The
summer after my freshman year I worked in a textbook warehouse as a warehouse associate.
For the first week on the job, my sole responsibility was to stand near a conveyor
belt and take totes with books off the line and sort the totes by the colored
labels on them. This was at best mind numbing and monotonous, but it had to be
done. Because this was early in the summer, the company was solely focused on
buying used books to resell in the fall, so everyday hundreds of new books would
be brought into the warehouse. The totes I took off would be picked up by other
workers and the books inside would be placed in their appropriate location in
the warehouse. This job, at least in my opinion, was far superior because it
allowed you to walk around all day rather than being stuck along a conveyor
belt for eight hours a day. However, after about a week and a half working the
line, I was trained on the technology and began working as one of the people
who put books away.
I
enjoyed this work far more, but taking this job meant that my performance would
be tracked daily. Because I scanned every tote I put away, the company now had
a direct measurement of exactly how much work I did every day. Without fail, every
morning there was list of all the employee ID’s posted and people who met their
quota were highlighted green and those who didn’t were highlighted pink. On top
of that they posted your weekly and monthly averages and highlighted those as
well. I wasn’t exactly sure what happened if you consistently didn’t meet your quota
because there was no “piece rate” policy, but nevertheless I was sure I wanted
to meet my quota every day. As I learned the layout of the warehouse and slowly
got faster at putting books away, my production started below the quota and
eventually reached the goal. However, the more I learned about the system and
worked with other employees, the more I saw chances for opportunistic behavior.
When I was first hired it was clear that all of the
summer workers were used as a buffer. The textbook industry clearly has a peak beginning
in summer when students sell their books and at the ending in the fall when
students are buying their books. Part of the intake process involved choosing an
end date or working until you are let go when the peak textbook season passes.
Because there is a clear and eventual end to the work, many people acted
opportunistic. When I was putting books away, I noticed that towards the end of
the day productivity among my coworkers began to fall off. Now this could just
be seen as people getting worn out after a long day, but the drop off was so
clear to me that I figured it had to be something else. Eventually I learned
that after people met their quota, they had no real reason to keep working.
There was no bonus for exceeding the quota and the fact that this is clearly
temporary work, meant that most people slacked off as soon as their quota was
hit or about to be hit. Although the quotas were being hit, they could have
been exceeded if the majority of workers didn’t sandbag. I could have easily done
the same but, I wanted to be one of the top performers and always have one of
the highest performances. This was my first job and I truly wanted to succeed and
becoming less productive towards the end of the day seemed to make the days
drag, so I always worked just as hard regardless of the quota. I was also worried
I would be let go if I slacked off; however, looking back at it is clear that
the company would be resistant to fire someone because they need workers during
the peak season, and all the new hires were going to let go eventually.
However, there were others who also didn’t act opportunistically
and most of these other workers had one thing in common. Although most of the
workers were temp workers and were comprised mostly of high school and college students,
there were a handful of full-time warehouse associates. These full-time employees
were older and worked for the company for at least a few years, and, from what
I saw, they never acted opportunistically. You could generalize and say older
people are more ethical and that’s why they didn’t act opportunistically, but I
believe it’s because they had more to lose. Unlike the temporary workers, this was
there way of making a living and they wouldn’t want to risk losing it. They have
much more to lose and frankly taking it easy for an hour or so a day isn’t
worth the risk. From my experience, people act more opportunistically when they
have an easy the opportunity to and when they don’t have much to lose. And for
most of the workers in the warehouse; both were true.
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ReplyDeleteUnlike in comments on other students, I will remark here from the bottom up in your post. Given the nature of your experience, the remark you made in the last paragraph follows. But it is at least conceivable that the that payoff from acting opportunistically might be quite big, perhaps even humongous. So on a cost-benefit calculation it clearly acting opportunistically clearly wins. But on the ethics of the matter, it's the wrong thing to do so the person doesn't do it. I have in mind, in particular, a very famous whistle blower story depicted in the movie The Insider. Big Tobacco was putting addictive ingredients into their cigarettes and a senior chemist and VP in company knew about it and blew the whistle, violating a non-disclosure agreement and therefore forfeiting a huge severance package. But the public had a right to know about this.
ReplyDeleteGiven that story, when you talked about the permanent employees, it would have been good if you had given something about their earnings and if you though they got any pay based on seniority. Standard theory in the labor market says labor gets paid its opportunity wage (what can be earned elsewhere) if what is being supplied is homogeneous labor and not specialized by specific human capital. That's what it sounded like here, though maybe the permanent workers had some skills that were valuable the rest of the year which you didn't witness. The point is that whether they were afraid of losing their jobs, as you said, would depend on whether they were earning a wage premium of some sort.
As to the summer workers slowing down after they had met their quotas, two questions come to mind. One is about your saying that they worked full out till the quota and then slowed down substantially after that. What about working say at 3/4 speed for the full day? It sounds like you didn't observe that. Can you explain why? The other question is how the quota was determined. If there was took much slack by the summer workers, why not raise the quota? Would doing so actually raise production or not?
I don't really know much about the compensation of the full time workers, but I think it's fairly safe to assume they weren't paid amazing. Even if they were paid at market rate and could find another job with similar pay, I still feel as though the cost in time and in effort discouraged them from acting opportunistically, at least slightly.
ReplyDeleteAs for the summer workers slowing down, it's possible certain workers who I assumed weren't acting opportunistically were just working slower throughout the day instead of slacking off. Because it was a large warehouse and I couldn't accurately judge their effort, I can't say for sure if they did or not.
Similar to the pay, I'm not sure how the quota was determined. However I could see management being hesitant to raising the quota because if the quota were too high workers could rush and not do the job to their fullest abilities(eg not checking the number of books in each tote, accidentally miss placing books etc). Even though in theory raising the quota could improve productivity, hiring additional temporary minimum wage worker is probably more cost effective.