That guy: Climate Survey

You want a post? I got a post for ya'll right here.

Every year, my company conducts what is called the yearly Climate Survey. It's 51 multiple choice questions asking us how we feel about our managers productivness, and wether we like the new color scheme for the fucking bathrooms, or some shit. As you people may or may not know, I feel rather strongly about this company, and many of the decisions they've made have not been ones I would have made. So without further adeu, I present to you my copy and pasted response to the only actual question on the survey. Enjoy.

-That guy



What would you recommend to make FedEx Office a better place to work?

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Less corporate bullshit. Dallas is a corporate fucking clowncar. Its a fantastic trick the first time you see it, but after that, you realize its the same shit spewing forth over and over and over. For the sake of brevity, I'm only going to cover a few points.

1.
According to http://news.van.fedex.com/fedex_office, FedEx spent a mind boggling $891 MILLION dollars to rebrand FedEx Kinkos to FedEx Office to somehow get the message across that we offer both printing and shipping. Whoever was responsible for this terrible decision should be forced to stand outside in the current -12 degree temperature outside my store to sell fucking cookies and hot chocolate in an attempt to earn this astronomical sum back for the company. At the height of a recession, corporate FedEx decided that instead of sticking with a product label that everyone and their mother were familiar with (Kinkos), we should try to change it up on people to change their vision of the company. Just like Q-Tips, Kleenex, Coke, ChapStick, Band-Aids, Tylenol, Spam, Bubble Wrap, Taser, Jacuzzi, Rollerblades, Velcro, Frisbee, Clorox, and any of the other hundreds of products that are brand names synonymous with the products they cover, Kinkos changed to Office. Oh wait. Not a single one of those products changed their names to better represent what they are. BECAUSE THE NAME ALREADY REPRESENTS THE PRODUCT. The dumbshit corporate think team that pushed this fucking brilliant idea to strip people of recognition came at the best time possible, spending more money that I would have if i won the current Powerball lottery 17 TIMES. Not only was I forced to answer the inane question 'FedEx Office? Do you guys still make copies?' well into the hundreds of times a day, but the extreme cost of this extremely retarted manuver took many other things from me as well.

2. Just because corporate bigwigs think a rebrand is the answer to more and more people doing everything digitally and desperatly hanging on to a dying paper based industry does not mean I should suffer as well. While it is true I am an employee of this company, just because the powers that be wasted more money than I'll see in my lifetime, my 401k shouldn't be matched, me and my co-workers should be required to be janitors as well as copy monkeys, and inane buisness plans should be thrown at us every step of the way. Everyone is feeling the effects of the recession. When I don't get a bonus on my paycheck because our largest contract client only wants $70,000 worth of copies instead of the usual $80,000, my morale and self motivation do not go up, as seemed to be belived by corporate. No. I get pissed that I don't get a bonus. I'm sorry the corporate bottom line is messed up because we didn't make an aditional $10,000, but my bottom line is messed up as well, which means instead of spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, I get flash frozen mac-n-cheese with 'textured beef patty crumble.' I'm sorry the CFO doesn't get a new yacht. I'll sell more over priced flash drives to make sure it doesn't happen again.

3. The inane business practices I mentioned earlier. Clean and Bright was a pile of hippo shit. In order to make every store the same, we had to strip the store down, modify everything that had been in the store working as is, and build it back to a specific corporate guidline, in order to make everything uniform. In addition to my normal center, I cover shifts at 4 different centers in the city. I'm not even going to touch on the lack of staffing. At these 5 centers, with the Clean and Bright process, I should be able to navigate each store with my eyes closed. Instead, I can't find a fucking thing. Each store has an individual floorplan, layout, and specific services they do more of. This means when I work at another store, I am flying blind. I look like a fool stumbling around thinking everything should be in the same place, when I couldn't be more wrong. And how bout that Blue Book? Dictating what needed to be done every month for the center. Even kindly breaking it down by week. We had specific tasks, spots to sign off, and more and more and more shit to print and waste supplies on every month. This asshole idea floundered for a year or so and has finally fizzled out into the aptly titled 'New Publication: Team Member Edition.' It contains no more information than the emails my district mananger sends and the Front and Center Newsletter that comes through from our beloved CEO. The delicious catch is that we get to name the Publication, carving our fantastic wit into the memories of all team members to come, making us famous forver. I think it should remain 'New Publication' for the sole reason that upon the next brilliant brainstorming session corporate has, and the next brilliant concept that replaces the current New Publication, the name can stay the same, and no money gets wasted on designing a new product, and forcing it down our throats.

4. New machinery. This one is gonna be short. How about instead of changing every god-damned copier in the store, you simply replace the ancient ones we have, run to the ground, new parts going in twice a week with brand new versions of the same machine. No more learning curve. No stupendous change in quality for those customers foolish enough to think they're gonna get a reasonbly similar experience each visit.

5. $891 million dollars. Really? And now you're spending even more money to put up window signs because "Our customers feedback revealed that many still connect 'Kinko's' with copying and printing? How about catching yourself in the middle of this clusterfuck instead of slogging forward? Too late. How about next time when you want to spend $891 million dollars you give me and my co-workers more than a sickingly low 2% max raise? Better yet, start by NOT cutting salaried employees paychecks past a district level, and then spend the $891 million dollars to give us all 'Sorry you had to put up with our idiocy' bonuses so I don't have to work two jobs to make sure my girlfriend and I still have food to eat and a crappy overpriced apartment while she recovers from her double ankle surgery while Fred Smith makes $8.67 million a year.

To sum all of this up, since employee contributions are clearly getting through to you guys, I see a very bleak future for FedEx Office, and a better place to work would mean making it a very differernt place to work, and that might cost money, so forget it.

Good day.

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If you actually made it all the way through that, they do ask one other question after that one.

What do you most enjoy about working at FedEx Office?

My response?

Free coffee.



Thanks for reading.