Why You Need To Be “On The Floor”

Being “on the floor” is a term which describes the ‘hands on’  Owner/CEO.   The person ‘in charge’ is ‘on the floor’, that means on the factory/shop/office floor.  That s/he knows what is going on first hand, or hires a trouble shooter that can be trusted to inform.

In many cases, whether a supermarket or on line publishing site; the Owner is NOT ‘on the floor’.   The owner hires managers and supervisors and assistant managers and assistant supervisors who work ‘on the floor.’

The mentality is; “I put them in charge.”

That is always stupid.   Stupid with a capital ‘S’.   In 99% of the cases the Manager/Supervisor is:

a) There for the money, couldn’t care less about the job
b) Needs a ‘good’ relationship with Staff
c) Couldn’t care less about the business, cares about the pay cheque
d) Will leave the job in a jiffy for a better Job.

In 1% of all cases, the Manager/Supervisor is:

a) a toady who sucks up to the Boss in return for benefits
b) will sell his mother for spare parts if the price is right
c) will abuse the power to get people who don’t comply to his/her fantasies fired.

If you notice 100% of all Managers/Supervisors are Not concerned with the business qua business.   They stop work as soon as the pay cheque ends.  They don’t sacrifice anything for the job.  If the business caught fire, they’d select a few things as they left.

This is real.

This is not the ancient days where people were ‘loyal’ to the company their worked for.  There is no reason to be.  The Boss is a distant figure, on the golf course, the work is endless and there are few bonuses or reasons to put more than eight hours, (or less) into the job.

Take a writing site; I’ll call it Nicerite.

The owner ‘hires’ a set of mods.  They get a cent or fraction thereof for each item they ‘mod’.  Most often they run the spell checkers or the plagiarism checkers, and if there aren’t many spelling/grammatical errors, no plagiarism, and the item matches the rules as to length, image, etc. the item goes through.

It is a shoulder shrug.

That the site is losing views or the quality is in the toilet is not noticed by the Owner, unless s/he physically is on site to be able to do some kind of ‘hands on’.

For example, in many situations, American English rules.  The person who uses English gets flagged…”What is with all those ‘U’s?”

In many situations a person might be quoting a statement which is attributed; “Today the New York Times reported that; (quote) and the plag checker flags it.

Without human intervention, perfectly good items are tossed.

So Writer comes to Nicerite and posts, and after a few run ins with the Mod or the A.I. or the Plag checker, leaves.  S/he may post vacuous pieces, but not the kind of hard stuff that a viewer would read.

If the Owner was more hands on then there would be an improvement.

For example, a chap whose English is poor uses the wrong words to describe something.  The word is spelled right, it can fit in the sentence, but it is wrong.    Take this sentence:

“In the appear Johnny Depp formed Pirate.”

It would pass a grammar check.  For it would take more than a cheap checker to catch the mistakes.

Further, on Nicerite, certain of the Mods have their friends who can do no wrong and their enemies who can do no right.

Pompous, one of the Mods hates Hardworker because she pointed out his errors in a particular item he wrote. He will never forgive her and so anything she writes is slapped down.

Pompous is played by a toesucker who claims she is dying of a disease, so he always promotes her rubbish.

Unless the Owner is reading the items, and calls Pompous to account, the site will go down, because the average person will glance at a front page and if there is nothing which attracts, move on.

The Owner should insure that the best items, those which catch the eye are on the front page so a viewer would be enticed.   But, the Owner is AWOL.

In businesses, one will find that many employees are also AWOL.   They are not where they should be and the Manager/Supervisor may ask and get some answer and not wanting to upset the worker, shrug.

People have walked out of shops when the clerk is on the phone or talking to another person, and shopped elsewhere.   A rude security guard can destroy a business.

The Manager ‘can’t talk’ to the Security, so it passes.

If you have a business be on the floor.