Late Night Chapter 10 Summary Thinking

        In chapter 10, Employee Satisfaction and Commitment, the correct procedures are talked about for how to correctly satisfy an employee so that they will want to be committed to the job. This chapter discusses why an employer should care whether an employee is satisfied or not. It explains what causes employees to be satisfied and dissatisfied with their jobs and how that correlates to job commitment. It goes into detail about whether an employee is a good fit for the organization or whether the tasks being performed are enjoyable, and if they aren’t, how best to deal with these situations. It describes how to measure job satisfaction and commitment via standard inventories or custom inventories. It then goes into what it is to be dissatisfied with a job and the negative effects that has such as absences and turnovers.

        Currently, this chapter hit home. I obviously do not like my job and have done nothing but complain about it, at every chance I get. I would be fired if I wasn’t allowed to complain about it. I have every intention of getting a degree and leaving the postal service for something that challenges me and makes me feel like I actually contribute something to something, actually feel like I’m making a difference and helping people. Standing around for 8 hours a day pushing mail into an up-ender and removing the empty equipment after the mail has been dumped out of the equipment is by no means what I call satisfaction. We do have job rotation if we would like it, and while it does sound like that would be a reward in itself, like working on an assembly line and being able to take the trash out, but it's not after years of only being rewarded with mundane tasks to replace mundane work. No matter how you slice that pie it's mundane all the same. It wouldn’t be half as bad if they allowed us to read a book or newspaper or something we liked personally while we were waiting for the mail to process through the machine, but we are not. We get personally reprimanded on the work floor like children, as we are supposed to stand there and wait and be watched like little children by employees who go up to be 204B’s (management then come down to keep their job bid, then go up, then come back down then go back up..etc) (and I’m supposed to look at them as authoritative, that’s a babysitter).

        When I went for this job it was because nepotism runs ramped in any government job despite what they say. Since my dad worked for them and he told me about the test, I took the test, and here I am, because at that time, 8 years ago, the postal service still boasted great advantages over most other non-career jobs. Since I was still in college it seemed like a good fit; as time went on it turned more and more into a horrible fit. Now I am counting down the days till I can leave and move on to something meaningful. I feel for the older workers there that will not leave because they feel they are too old to move on to something better, which is most of the employees there. Those of us who are younger have been actively seeking employment elsewhere and have displayed our dissatisfaction with our jobs through absenteeism. In my 8 years, I have seen FMLA forgery been rewarded with a month off and her job back with back pay, a fistfight on the work floor ended in a 3-month suspension with rehab and both their jobs back with back pay, chronic sexual harassers have been shifted around but never lost their job, people who only work 2 or 3 days a week every week continue to keep their job despite the fact that you only get 12 weeks FMLA a year, people who call off for months at a time get to clock back in when they feel like it and keep their jobs like they never missed a day, a man who got a year and a half suspension for getting arrested and he kept his job and got back pay and leave. Yes, I completely understand I just listed job security to a T, but I also described a hostile work environment where employees get away with anything and therefore do anything because of ill management and poor execution of supposed policies, lack of discipline, lack of morals and values. Therefore, is it really any wonder why I complain and have a complete lack of satisfaction and commitment to this job.

        My critical analysis of this chapter is that this chapter is also right. Social Learning theory is right, Social information processing theory is also right, and Discrepancy theory is also right. It’s also extremely correct that if an employee is dissatisfied with his/her job they will react by lowering their job performance in retaliation if they feel they cannot leave their situation due to personal reasons.

Late Night Chapter 9 Summary Thinking

        In chapter 9, Employee Motivation, the correct procedures are talked about for how to correctly motivate an employee. This chapter discusses whether there a predisposition, through personality, self-esteem intrinsic motivation or needs of achievement and power, to become motivated. Also how to go about meeting the employees’ values and expectations through clarifying job expectations and employees needs. This chapter discusses the measurability of employee goals in relation to the company, the goal specificity, and its relevance. It also discusses the self-regulation theory with regards to employees receiving feedback on their goal achievement progression. The chapter then discusses the types of rewards an employee can get for achieving his/her goals and the integration of incentive plans and the difference between rewards and punishment.

        When I first started working for the postal service the plant manager had employee appreciation cookouts. The 1st 2 years I was there they did it twice a year. The next 2 years it went to once a year. In the next 3 years, it went from a cookout to one day where they ordered pizza for everyone. So far this year, it’s been nothing, and since our plant manager has changed again, I don’t sense this one as being all to employee incentive oriented. Otherwise, we used to work hard so that we could get approved for a certain day off, like maybe the pirate home opener or first penguin playoffs, but that has since ceased. They have made it abundantly clear that they are not granting any special leave requests to anyone for anything. They used to support company picnic day at Kennywood Park and have since quit doing that. In the employee appreciation department of things we the employees can definitely feel the financial hurt that the postal system is going through. However, in the amount of wasted resources we consume and dispense you wouldn’t be able to tell one bit. I believe they cut down forests for trees and make new housing developments in wooded areas just so the post office can waste paper products and they don’t even recycle. Our input/output ratios have become so out of sync that we the employees have lowered our inputs to match those postal outputs. They have since been subjected to the increases in health care costs that make the benefits we get not that desirable anymore because in order to support and the whole family you are now paying in upwards of $200 bi-weekly and you still have high co-pays. Our salaries have been in a wage freeze for years now so we have received no cost of living increases despite gas increases and health care increases. There is no way an employee can have a life of any kind outside the doors to the post office because while the news reports post offices closing and financial instability, at my building they are dishing out overtime like its candy and unless you get a doctor to sign off that you cannot work more than an 8 hour day or 40 hour week then you must be there with not one thank you or anything. There is no organizational justice, we have no say in how things are run and every day is like a brand new day, like the post office has never sorted mail before. It’s confusing and there is no incentive to be hard working at all. What once was a job that everyone thought was great has vastly changed into a drone assembly line of unhappiness. In fact, they don’t even hire anyone anymore with the assumption that you’ll have job security or great benefits and pay. People are now hired with the ability to be “let go” at any time and benefits are limited and pay has drastically decreased.

        My critical analysis of this chapter is that this chapter is right. Its theories are right and its evaluation of how companies can motivate employees is right on the mark and more so, its analysis of how employees will react to lack of motivation is spot on too.

Late Night Chapter 7 Summary Thinking

        In chapter 7, Evaluating Employee Performance, the correct procedures are talked about for how to correctly perform an employee performance evaluation. From determining a reason to perform one, if there are any environmental and/or cultural limitations, determining who will do the evaluation, and the best appraisal method to be used to obtain the desired goals of the organization. It discusses how to train raters, how they should observe and document employee behaviors and working conditions, then how they should take their information and evaluate. This chapter also explains the many different rating errors that can occur and the reasons that these errors may arise, their effects, and/ or how they can be solved. It then explains the best ways in which to explain to employees the results from the performance appraisal, critical incidents logs, and/or any other observations made by the supervisor. Finally, this chapter covers the best ways in which an organization and/or supervisor should handle a termination if it is needed and making sure that the legal aspect of any of these actions is done with fairness to avoid the potential possibility of a lawsuit by any employee.

        I do not think I have had more than a dozen performance appraisals over my work span, and I have been working since I was 15. I have worked for several different retail and food places most of which I did not stay at for very long because they were not the kind of job I wanted as my career and I when I found a better paying job I moved on. So, to some degree, I wasn’t at most of my jobs long enough to get a performance appraisal when I was much younger. The jobs I have gotten performance appraisals from did follow some of the guidelines stated but only loosely. They mostly went along the lines of..


~Hi


                         ~Hi


~Just wanted to let you know how you were doing so far.


                         ~OK


~You understand how to do the job, you understand what needs to be done and you get it done.


                          ~OK


~So, keep up the good work


                           ~OK


~Do you have any questions?


                           ~Nope, I’m good.


~OK, back to work.


                            ~OK


        Even at the postal service, its short and to the point. The postal service hardly ever does an evaluation. I think in the almost 8 yrs I’ve been there I have had maybe 3. They did observe my work and they had a sheet for it that they rated my performance on, I believe using the graphic rating scale, with a comments section, that usually said “keep up the good work”. They would hand me a copy afterward and that was that. Keep working.

        The only time they pulled me into the office for a sit down was after my son was born when I started missing more work than usual due to the hard time I had finding people to watch him. It was decided that I should move back to the night shift, so I did. My supervisor at the time was very nice, it was more like friends conversing than a boss and an employee and she listened to what I had going on and we thought of some solutions and night shift was the best and there was a bid up for it so that was what we decided I would try for.

        Not that I don’t think that companies out there don’t have and practice these policies that our textbook refers to, I just have never worked for those companies; or the supervisors that I have had, have never adhered to those policies. So I again don’t have a critical analysis, because what is there to analyze when the book is telling it straight forward how a company should, in a perfect world, handle any and all situations and circumstances. How a company can be and will be at its optimal. It’s kind of hard to critique what has already been critiqued to such a level that it made it into print as being the best way to accomplish a successful business.