RafaelFajardo

When companies offer bad jobs, they can find themselves in a vicious downward cycle. Take supermarkets, for example. That’s an industry full of bad jobs—low pay, unpredictable hours, and work that is not meaningful. But it’s also a very complex working environment. In a typical supermarket, employees manage thousands of products, serve more than 2,000 customers a day, and carry out hundreds of sales promotions a week. When you operate such a complex environment with employees who are unmotivated, poorly trained, or overworked because the store is understaffed, the result is operational problems. Products are misplaced or mispriced. Promotions are advertised but not carried out. Employees can’t answer customers’ questions—they may not know or have time. Those problems reduce sales and profits, so sales decline, so labor budgets shrink, so companies invest even less in their people. That’s the vicious cycle. Companies can still make money operating in this cycle, but they are leaving a lot on the table. Customers come as long as there are good deals, but they have no loyalty.