER. ONE AT A TIME PEOPLE, ONE AT A TIME.
Same retail operation…..same store in fact. A 26-year-old pharmacist straight out of college with no managerial experience, and no real work experience to speak of assumes a position of authority because the lead pharmacist provides no leadership. The younger pharmacist makes sure everyone knows that they are running things as the lead pharmacist will do whatever this person asks. The lead does nothing to refute this. A work atmosphere of favoritism and intimidation comes about, in what is an already stressful environment. Another day, a District Manager comes in and starts yelling about firing someone, in front of customers, because a coat was hung up in the wrong area. Nice impression. That's the way to gain loyalty and impress the customers. After making a scene, the DM next heads up the road to another store and begins to make a scene over perceived shortcomings at that location. In this store however, the lead pharmacist exhibits some leadership and escorts the DM out of the store, because it was their busiest time of the day, and no one had time for the antics. The DM was told to come back at a less busy time. The DM climbed aboard the corporate broom and flew off to the next victim.
My point in all of this, is that these are all people in positions of authority (whether actual or perceived) and do not have a clue as to what to do, or how to behave.
There are no leadership skills exhibited (except by one of the lead pharmacists), no managerial skills, and no customer service skills. There is understandably, a high turn-over of employees, especially the lower paid people ("I don’t make enough to put up with this crap"). Because there is a line of people who are willing to back-fill even the lower paying jobs, this employee turnover is not given much attention. Little thought is given to the costs of training replacements. Little thought is given to increased productivity generated by employees who are not ruled by intimidation, or demoralized because they are not on the ‘favored’ list.
Incompetence is evident in so many aspects of our lives, and we accept it. Many persons have no clue how to manage people and/or processes, yet are in charge of both. There is a school of thought out there, which says you do not have to know something intimately in order to manage it. Knowing how to get people to perform to the best of their ability, knowing how to get results, knowing when to push and when to back off, using common sense, thinking out of the box, keeping everyone focused on a common goal, these are not qualities that can be learned. Either people have them or they don’t. Just because someone knows a process inside out, does not mean they have the ability to manage the process. Don’t put people in charge of things when they do not have the skills to manage. Metrics do not always show what’s going on. There is an old saying:“Figures can lie because liars can figure”.