Corporate America

Why are there so many satires about corporate America?  Because they do the stupidest shit in the world.  It's unbelievable what they come up with to limit a locations ability to provide the customer service that 'THEY' say is of their utmost priority.

 

Here's a perfect specific example.  I got a call today for a client who purchased a few items on credit.  She has run into some hard times and is unable to continue with the contract, even though she has paid for more than half of the items.  Failure to pay another month will result in a cancellation and she will receive a certificate of credit that will allow her to repurchase those items at today's cost within a year.

 

What we used to do in these situations is just apply the amount paid in to the items used and then cancel the additional items resulting in a zero balance.  This way the customer protects their cost protection and what they paid in.  They are happy and so are we.

 

Now I've been told that even though we can do it we are not given the local authority to do it regardless of the situation.  For no other reason than to clean up the paperwork for the auditors when they come through.  It's just insane, the reality is, according to the contract if we don't take advantage of this opportunity to secure her equity she could cancel the contract and ask for her money back which we would be obligated to give her according to our own contract and finance law. 

 

This is bullshit, the way we are set up we intentionally piss off the families we serve and offer no real reason for doing so.

SIM Card blew up my Blackberry

I have a gripe.

 

One month ago Cingular wireless in their infinite wisdom decided that I needed a new SIM card.  They mailed it to me and sent me text messages repeatedly to change it.  I ignored their constant abuse of their text message system until one day I got the message that it was required to change the SIM card followed by immediately loosing my signal for all calls and text messaging.  The damn phone just went dead.

 

Upset I brought my SIM card down and had a representative change out the card (I would have done it myself but I wanted them to make sure everything would be just the same).  The phone started to work again but within 2 days it was dropping calls within 30 seconds and started getting sporadic service.  I took it back and had the SIM card change again with the same results, within 2 days my phone no longer worked.  A third time had the same results except now the phone has TOTAL FAILURE.  No signal, no service no exceptions it is now a worthless piece of shit.

 

A phone call to Cingular CS and Tech support was unhelpful.  They said that it was a hardware issue and no way that the SIM card could have done that.  I think it's BS.  I am 2 months away from the end of my contract and what better way to get me to sign up for two more years than to blow up my phone just 60 days away from the end of my contract.  Knowing that I would not want to go without a phone for 60 days and that I wouldn't want to pay the huge cancellation fee I would be forced to renew with them AND buy a new blackberry to continue the service.

 

NOPE AIN'T going to do it.  If anyone with a similar problem sees this website let me know.

You can't live without protection

You know the interesting thing about being a funeral director is that everyone assumes that your job is about dealing with the dead and miserable. They assume that everyone you deal with is in a very sad state of mind. This couldn't be further from the truth.

Certainly there are a portion of the families that I serve whome come in in despair and grief, but that is not the norm. Most people have time to accept the fact that someone will die.
In today's society we have pills, and surgeries and laws that protect our weak and fragile bodies. From helmet laws to the newest treatments in chemotherapy few people every die quickly or tradjically. Especially in the US where 8 out of every 10 laws seem to be to protect us from death or injury whether it be California's helmet law or seatbelt laws that have now been adopted nationally.

More and more restrictions are being placed on people to 'protect' us from premature death, extended medical stays, injuries, or even discomfort. Of course this is all at the blame of the attorney's (evil beasts see previous blog), and their ever growing hunger to sue companies who cause even the remotest amount of discomfort throught the mass distribution of a product or service, regardless of the opposing benefits.

We can't even get drugs approved in America until long after Europe and Canada because of our ever increasingly difficult FDA process. Many car companies are excluded from the US market because they are required to crash test an Obscene number of cars each year just to offer a car in the US. And if they do get the opportunity to get through the process the car will cost double or triple what it could have been purchased for in Europe.

OOPS out of control again, enough rant for one day.....

Money Changes Everything

You've heard it before, you'll hear it again: Money Changes Everything. In this story it's the fastest path to screwing up a sales department.

If I haven't said it before my job is a little different than most. 1st of all I am a Funeral Director, the least of all thought of positions on the college enrollment forms. The 3rd most likely profession to result in suicide, right behind Attorneys (lying, cheatin, bastards), and Dentists. Interestingly enough the 4th most likely is Embalmers (Note same as Funeral directors). But the second part of my job is a Pre-Planning counselor. I've written before on the importance of pre-planning and I truly believe that people should do this, but in the end most of my compensation comes from the selling of pre-need.

About 3 months ago our company in their infinite wisdom decided to change our compensation plan and make it more heavily weighted towards pre-need sales. Before we were paid a good hourly rate to be a funeral director and then compensated on bonus for exceeding certain 'Gates' or pre-need targets. Worked fine I would say it helped balance the 'Service' side of our business against the 'Sales' side of our business, and I am fortunate to work with a group of individuals who truly put the Service before the Sale which is why they are so successful. I

In an effort to increase sales and lower costs they decided to incent our group to sell more by lowering the hourly wage up to 1/3 and increasing the bonus for the top tiers of our compensation plan. And so far it has done nothing but fail. The people in the middle who felt their personal wages were targeted just got upset which depleted their energy and enthusiasm, yes even in a mortuary you need energy and enthusiasm to sell, and the people at the bottom just feared for their ability to pay the bills. And thusly we are all in a position now top, middle and bottom of fearing for our jobs. What a GREAT PLAN!

This lead me to think this morning that there is NEVER a good way to change a comp plan for a sales team. Once established it doesn't matter what you do you will always end up with less sales for a while, at least. Let's say for instance that you increase compensation, well the likely result is that you will sell more of that product for a while, but soon the salespeople will settle back into their income comfort zone, and only sell enough to get their bills taken care of. If you lower compensation you will destroy enthusiasm and loyalty and loose people (most likely your best) .

Every comp change must be looked at long term to get through for the sole purpose of necessitating a cost issue, changing comp plans for the purpose of increasing sales will always fail.

The Importance of Pre-Planning

OK,

Granted I have been helping families pre-plan for the last 13 years so I may some pre-determined opinion on the subject, but today most families have pre-planned some or all of their arrangements years before the thought of a death has even occurred. It's rare that a family walks in and needs to make all their arrangements while having no direction or basic start in mind.

This weekend, however, I met with one of those families and when this occurs it reminds me of the importance of pre-planning. They had nothing and their mother 64 years old just passed away. She had been ill and it wasn't of any real suprise when she passed away, but as always it was still devastating to the family.

With no knowledge of where to turn the HOSPITAL made the first decision for them by choosing the funeral home that would pick their mother up at the hospital. This must occur within 4 hours of the death at most hospitals. They later decided not to use that mortuary and incurred additional expense for not knowing where to turn.

It's taken 4 days to complete all the decisions for the family. Changing plans and locations within the park several times. All of which could have been done by taking some short time for pre-planning. Not only would they have not had to make all these decision the challenge the family had figuring out the finances would have also been relieved.

I don't care where you go, or what type of arrangements you want to have for yourself or your family take some time and get the pre-arrangements in place it's the EASIEST way to save money of Funeral/Cemetery/Cremation arrangements. Just try and choose a place that has a good like for like relocation benefit. And a 1/2 a dozen other things that are good for you but I don't want to get into recommending anything or anybody specifically.

Have a great day.

People with letters after their name are crooks

I have determined that people with a Degree on the wall feel they have the right to rip people off!

Most of the time you hear how important it is to have good advisors. This is absolutely true, unfortunately many, myself included, take this to believe that formal Education means that someone is good. What I have found over the last year or so is that Educated people generally are more concerned about their own ego than whether or not they are helping anyone.

Matter of fact I believe that this is the direct difference between a professional service provider and a Degreed Individual. A Professional Service provider has only his reputation to stand on and there-fore finds direct correlation between his income and his service, whereas, a Degreed Individual doesn't care about you because if you hate him at the end of the day he knows he will most likely get his same fee from the next guy who walks through the door and see that some 30 years ago he actually did some work, and got a degree.

Now before you all write me upset and chastising me for my spelling, grammar, punctuation and content I realize that there must be some Collegiate individuals that do fundamentally want to help the people they work for. But at the end of the day if they Fuck up and don't help them they can simply shrug it off and wait for the next sucker.