Boss creates "Guess who I'm going to fire next" contest

William Ernst, owner of the QC Mart chain of stores headquartered in Bettendorf, Iowa, has lost a court case against an employee who claimed benefits after quitting. Ernst had created a contest that invited his employees to guess who among them would be fired next, and a cashier named Misty Shelsky quit. Ernst tried to get out of paying her benefits, saying that people who voluntarily leave their positions are not entitled to unemployment pay. Administrative Law Judge Susan D. Ackerman sided with Shelsky, calling the contest "egregious and deplorable."

New Contest – Guess The Next Cashier Who Will Be Fired!!!
To win our game, write on a piece of paper the name of the next cashier you believe will be fired. Write their name [the person who will be fired], today’s date, today’s time, and your name. Seal it in an envelope and give it to the manager to put in my envelope.
Here’s how the game will work: We are doubling our secret-shopper efforts, and your store will be visited during the day and at night several times a week. Secret shoppers will be looking for cashiers wearing a hat, talking on a cell phone, not wearing a QC Mart shirt, having someone hanging around/behind the counter, and/or a personal car parked by the pumps after 7 p.m., among other things.
If the name in your envelope has the right answer, you will win $10 CASH. Only one winner per firing unless there are multiple right answers with the exact same name, date, and time. Once we fire the person, we will open all the envelopes, award the prize, and start the contest again.
And no fair picking Mike Miller from (the Rockingham Road store). He was fired at around 11:30 a.m. today for wearing a hat and talking on his cell phone. Good luck!!!!!!!!!!

(via Lowering the Bar)

(Image: Ultimate Anal Douche Hygienic System easy to clean Rectal Syringe, Amazon)

Firing contest by boss leads employees to quit [desmoinesregister.com]

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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OldBrownSquirrel

Second prize is a set of steak knives!
- EH
  
  Third prize is I’m your father.
GeekMan

Wow, a whole $10. That’s the cherry on top of the douchecake.
http://twitter.com/ohfuckinreally awhellno

Power tripping.
- phisrow
  
  I’m pretty sure that this is closer to “Power drinking the used bong water in the hope that some psychoactive residues might be left there after even the option 0f scraping for resin has been exhausted” than “Power tripping”…
fredh

And I thought my last boss had serious problems. At least he never made it into a contest.
Donald Petersen

I gotta say, hellhole as the place must be to work in, and douchey as that boss inarguably is, the contest made me LOL. In a safe-remove, boy-am-I-glad-I-don’t-work-in-chain-retail-in-Bettendorf-Iowa kind of way.

I am reminded of a shift manager I worked for at a Pizza Hut in the late 80s. He was exactly the kind of boss who would have instituted this selfsame contest, had he the imagination to come up with it. I once saw him pick up a quarter that a customer had dropped on the floor. Pocketing it, he exclaimed “It f***in’ pays to work here, man!” Utterly made his day.
http://twitter.com/Surestick Adrien Murphy

I wonder if this wasn’t an attempt to get the employees to rat out their colleagues: “Wow! Five people think Frank will be the next to be fired, he must be doing something wrong so I’ll fire him!”
patrick dodds

CWAA.
LogrusZed

My two responses to this would be:

1) “Me you motherfucking prick. Now gimme ten bux.”

2) “How about you guess how many people pissed in your coffee today?”
ChicagoD

What a tool. Hey, Ernst, you know another way to approach this issue?

“Dear Cashiers, as you know, it is QC policy that you not (list things that would get people fired). You should know that we monitor this behavior, and treat infractions of these rules as grounds for immediate termination. Please work to avoid these behaviors. We do not want to terminate anyone for violating these simple rules.”

How hard was it to be honest and straightforward with your employees without being a sadist? Not very.
- xzzy
  
  Or maybe he could learn to cope with the fact that people being stuck in a menial low paying job are going to look for outlets. A more constructive message would be “I don’t care what you do when it’s quiet, as long as customers leave the store happy.”
  
  The turnover rate might even decline!
Jesse Fagan

Turnover is expensive. This guy is a moron.
4chr

You’re not exactly going to get content and attentive employees when you pay them minimum wage.
- ChicagoD
  
  It’s still OK to have expectations etc. After all, the people shopping there still deserve a decent experience. You just don’t have to be an a-hole sadist about it.
  - jetfx
    
    “It’s still OK to have expectations etc.”
    
    Yes, but even as you rephrased it, they’re not even reasonable expectations. Not only is it a boring minimum wage job, wearing a hat is grounds for termination! Why is it the less you get paid, the more bosses expect of you?
    - ChicagoD
      
      I am not going to be in a position to defend this tool, but not wearing a hat in a retail cashier position is . . . typical. Frankly, none of the offenses he listed strike me as outside the norm for retail positions. His means of presenting them is despicable.
      
      P.S. Believe me, the more you get paid, the less likely bosses are to be happy if you successfully avoid wearing a hat. Your sense of correlation is way off.
      - jetfx
        
        I can think of oodles of cashier positions where wearing a hat is required, albeit a specifically mandated one. But as others have pointed out, I don’t think most people notice, let alone care if the clerk is wearing a hat. But we’re quibbling over this triviality, but my wider point is that it is ridiculous to be fired for what is a triviality.
        
        I can’t quite make sense of your point about “the more you get paid, the less likely bosses are to be happy if you successfully avoid wearing a hat”, but I’ve found the more I’ve gotten paid the less bosses rode on your back about minor things. Working as a professional has been vastly less stressful and petty compared to retail, besides being more financially rewarding for me.
      - ChicagoD
        
        “but I’ve found the more I’ve gotten paid the less bosses rode on your back about minor things.”
        
        Yeah. That’s not what you said. You said “Why is it the less you get paid, the more bosses expect of you?” That is a very different proposition. I can follow a dress code and not talk on a cell phone with my eyes closed. Those are low expectations.
        
        This guy is a tool. I suspect he is a tool in his personal life, as well as his professional life. That being said, what is “trivial” in an employment situation is generally defined by the employer, and this tool set the bar at hats. That’s not too complicated, and not hard to comply with. Sheesh.
        
        Now I’m done, because I don’t really think I can say hate the messenger, meh about the message any other way.
      - slab99_99
        
        “You said “Why is it the less you get paid, the more bosses expect of you?” That is a very different proposition. I can follow a dress code and not talk on a cell phone with my eyes closed. Those are low expectations.”
        My experience is similar. It’s not that bosses expect more of lower paid people, it’s that they have to spell it out. For years, the dress code was “appropriate attire.” No one had to spell it out. Emulate your coworkers. Don’t dress like a bum. Now we need 50 page booklets because some people are too dense to figure it out for themselves.
      - TheHowl
        
        Exactly. One of the primary reasons that low-wage workers are and remain low-wage workers is that they lack the social capital and experience to tell them what is and is not appropriate in a work environment. So whereas a skilled worker could be given the instructions ‘dress and comport yourself appropriately,’ a low-skilled worker gets a fifty page booklet telling him/her not to use an iPod, not talk on the cell phone, and not to wear a ballcap while on the clock.
        
        Then when the micromanaging begins and the scanty checks come, the workers get resentful. Which causes petty lashing-out by the unwise, and the cycle continues–only this time with the managers thinking to themselves, ‘well, good thing I put that thing about ballcaps in the manual… look at this kid acting the fool on my dime!’
        
        If I had to start out again, I’d much rather have social capital and low technical skill than the reverse. In my experience, it’s a lot easier to instill specific technical skill than it is to instill a good strong dose of act-right.
Andrew Singleton

Yeeeaaaa the only reason he could remotely continue to have employees is due to the unemployment {situation… no. Problem… understatement. Crisis… don’t wanna scare people….. Frik.) Condition our country’s in.

but I’m gonna have to go with one of the above posters.’who’s gonna get fired? ME! Now gimme my money.’As for peeing in the boss’s coffee. Nah. Get more creative. I mean if you’re gonna have a douch for a boss (who apparently isn’t going to get fired from HIS position) and you can’t afford to outright walk…Have some fun with the thing.
Childe Roland

I can’t think of a better way to have employees who look like they’re working hard for the boss but who are actually working hard to screw the entire firm. Imagine the breakage and the shrinkage and the general nastiness a convenience store employee could create, if only by turning his or her back at appropriate times. I wouldn’t want to patronize these stores and get caught in that line of fire.
ridestowe

this is an idea a cokehead would have
http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb

I’ve heard this bait and switch many times anecdotally. Boss threatens to fire employee, argues. Employee goes home thinking they’ve been officially fired. Boss claims that the next day when the employee doesn’t show up for work, that’s the signal that they’ve quit.
http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb

Are you ready for democracy in the workplace yet, people? How many times do we have to see this or live through this before we’ll do something about it?
- ChicagoD
  
  Viva democracy, where the cashier who takes your money is talking on a cell phone while B.S.ing with his buddy who is just hanging around!
  
  What the hell is the matter with people? Nobody wants to shop in a store that doesn’t have rules like this. Nobody wants to shop in a store where the owner reminds people of rules this way. His presentation was way off. The rules themselves were typical.
  - Xof
    
    You know, in my half-century on earth, I cannot once recall entering a store and thinking, “I cannot shop here! The retail clerk is wearing a hat! Up with this I will not put!”
    - bcsizemo
      
      Neither have I, but I did work at a grocery store that would send you home if you didn’t have your appropriate colors on. And at one point it was bad enough that the management was keeping track of people being out of “uniform” while on duty and writing people up for it.
      
      It didn’t impede their ability to do their jobs, but sometimes it did reflect negatively on the store.
  - http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb
    
    Democracy isn’t just something that customers should have. I meant that ideally, hopefully, when a workplace is operated and managed by its workers (maybe by voting on policies or voting on representatives), then they would still have policies to fire slackers and to present good customer service, without taunting their fellow workers like this guy did. Like you said, his presentation was way off. I just meant that it’s a symptom of authoritarian workplaces, the status quo in the US right now.
    
    Any democratic workplace or co-op that voted to sit around talking on the phone and ignoring customers wouldn’t last very long. Workers would still be motivated to have a competitive business and good customer service. They wouldn’t necessarily preserve slackers and bad workers at all costs, the kind of stereotype we see batted around concerning unions.
bcsizemo

I agree with ChicagoD. I don’t want to shop in a store where the employees don’t care about their jobs. And I don’t care if it’s a shit tier job, fake it, that’s life sometimes. I think we need to bring back Home Economics, and update it to teach people about money, jobs, working in the real world, retail, managing their finances, ect… Might give the overall population some general respect for each other.
- Gilbert Wham
  
  Not feasible. If we had a lesson in schools that explained, really laid it out straight for all to see, the nitty-gritty of how the world actually works, and how you are going to have to battle, scrimp, save, compromise and eat shit just to stay alive and employed, our children would rise up and fucking kill us all.
4chr

No matter how typical the rules are, no matter how important customer wishes are, why would anyone give a damn about the state of a store that refuses to even pay them a livable wage? Why would anyone care about profit margins when it doesn’t influence their lives in any way?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  …why would anyone give a damn about the state of a store that refuses to even pay them a livable wage? Why would anyone care about profit margins when it doesn’t influence their lives in any way?
  
  I taught yoga classes for a couple of months at a national gym chain with exceptionally clueless managers. One of them told the teachers that we had to comply with a bunch of little rules or “his bonus would be smaller” if national management found out. I mentioned to another one that we didn’t have enough yoga mats for the number of students that we were getting, and he suggested that if I worked on increasing student numbers, they might consider buying some more mats as a reward. Like their bonuses or investment into their business are supposed to be motivations for me.
  
  I’m happy to report that their quaint management theories drove that facility to close.
- MythicalMe
  
  Um, because you choose to work there? Stores that don’t make profits don’t supply jobs for very long.
  
  You’re not entitled to a job. Employers hire and fire based on their needs. If you aren’t satisfied with your job enough to keep my customers satisfied, I don’t want you working for me. I work very hard to keep my business profitable. Sometimes I don’t make a “living wage”.
  - Navin_Johnson
    
    I work very hard to keep my business profitable.
    
    We’ll just have to take your word for that……
- ghostbear
  
  If you and millions of others are willing to pay substantially more for things everyone can get a livable wage for standing behind a counter and working a cash register.
  
  This is America, if you want a good wage, YOU have to get off your butt and make it happen. That might mean you may have to get two jobs for a while or conform to a dress code and do a job that might not be the best in the world. Maybe work your way through college. It is not just going to be handed to you as much as you may want it to.
  - blueelm
    
    Actually that is not a good way to make money. A good way to make money in America is to be born rich, barring that it’s good to go into white collar crime. If crime isn’t your thing, you can always be a con artist. Working two jobs is something low class people do. Working two jobs and going to school full time will result in your having a very poor degree from some community college and probably a lot of medical debt. Put the crack pipe down, bro. America is no place for dreams.
    
    And yeah, I’d rather live in Denmark, frankly. I think this place sucks donkey balls and I hate it.
  - Guest
    
    Ghost. I have a BS and over a decade of great projects and happy clients. I still can’t find an employer who treats an annual vacation request anything less than a personal attack on their universe.
    
    My girlfriend, unionized school teacher, M.Ed., has to fill out her vacation request forms in the color of ink preferred by the secretary of the superintendant.
    
    You point, that workers make bad assumptions about what work IS, well, it seems to me that that cart and that horse are interchangeable to some.
    
    Yeah, you can find terrible employees with a sense of entitlement, but it’s easier to find bosses with the same exact problems.
http://celesteagnes.blogspot.com/ Sekino

He sounds like most managers and bosses I’ve ever encountered (save a couple). They typically believed that everyone was as petty, dishonest and greedy as they were, which is probably why they had so little respect for others.
Guest

Fucking People.
Bad Juju

As Louis CK says, “Of course your job sucks. That’s why we gave it to you! ”

Stay in school, kids.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Gijs-Peetsold/100000380468783 Gijs Peetsold
  
  Yeah, stay in school. And take out a loan to pay for the tuition. Put yourself in so much debt so that the monthly payments force you to meekly accept the weird guess-who’s-gonna-get-fired-first-games your manager is organizing without even the option to walk out.
  - Navin_Johnson
    
    And don’t forget this fun fact school kids: college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007 while median family income rose 147 percent
    
    Enjoy your future of debt, low pay, and scarce jobs.
ccmask

This would be a great way to fire the manager. If everyone wrote the managers name, corporate could really surprise him at the end of the week.
- Guest
  
  would be better if they all turned in a copy of their new union cards
alfanovember

for-each employee { for ( hour = 0, hour -le 23, hour++) { for ( minute =0, minute -le 59, minute++) { write employee, date, time, my name }}}
blueelm

Also, whenever I shop at a store I remember being dirt poor, working two jobs, and putting myself through college. I remember the seething rage as assholes took the opportunity to get a little abuse in to make themselves feel higher on the food chain. I some times thought I might as well kill myself. I racked up about 8k in medical bills because I couldn’t afford insurance. I lost some teeth. And I hated my fucking job.

I think about that and I try to be nice to the people in the store because they’re probably dealing with a lot. I figure a lot of days they probably hate it. But the other option is to die, or watch your kids die… teeth rotting out, fevers, broken bones you never took them in for because they weren’t major ones. Yeah… fun stuff. So frankly, I think “man I’m glad I made it out of that mess and I hope you do too some day” and I think “it sure is sad that life is this way.” That’s about it. I’m not the kind of psychotic controlling freak who wants everyone to FEEL however it makes me happy to have them feel (even if it’s a lie) though… so what do I know?
AirPillo

What an idiot manager, everyone knows you have to go to Texas to treat employees that badly (it’s the official state sport).
SomeGuyNamedMark

I guess he took this whole class warfare thing literally. If he could’ve had them fighting in an arena he would have.
http://twitter.com/_whm w. m.

… am I the only person here that thinks, despite the actions of the manager, quitting your job should not entitle you to unemployment benefits?

the ruling from the judge makes it seem as though they are trying to punish the boss for being a dick, which, while perhaps morally appropriate, is not ethically, or legally appropriate.

or maybe I’m missing something
- donniebnyc
  
  From the story:
  “Administrative Law Judge Susan D. Ackerman sided with the workers,
  calling the contest “egregious and deplorable.” Shelsky was awarded
  unemployment benefits.”
  
  “The employer’s actions have clearly
  created a hostile work environment by suggesting its employees turn on
  each other for a minimal monetary prize,” Ackerman ruled. “This was an
  intolerable and detrimental work environment.”
  
  In this case “being a dick” created a “hostile work environment” which is illegal, and IMHO unethical.
- Navin_Johnson
  
  Yes you are.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    http://instantrimshot.com/
http://celesteagnes.blogspot.com/ Sekino

Funny that no matter how douchey and abusive an employer is shown to be, there are always people taking the opportunity to remind us that the average worker is lazy, stupid and unkempt, and probably somewhat deserves what’s coming to him/her for being too daft to find something better.

We have quite enough people reminding the world of how poor people are nasty and smell bad already. We promise we won’t forget, okay? But thank you for your vigilance.

@google-c5868c47252dbe2d7b51541d5f7b6f51:disqus W. M. – If an employer makes a work environment so noxious as to drive the employees to illness or quitting, they are not playing by the rules. When employers purposefully drive their employees to leave and expect no compensation at all, they are cheating a system that attempts to give workers a meager speck of financial safety. It is by no means (moral, ethical AND legal) fair game.

I’ve had a boss who unabashedly told us “I never fire people: I make them quit”. I’ve had countless colleagues ending up cooped in the bathroom in tears over verbal abuse and general, constant meanness. Most of them weren’t even bad employees, far from it (and many of them endured this treatment for years before being able to leave).
monitorhead

BUSTED!!

An Iowa judge sided with former convenience store workers whose former boss offered prizes to employees who could correctly guess who would be fired next.
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2011/10/04/UPI-NewsTrack-Quirks-in-the-News/UPI-45131317762000/#ixzz1ZweOAvJM