In an amazing glimpse into employee relations in the city of Dubai, Emarat one of the biggest gas station chains openly admits to strip searching employees to make sure they are not keeping any tips.
With a truly spectacular display of a total lack of understanding of even basic PR, the spokesman said,
" 'Body search is part of the procedure and we will continue to do it. However, a supervisor should ask the staff to take off all his clothes only if he is sure that the staff is guilty' said Abdulla Al Noman, the retail sales operations manager at Emarat"
So that makes them judge, jury and stripper all in one, wonder what the qualifications are for that cushy little number? more....
06 November, 2005
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4 comments:
I cannot help but wonder if Emarat has cashed the tips I have given to their employees during the past many years???
- What a horrible, horrible policy. Emarat ought to be really embarassed.
Let the guys get the extra 20-30 Dhs. per day - it's not as if they are paid a fortune for standing in the heat and the gas fumes!
sid i wrote a bit about it in my blog.
emirates petrol station was found to be doing the exact same thing 5 or so years back.
It's absolutely sickening that the management can come out and say "yes we do that", if i had to say that i couldn't bare to look at myself in the mirror. Absolutely despicable company.
I dare to come to the defense of Emarat--somewhat, anyway. My guess is that the tips are supposed to be pooled and then redistributed equally, presumably to all the gas fillers. Problems of fairness and hard feelings come into play when the honest filler hands in all of his tips while the dishonest filler keeps some of his then on top of that gets a share of everyone else's. Clearly the honest fillers are the ones who get burned the worse in such cases. So by forcing everyone to put all their tips into the till there will be more fairness.
That being said the whole idea of pooling tips is just a very bad idea, but unfortunately very common. It leads to many problems including the one I describe above as well as the one which others have commented on about some fat cat boss or supervisor stealing from it. But the main reason it sucks is that it negates the whole intent of tipping. The customer wants to show his appreciation to a particular person, not the whole bunch. Even if one guy gets Dh100 in tips and in the same day another gets only Dh5, that's much easier to accept than the idea that you've given in all your tips to get a fair share in the pool while one of your co-workers secretly kept part of his. I would bet that the honest guys are glad that Emarat threatens to strip those they suspect of cheating.
So, if Emarat is gonna make the guys pool their tips then it's a good thing they make sure no one's keeping more than their fair share. On the other hand they and every place that uses it should just bag the whole idea of tip pools.
I comment on this based on the personal experience of someone I know. Eventually where he works the tip box was banished. When that happened morale shot way up, just as it had come crashing down when the tip box was initiated.
While it is a possibility that there is a common tip fund I doubt it. The spokesman said that Emerat ran a no tip policy which would imply that monies found are treated as having been taken from customers (by fraud or tips)and as such conviscated.
The common tip fund does work in many restaurants though. There would be a rebellion by the kitchen staff if the food carriers got all the money and everyone was jealous of the bar staff. DW (ex barman)
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