财富美国500强国内员工的日子也不好过

给员工足够的报酬，让他们成为公司的忠实顾客。

    我们姑且认为对员工的同情心并不能成为给他们加薪的理由、加薪需要更有说服力的理由。但是，员工低薪对沃尔玛和麦当劳这样的公司来说真是好事吗？

    给工人开低工资，最后自食其果的还是公司。对于许许多多像沃尔玛和麦当劳一样已经取得成功的大型公司来说，与它们员工经济实力相当的人肯定具备购物和外出就餐的经济能力。据《财富》杂志（Fortune）最近报道，麦当劳已经决定淘汰旗下的安格斯汉堡，部分原因就是因为价格太高。“不能把价格定在顾客的承受范围之外，”投资研究及资讯机构Hedgeye风险管理公司（Hedgeye Risk Management）董事总经理霍华德•佩妮接受《财富》采访时说。如果美国中等收入职员可支配收入微薄，而低收入工人可支配收入几乎为零的现状继续维持下去，许多其他变革将成为必然。

    另外，为了吸引新的顾客（如沃尔玛正在积极争取的新生代顾客群体），同时留住原有顾客，零售和快餐企业不仅需要提供顾客需要的产品，而且要提供至少不会让顾客扫兴的消费体验。

    麦当劳现在也面临着同样的问题。上个月，《华尔街日报》（The Wall Street Journal）发表了一篇报道，谈到了麦当劳集团试图“修复受损的服务”。这家公司的高管称：“顾客最主要的不满来自粗鲁、不专业的员工。”

    “总公司以及我们的特许餐厅会不断寻找改善顾客服务的途径，”麦当劳的一位发言人在写给我的电子邮件中表示。

    只要你愿意，你尽可以责备员工。但是如果实际情况是，你的员工同时打好几份工却还在担心付不起不断上涨的房租或燃气费，也没钱给孩子买双新鞋子，或者说还要眼睁睁地看着家人食不果腹，如果这个时候刚好有某个顾客因为没拿到番茄酱而朝他们大吼，这个时候被人责骂一定不是一件能容忍的事。即使是一个铁石心肠的资本家也会意识到，这样压榨员工一定会影响到服务质量。

    沃尔玛公司也存在类似的情况。据彭博资讯（Bloomberg）报道，沃尔玛公司正在面临裁员后货物无法及时上架的困境——对此，员工和顾客都很不满意。不过，沃尔玛对彭博的报道不以为然，辩称公司正在致力于新技术和网上业务，以有效应对运营挑战。

    问题是沃尔玛的商业模式并没有完全向网上商城转移，而且对沮丧的员工的培训也仅停留于服务技能的训练。大概20年前，我参加过一个由具有心理学和戏剧表演双重背景的传播专家史蒂芬妮•亨德利主持的公众演讲培训班，我那时候就已经明白了一个道理。亨德利说，要想演讲成功，最重要是要意识到自己的情感与演讲内容之间的联系，而且要在察觉和实际训练的基础上，有意识地把感觉到的情感转化成想要表达的情感。然而，尽管这种方法对训练演讲技能行之有效，但想要用它来培训那些生活不稳定、情绪沮丧的员工，使其提高服务水平，不管费多大劲，结果也将是徒劳。

Paying your workers enough to be good customers

    But let's say we have no compassion for workers and need more convincing. Do low wages help companies like Wal-Mart and McDonald's?

    The chickens seem to be coming home to roost on that score. For massive establishments like Wal-Mart and McDonald's to succeed, people who fit the economic profile of their own workers must have the wherewithal to shop and eat out. Fortune recently reported that McDonald's has decided to eliminate its big Angus burger, in part, because of the high cost. "You can't price it outside [the] range of people coming into McDonald's," Howard Penney, managing director of Hedgeye Risk Management, told Fortune. Many other changes will be needed if U.S. middle-income workers continue to have meager disposable income and low-wage workers have none.

    Further, to attract new customers (like millennials, a group Wal-Mart is targeting) and retain existing customers, retail and fast food establishments not only need to provide products that customers want, they need to also provide an experience that at a minimum won't turn customers off.

    McDonald's is wrestling with that issue now. Last month, the Wall Street Journal ran a report on the chain's efforts to repair its "broken service;" McDonald's executives said "the top complaint [w]as 'rude or unprofessional employees.'"

    "McDonald's and our franchisees continue to look at ways to improve our customer service experience," a spokesperson wrote me in an email.

    You can blame the workers if you like. But if you hold down multiple jobs and don't know how you will afford to pay your rising rent or gas costs or buy your child shoes, or if you are forced to witness family members skipping meals, it might be a challenge to be pleasant if someone yells at you because they didn't get their ketchup. Even a hard-hearted capitalist will recognize that squeezing workers in this way will affect customer service.

    Wal-Mart is facing similar issues. Bloomberg reported that the company is having trouble keeping shelves stocked following staff cutbacks — and workers and customers are not happy. Wal-Mart has disputed Bloomberg's findings. The company says it's focusing on technology and its online business as possible solutions to its operational challenges.

    But the company's business model hasn't moved completely online, and educating unhappy workers will only go so far. I learned this lesson when I took a public speaking workshop almost 20 years ago given by communications expert Stephanie Hendrie, who has a background in both psychology and theatre. To give a speech well, Hendrie said that it was important to become conscious of the emotion you feel related to the words in your speech and, through awareness and practice, to change that emotion consciously to the emotion you want to convey. But while it's helpful in speechmaking, for workers who are living lives of instability and distress, this is a nearly impossible feat no matter how hard they try.