[uujudy]

Originally Posted by Boomer

About that Snarl School thing, you are exactly right -- sort of. . . .

She was told that in their training, the tellers are instructed to spend the least amount of time possible in an exchange with the customers. In fact, she had the impression that they could be marked down on evaluations if they were too friendly. They were to give a robotic greeting and then get the job done. Human pleasantries were officially discouraged for the sake of speed and whatever else may have been the reason.

Boomer

Right on! This isn't limited only to banks. A friend who works at a local grocery store said that their transactions are timed, and if they're evaluated as "slow" it impacts their raises. The checkers who are the fastest get the highest raises. I didn't realize it impacted their performance reviews, so now I feel guilty about all the times I purposefully slowed waaaaay down when I thought they were trying to rush me. Yes, I'm guilty of doing that. Big time. Whenever 'they' start talking fast (from the grocery checker to the computer guru on the other end of the line) my contrariness kicks in and suddenly I can't find my credit card or I have trouble understanding their explanations and I need to have them repeated to me, and I just get slooower and slooooower. The faster they try to go, the sloooower I go. Now I feel guilty -- Not necessarily faster, just guiltier.

You would think that these companies would figure out that they're just shooting themselves in the foot with this bean-counting approach to customer service. It's too bad the employees are the ones who have to suffer for management's misguided decisions.