Our proclivity to treat all “unskilled labor” as if the people doing them are trained monkeys is one of the reasons customer service in large retail stores is so often horrible.

If you treat your people like valuable members of society/your organization they will develop and improve on the actual skills that an unskilled job needs, like anticipating problems, knowing when an how to escalate issues, being warm to customers, being knowledgeable about the business and your products, and hustling when needed.

If your treat your people like disposable chattel then they’ll show up to punch a clock, check the boxes, and get out as soon as possible.

When comparing price to customer service, price wins every time.

We can say all we please that we want great customer service, but we vote with our wallets, and our wallets say "Save $5 per trip to interact with the trained monkeys."

Thus, we have Walmart.

>When comparing price to customer service, price wins every time.

This is very much a cultural problem that stems from treating service workers as subhuman and undeserving of a decent wage.

And the price difference is hardly as high as $5 per trip. Even places with really high minimum wages don't get that bad. It's more like a few extra cents, barely noticeable. Where the savings on payroll at the bottom are going is usually payroll further up the chain.

Some stores have much better customer service than others, like Whole Foods and Costco (just to cover both sides of the pricing models), and they seem to be doing all right.

Not true. I know several people that have good careers at WF and would be offended by the fact that you think they are unskilled.

Seasonal workers in the FCs literally get only 4 hours of training and are then filling orders. That's the pure definition of unskilled, and a far cry from a pastry chef at WF.

That's not what unskilled means in this context. It just means that they are easily replaceable and not specialized. You can have respect for people as individuals while recognizing that the job they do could be done by just about anybody (the definition of unskilled)

A pastry chef is unskilled?

How many employees at WF are pastry chefs and how many are in stocking, orders, cleaning, and manning the register?

I feel like at least half of the average grocery store staff I see are skilled: butchers, fishmongers, cheese and wine managers, and pasty or bakers. Proportion varies with class of grocery: BiLo obviously having fewer than WF.

There's the checkout counter and stock in the back, but I feel like the employed-during-the-day crew definitely has career opportunities.

Thank you for saying this. WF needs a half dozen unskilled workers to stock shelves, and about 6 dozen skilled laborers in the trades you mentioned. Do you think a 21-day dry-aged steak can be made by someone that just showed up during a high school job fair with zero training? Would you eat it?

It's not that pastry chef's are unskilled, but they are very easily replaceable. It's really difficult for culinary school grads to find work because of the influx.

Not true. It's very hard for restaurants to find skilled cooks nowadays because the salaries they are willing to pay are not high enough. When an artisanal pastry chef can open their own business, setup a Stripe account, and make six figure income, you know a restaurant only willing to pay $45K for a skilled chef is going to have a problem...

A pastry chef is to WF what an AWS engineer is to Amazon.

IIRC the definition of unskilled labor is one requiring less than a year of training.

What I mean is you don't necessarily need a college education to work in any of their departments. Not trying to be offensive

Oh well, you know a dozen people working at Whole Foods that have good careers, guess the literal thousands of people working in the stores, filling the shelves, being cashiers, etc., usually being the first ones to be thrown away, overworked and overpressured don't exist then. Only white collar jobs matter after all.

Enjoying your ivory tower I hope?

So the people stocking the shelves and operating the registers are all highly skilled labor?