Month: November 2024

The Situation

For this blog post, I think I am going to talk about my personal experience with a previous employer. I had originally been hired as a cashier at a popular thrift store. I was excited for this as I had just left a housekeeper position at a nearby hotel. After working at this thrift store for a couple months, I had wanted to move into a new position. Luckily, I was able to move to pricing shoes, rather than cashiering. Unfortunately, this opened the door for overworking. After I moved into the back, where everything is sorted and priced, I was tasked with sorting and pricing shoes, sizing and stocking clothing on the floor, stocking books, helping with incoming donations AND cashiering, all as needed. I was working five separate jobs for the price of one. On top of those five jobs, I also had to be available at the drop of a hat during my shift to help my manager and assistant manager with anything they needed. Lastly, they had introduced quotas we all had to meet. Imagine needing to meet a quota for four different jobs at once. It was a nightmare job.

If being overworked wasn’t enough, I got paid maybe $12/hr. It, overall, was not worth the time, effort or mental and physical exhaustion the jobs were putting me through. I started looking for a job and started reducing the amount of effort I put into my work. I’m not proud of it, but due to the quotas and constant stress from additional jobs needing done, I would price and put out shoes ridiculously high for a thrift store just to meet the quota so I could work on the other jobs needing done.

The Outcome

The entirety of this situation was absolutely motivated by compensation. Had I been paid for the effort I was putting in for those five jobs, I likely would have stayed longer. Additionally, I was getting irritated that I was tasked with so many different positions while my coworkers had one, maybe two, positions they had to focus on each day and they got paid more than I did. All of it was clear there was negative inequity occurring with myself and the positions I filled. I started with a decrease in output and ended with leaving the organization. It was such a bad experience that I swore I would never work for the company again unless it was my absolute only option.

Looking back, I haven’t taken many trainings. I can recount two instances, both positive and negative, that I think would be best to discuss for this blog.

Training 1: Group Video – Not Beneficial

In one of my previous jobs, about 5-ish years ago, I had worked at a well-known store. I barely remember what the training was about, which tells a lot about how impactful it was. I do remember we were called into the break room to watch a short 20-minute video on some sort of training topic pertaining to the company’s inner workings. After we completed the training, I believe we had to sign a paper saying we watched it and went on with our day. Looking back on it now, it was the absolute bare bones training a company could offer. If I can’t recall what the lesson was or even what the training was supposed to be about, it pretty much explains how poor it had gone. It lacked all of the core principles, as explained in the Week 6 – Lecture 2: Evaluating Training Effectiveness, needed to create a learning environment to promote the training and ensure employees retain the information and can use it later.

Training 2: Online Lessons – Beneficial

The second time that I have done a training, and remembered it, was actually quite recent. I had to complete multiple online training segments on sexual harassment and data/scam safety. I remember this a lot better due to it being recent and the specific videos and readings that were used. For the data safety, there were skits explaining the situation with two and three employees where one employee was like “Who cares about data safety” while the other goes into extreme detail on just how important data safety is and how to protect yourself from data attacks. When it came to the sexual harassment training, the training consisted of stories that had to do with the types of sexual harassment that could be present in a workplace and what to do in case you or someone you know has experienced sexual harassment. I found this was done very well as it was engaging and provided opportunities to test myself on what was covered with mini quizzes in the middle of each lesson.

Ultimately, I can definitely tell which business truly cares about their employees and customers well-being and which business just wants to meet quotas.

I completed the IAT test on skin color. Below is my results:

I went into the test believing I had no bias and preferred both dark-skinned people and light-skinned equally. According to the IAT, I suggest no automatic preferences to either skin tone and I was correct in my assumption on my implicit bias when it comes to skin color. I was thinking about choosing religion, I feel anyone and everyone can have differing religions and mixes of practices so I felt skin color would be the best option for this assignment as it is one of the major bias issues, specifically in the US (1),(2).

I understand how implicit bias can impact the reliability or validity of a selection process. I almost want to compare it with jury duty selections and how people are asked if there are any reasons why they cannot maintain an impartial opinion throughout the entirety of the case. If someone has a bias against a particular group of people, I feel they should not take part in the selection process as that can skew the decisions ultimately made. If anything, hiring processes should include multiple people of differing background, ethnicities, skin colors, etc., to allow for the most unbiased choice possible, but I understand that isn’t much of a possibility considering the amount of people that would have to be present for each interview. As explained in the week 5 – Lecture 4: Improving Interview Effectiveness this week, many interviewers have snap-judgements about the candidate within minutes of meeting the person. Having those differences in background and insight can be beneficial in hiring the correct people and possible reduce the risk of biased decisions being made, thus helping with the reliability and validity of an interview selection process.

(1): Anderson, M. (2023a, April 20). Most Americans say racial bias is a problem in the workplace. can Ai Help?. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/20/most-americans-say-racial-bias-is-a-problem-in-the-workplace-can-ai-help/

(2): Noe-Bustamante, L. (2021, November 4). Majority of Latinos say skin color impacts opportunity in America and shapes daily life. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2021/11/04/majority-of-latinos-say-skin-color-impacts-opportunity-in-america-and-shapes-daily-life/