Reader Challenge
28 07 2009Rather than telling you what to do, I’d like to take some time today to ask you what to do. There is ample talent, insight, and managerial skill in this audience, and I’d like to put it to work.
I work in retail loss prevention, and one of the tasks we are required to do on a monthly basis is an ink tag audit. Ink tags, for those who aren’t familiar with them, are the long pieces of plastic that are stuck through items of clothing. They are difficult to remove without damaging or ruining the clothing (due to ink inside), and thus provide a deterrent to theft. The auditing process involves hitting the sales floor and counting hundreds of items of clothing to insure that we are up to standard.
I did one ink tag audit, and it was one too many. It’s a task that I will avoid ever doing again for any reason. It’s boring and time consuming. And that would be fine if I could picture some sort of benefit that doing ink tag audits would confer upon me in the future. But I can’t think of a single benefit. I don’t anticipate a future in retail loss prevention, I’m already comfortable with my ability to count to 100 and beyond, and I’m comfortable with my ability to understand and execute a standard (when I want to).
So, readers, here is the challenge:
How would you get me to care about an ink tag audit if you were going to ask me to do one? What would you do to try to relate it to my world, to my goals, or to my immediate benefit?
Leave comments with your responses, and I’ll be highlighting the most insightful responses in my next post!
I have no idea. This is my problem with jobs not in my field (and as of yet, I haven’t had a job in my field), I just don’t care. I make a terrible employee for just this reason.
Maybe all that counting will come in helpful when trying to romance a girl and you want to count all her freckles? You know how THAT happens, or something.
Here’s a challenge to your challenge. Gen Y is known for being the techo generation, so can you come up with a better process for achieving the results of the audit? Possibly using some kind of technology? I completely agree that this kind of task would be mind numbingly boring, so show your bosses (and yourself) what you can do to fix the problem.
Your goal: come up with a better way of doing the job
Your benefits:
— Impress the boss for that future reference you will need at your next job,
– Gives you something to add to your resume by showing you can problem solve
– You have something to do other than count tags
– you get to play with technology and show up all us old folks!
Sometimes all thats needed is a pair of fresh eyes to show how an old problem can be improved. Take the challenge!
@Diedre - I’m in the interesting position of not even knowing what my field is, so everything should be able to contribute something to my future. So, when I struggle with the benefit of an ink tag audit, you know it’s a tough sell.
@Kelly managed to do just that - great way to get some motivation for it! As for your challenge, I’m going to have to get thinking about how to do that.
lol! Gen Y runs circles around the rest of us when it comes to technology - so I’m sure you will find an app on the I-fon that will make it easy!
Just remember - anything you “create” at work belongs to the company. Make sure you either create it on your own time or get the credit for it if you do it at work.
It’s a lousy job, but somebody has to do it.
Face it, dude. Ain’t no way to make you look forward to an ink tag audit. But I can’t think of any business, any career, or any job that doesn’t have a lot of lousy tasks that need doing. And when managed properly, everyone does their fair share of ink tag audit jobs.
The challenge is on you to make the best out of it. Turn up your iPod, count in Spanish, or lose yourself in a fantasy. Just suit up, do your part, and be a past of the team.
I would turn each ink tag audit into some kind of “treasure hunt”–because who doesn’t like a little fun while at work? I’d randomly select a handful of ink tags and would mark them in some way to designate those tags as the “winners”. Depending on the budget for prizes, you could offer a number of things up to the team– from gift cards to neighboring businesses (even better if you can trade out gift cards with these businesses, i.e. free!), a “Paid Day Off” (where the manager works the employee’s shift but the employee still gets the pay), an iPod, a candy bar, the list could go on and on and on. The prizes themselves are of minimal importance– make the task fun and give your team a challenge– they will rise to the occasion and will have a good time while doing so!
@Kelly - There are iPhone apps for losing weight, finding out the names of songs, playing games, computing gas mileage, reading the news, and it goes on. I imagine that one for ink tag audits can’t be far off. Now if only I had an iPhone.
@Eric - Agreed, but is that really how you’d put it to me if you wanted it done right? Because when it comes to making the best of something terribly boring, I often find that I challenge myself to game the system, rather than working with it.
@Jenna - I would spend considerably more time looking at ink tags if I knew that I would get something more than bored out of it. Especially if that something were a 52″ plasma…