What Would You Do?

1. Its summer job time and you’ve found something that just might work—handling technical support inquiries at a local Internet provider. The regular full time employees are paid by the hour. Summer hires like you fill in when they go on vacation. However, you will be paid by the call for each customer that you handle. How will this pay plan affect your work behavior as a customer service representative? Is this summer pay plan a good choice by the management of the Internet provider?

Answer: As a part time customer service representative, I would expect to be paid by the hour. Even though I am suppose to be here to fill in for the full time staff, if I am not being paid by the hour I don’t think that myself or anyone else would feel like they have to take their job as seriously. The management of this Internet provider is asking for trouble when they told the part time employees that they would be paid for each customer that they helped over the phone. To my understanding, those who work part time would show up to work and not work nearly as hard or put nearly as much effort into their job because they are only being paid once they get on the phone with a customer. If the lines happen to be slow one day, these part time employees are going to start goofing off and not paying attention to the task at hand because they aren’t being paid. I think that if they want to get the job done right, they need to pay everybody hourly. I do not think that this summer pay plan is a good choice by the management of the Internet provider.

You’ve just come up with a great idea for improving productivity and morale in a shop that silk-screens t-shirts. You want to allow workers to work four 10-hour days if they want instead of the normal five day/40-hour week. With the added time off, you reason, they’ll be happier and more