Multi-tasking is...

How many people believe that multi-tasking is just a way to get more work out of a person without paying them more?...

...And are using full staffing only at the high sales volume periods to justify cutting back hours and placing more burdens on the individuals remaining at work?


Let's say there is a department in the company which requires 5 people to do the job correctly over a two shift period. Each shift functions with 2 people and the fifth person spans the transition from one shift to the other, covering lunch and coffee/smoking breaks and extra customer service.

Some wise executive has determined that expenses can be reduced and efficiency increased by laying off two employees and having each of the remaining employees take on a portion of the work of the layed off employees.

Their reasoning is that , say in a sales position, there are not customers every single second of the shift and therefore there are times when they are just "standing around doing nothing".

So "back up work", that is the chores which maintain the department (stocking, cleaning, preparation), can be done at these times.


While this might be true sometimes, the fact is that the executives making these decisions never actually go to or work in the department for any length of time, if at all, to determine if employees ever actually do "just stand around doing nothing"...and they don't verify whether this back-up work can be done any old time, or has a specific time line, which does in fact, keep the workers busy with no down time, ever.

The executives (who are eyeing the short term rewards of huge bonuses for creating efficiencies and cutting costs), put pressure on the managers and assistant managers (who also get rewarded) to push the workers in finding shortcuts or alternative means to get the work done.


While this may be effective in some departments, this method used in ready-to-eat food departments brings the department into marginally complying with Food Safety requirements. The work is aggressively inspected and documented multiple times a day, which adds a pressure to the work above the already stressful roles as Sales Associate, Cook or Baker, Cleaner, Stocker and Inventorian at the very least.

The reward to the worker is possibly a bonus, if these inspections have high marks, but that is rarely the case...Why? Is it not self-evident that there is a limit beyond which a certain amount of work can actually be done, well, if at all.

This concept is a perversion of a good idea, which at one time was labeled, "employee feedback to help make work more efficient and productive", because the powers that be never actually ask the workers what is a good idea and what isn't.

Workers today, considered Associates and not employees, are called Stakeholders, as if there were some kind of democratic participartion in the workings of the company, are in fact disposable factotums, desperate to hold on to any source of income in these hard times.

More on FACTOTUM and AUTOMATON later...