the modern day dogma of customer service

So I came in to work today at the video store and basically got told that everyone is on the verge of getting fired or written up because everything the company is not making enough money and are putting more pressure on the associate, and further more the store is changing the sales approach to an aggressive 5 point sales approach that constitutes continuously harrassing every customer until they finally buy something. So say you have a scratched dvd, basically you go in to get it exchanged because its not playing right and you go up to the counter and you say hi, i got this dvd and it doesn't play right, they answer with, would you like to get a soda? You say no, i just want to exchange this for another one, and they say, well would you like to get renter's insurance? You are getting more and more irrate and they push three more itmes suggestive sell at you at you say no, finally they give you what you want. Then as you leave you hear them do it to the next person in line. We are required to do this 100 percent of the time. Our renter's insurance is a quarter extra. Appearantly they sold so much of this bogus insurance ( you don't get charged anyway) last year that they were able to open up five stores. 15 million in revenue. Instead of investing in the stores they already have. I also actually read a memo from corporate saying that they no longer are interested in quality of service, it's quantity of units that are sold that is the new marketing strategy. In other words they don't care about the customer, unless they have to hear complaints from them in which case they will blame the employees, and after one warning you get fired. They don't care about the employee and almost treat them like an enemy. Their idea of management is scare tactics. Thankfully for them this generally causes a high turnover rqte in employees thus insuring that they don't have to give pay raises or offer benefits, thus keeping them staffed with an ever constant flow of unskilled labor that they can toss around as they please. Most of the people that work in this industry are either doing it for a 2nd job or are kids. When raising someone to managemnt level they push the golden rule of keep hiring and firing as often as possible, don't offer them over time, and if you don't turn a profit in six months we will just close this location ( they do this a lot) The idea is to quickly boost revenue during a really bad slump in the industry on the part of hollywood having a poor release slate late in the fourth quarter ( read about it in the video store weekly guide) , and they are compensating by putting all the pressure at store level. It's also part of a ny 5 year buisness plan, if you study buisness management. The high pressure sales tactics will only serve to further alienate their already piss poor customer base, and will generally contribute to the already presumed downfall of the video store industry. It's sadly a thing of the past i think. The major competition hollywood just got bought up, and Blockbuster the number one retailer is switching to video sales in the upcoming year.
Further more the company is basically starting this prcess themselves, and io anticipate them shutting down large numbers of stores in the near future, as per our selling off huge amounts of inventory at bottom dollar prices. I think these guys just want to make a quick buck and get out. I've seen it before in the movie buisness. It's disgusting. But it's easier to just close out a store and fire off your staff , then transfer all the inventory to another location and sell off the goods there. When i worked for west coast they did that. they would buy up a small chain store, and sell it back to the original owner after selling off all the stock at vastly reduced prices to boost their revenue on the short term. then they repeat the process. Another problem with the industry is how low the level of pay is for the employees. This induces both theft issues, as well as store inventory losses. By not offering the employee proper compensation or revenue goals or personal goals in general their is no motivation to want to improve the buisness other than the vauge want of not getting fired, which in the end will happen after a five year corporate plan anyway.
so uhm.. I might not work for this company very much longer.
I am thinking of trying something not customer service oriented because i am not particularly infatuated with today's customer service dogma. The policy of the customer is always right but they are not, and the employee is always wrong no matter what doesn't do for good buisness. Especially when the bad example of a manager they have running the store randonmly threatens to fre everyone and oh hold on.... ( phone rings) hello? yeah oh my god, we drank so much beer lat night.. hahah i know right.. yeah, oh uhm.. i gotta go.. bye.. so ahem. yeah.. you are not doing your job, and this is not proffessional, and uhm. blah blah blah..that's rediculous.
Like I said, keep your employees under trained and keep the turn over rate high. In a way i guess it at least insures that the manager has some level of job security. So I come in and there are five kids looking scared for their beer moeny cooshy ass job, and then there is me, who still has a security gig, and couldn't give a fuck about any of it.