Tell Me I’m Perfect

I went to Walmart yesterday. I picked up one item. I brought it to the self-checkout area. I scanned my item and then placed it in the bag that I had pulled out of my pocket. Living in New Jersey, I am fortunate to have politicians who save me from the evil of store-provided shopping bags. I then hit the button to print my receipt.

It was at that moment that two women rushed over to me, yelling, “Fi-Sta, Fi-Sta.” One of the women snuck up from behind, but the other I saw literally running over to my register. Now, I do not mean any disrespect to our immigrant population, but I could not even guess at what “Fi-Sta” meant. My daughter is a freshman in college down in Virginia, and she called us up one day, surprised to tell us the people at her Walmart both “smile and speak English.”

When the women reached my register, one of them started tapping on the screen where they asked me to rate my experience. Turns out that “Fi-sta” was a broken English version of Five Star. Did I really receive Five-Star service? When I walked in, no one said anything to me. When I brought my purchase to the self-checkout area, neither of the “Fi-Sta” ladies acknowledged me. No greeting, no pointing to an open register, no eye contact at all. Since I was the only one who provided me any service whatsoever, I gave myself a five-star review and left the building.

As someone who has managed customer-facing teams for much of my career, I understand the importance of customer satisfaction surveys. There is a lot to be learned from honest feedback, but that is not always what people want. Years ago, I had some work done on my car and the dealership sent me a link to an online survey that had about 20 questions on it. The workers had warned me that the survey was coming and said, “If you answer with anything other than a 10 on any of the questions, I will get in trouble.” In my mind, a 9 out of 10 is a really good score. But here are workers being told they have to achieve perfect 10s across every aspect of the business. In my mind, the world has only seen one perfect human, and he never worked at Walmart or the car dealership.

What is the point of such a survey if not to locate areas for improvement? My guess is that some mid-level managers have their bonuses tied to arbitrary survey scores, and they bully their employees because they want the money. I can’t see how that helps to generate return business. Unless something exceptional happens, I certainly do not want to take extra time to do a survey. And if the people giving me the survey are telling me what grade to give, why not cut out the middleman, leave me alone, and tell yourself that you’re wonderful?