Retail Musings: The Conference Call Concern
Part of my retail experience has been the tedium and misery of conference calls. In this meerkat’s view, conference calls are a waste of everyone’s time. The information that we’re expected to run through with regional managers is already available to them, so why would we be going through it all, and in a semi-public method that can put you on the spot?
The process also takes ages. With regions compiling dozens of showrooms, you could spend ages on hold, listening to what is effectively the same conversation over and over, unless you are fortunate enough to go first, so to speak. This drags the whole process out to a ridiculous degree. Granted, in my current workplace there isn’t a lot going on so it’s not a massive chore to sit on the phone, but there’s always something else to do, and I could do without wasting time waiting to go over the store’s figures. It doesn’t particularly help that I get a bit anxious over the whole affair as well. I feel put on the spot in these calls.
In previous jobs, the expectations around conference calls were utterly absurd. One of the last area managers I worked with during my office supplies days had the unreasonable and unrealistic belief that whilst trying to run a busy environment as a harried, unsupported team leader (said area manager failed to offer much in the way of support), including manning the tiles and serving customers, that I should also be on conference calls. Fine. Time for some malicious compliance. I was on the calls, whilst on the tills, so I often had to dip out to serve customers. What’s more important, faffing around with calls, or putting money in the coffers?
Unfortunately, some – certainly not all, but some – regional managers fail to live in the real world. They only see things in terms of spreadsheets and numbers. Human beings, under strain and pressure, trying to do their jobs with increasingly limited resources? Why would they waste their time considering such mundane details?
Don’t get me wrong, there will be times when a conference call is easier than making individual calls to showrooms, and easier than emails. On most occasions though, they are simply a ball-ache.
