Stupid People

My company used to have (in the olden days) something called "bucks", which were a paper coupon that was given to a sales associate who met their sales goals and could be used the same as cash for merchandise. They began over the years to become a substitute for pay for some contractors, summer help or special event help (ie: given to non-employees instead of any real pay). This was a fine system and everyone liked it. The only problem was with the IRS. There was no tax being paid for this "income" - it was not trackable and easy to forge. No one in the company had any real idea of how much of this "money" was being spent.

Enter the Associate Rewards Card!! This would be a credit type card, that would be given to each associate at hiring and then the store manager could assign funds to the card for a myriad of reasons. We would be able to track how much incentive money a store was spending, it could be budgeted, associates would be taxed on this "income" - all issues would be over!!!

Not quite! Apparently, there are people who have been hired as both store managers and as district managers who are just plain stupid! Why, you say?? Allow me to explain!!

When I received the reward cards from the manufacturer and I assigned one card to each individual store associate. This took several days has we have about 500+ associates total working for our various retail stores. I then created a package for each store which included their cards, a list of who was assigned to each card, a letter stating the purpose of the new program and the procedure each manager was to follow, a packet of instructions as to how to fund the cards, check balances, etc. all from their registers. I then e-mailed the letter, instructions, and assignment lists to each manager. This way each store manager would have both an electronic "heads up" copy, plus hard copies of everything along with their cards. This whole process took me about 10 days to complete, from the day the cards were delivered to the day I shipped them out to the stores.

During the time it took me to get these cards shipped out, a few associates had left the company and a few more had been hired. I each case, I allowed the store manager to take a card currently assigned to a recently terminated associate and give it to a new hire. I would then delete the terminated associate off my spreadsheet and assign that card number to the new associate - both sides matched!

Each week, HR sends me a list of every store associate who was terminated and who was hired that previous week. I then delete terminated associates and assign cards to the new hires. I put a Post-it note on each card with the new hires name on it and send it to the store manager with that weeks payroll checks.

The initial roll out was in JULY!

Today, the payroll manager comes into my office and has a couple of cards that have money attached, but she can't find who the cards are assigned to. I don't have the cards on my list, so they must be fore terminated associates - this would be fine, except money was added to one of the cards this week, it can't be for a terminated person, if they are still getting money assigned to the card.

We e-mailed the store manager for that store asking about everything. Her response????

"Gosh is there a way to differentiate who is what card, I just gave them out depending who was here and what card I grabbed. If certain ones went to certain people I guess I might hae messed that up. That one went to XXXX.
Sorry if I messed up."

WHAT??? WHAT???? WHAT????

It is not even possible that she missed EVERY SINGLE PIECE of information that I sent to her! There were e-mails to the store managers on this project from the district managers and above! EVERYONE KNEW WHAT WAS GOING ON!!!!

I spoke with the person who developed the program and helped me put together all the instructions and procedures - she was cussing like I have never heard. Her main complaint is that now we have to go back to EACH store to check and make sure that the store managers are capable of reading and that no one else handed out cards to the wrong people. I have to call this particular store manager and get her to get with each of her associates to make sure that the cards they each have match my list. People have been being taxed based on the money assigned to their card!!! People may have been getting taxed on money they did not earn!!

Oh lordy - I have to call this manager now, please grant me the calm I need to get to the bottom of this without taking her head off!! I am PMS'ing after all - it could happen!!