Posted on 02/01/2008 12:28:40 PM PST by Cagey
NEWARK, Del. (AP) — Employees at a Chrysler plant in Newark, Del. who don't drive a Chrysler now have to park in the back, where passers-by can't see them.
Plant management issued the directive Jan. 25. Workers have been told local union officials endorsed the decision.
After March 24, vehicles that aren't made by Chrysler will be towed if they're not parked in the proper lot.
Workers at the plant face a planned shutdown next year.
do managers who sold out to Daimler Benz have to enter through the back door ?
Nothing here.
Old news.
This has been standard in the auto mfr industry for decades.
Hmmm. I thought broken headlights and windshields were the standard...
It’s the same in every industry. I used to do freelance work for Dr Pepper/7 Up, and people there were not allowed to drink other brands of soda while on the premises. Of course, since I drink Dr Pepper anyway, this was not a problem, but my point remains.
When I was a teen, I worked at a certain chain of hamburger restaurant. It was verboten to be seen inside the competitor’s place................especially in uniform!.......
Note to Chrysler: Won’t help.....
As a teenager working over the Summer at a Pepsi plant, I once asked my boss if I could take a “coke and smoke” break. Heard about that one for quite awhile. (Who knew Pepsi went better with underage smoking?)
It has been going on for a long time. No problem with it, AFAIC.
In a better era, this would be a given. It would be called being polite, respectful, and having manners. What a self absorbed classless swarm of idiots we’ve become?
It’s like letting fighter pilots not be familiar with enemy aircraft. Or scientist with other notions in their fields. What are blue collar workers but mindless cogs? No wonder so much American manufacturing sucks.
I'm so far from that era, I'm not even sure what you are saying.
Driving a piece crap would be considered good manners?
I got no problem with this rule.
Yah, Brian Urlacher got fined $100,000 for wearing a Vitamin Water ball cap during an interview at last year’s Super Bowl. Players must only wear officially approved NFL apparel during interviews.
When I was a young boy, my father took me into the city to see a marching band. He said, “Son when you grow up, will you be the saviour of the broken, the beaten and the damned? Will you defeat them, your demons, and all the non-believers, the plans that they have made? Because one day, I’ll leave you, a phantom, to lead you in the summer, to join the black parade.”
In software it’s called Dog Food. Because of an old commercial from a dog food company where the guy said their stuff was so good he’d eat it himself. If we do anything that could use our we use our product, if it’s good enough to sell it’s good enough for us, and if it’s not good enough for us that’s a problem. These guys are lucky they only have to park in the back, in his day Ford would have fired them on the spot. Of course part of the trick here is you give good enough employee discounts that they’d be complete morons to buy the competition anyway.
The quality of the car has nothing to do with it. If you don’t see it I’m not going to try to explain it.
In a better era, Chrysler employees wouldn’t *want* to buy other companies’ cars.
Consider this:
All the major car makers offer their employees incentives to purchase the products they make - from enormous discounts to interest-free loans to being able to buy accessories and options at cost.
What does it say when a significant number of your employees are willing to give up all of that and spend their own money on a competitor’s product?
It means that you have *problems* with your product. Aside from people buying vehicles that you have no competitor for, your employees should not have any reason to want to buy a vehicle anywhere else. You have quality control and design problems. Making the employees that buy a superior product park in the back isn’t going to make the problems go away.
Are you saying it’s impolite, disrespectful and bad manners, to use a product other than what is made by your own company?
No, blackdog meant that asking would be good manners. I would have gladly allowed my pizzeria employees (way back in 1979) to bring McDonald’s food for lunch if they wanted, but I would also appreciate they not have the bags on top of the front counter.
But if you offer those steep discounts, and they’re still buying elsewhere, you have some serious problems. And it’s not with your employees per se but with your product.
I would proudly park my Jon Voight LeBaron close to the front door (but I would avoid the handicapped space).
It’s both. Your employees should have enough pride to not ship cars they wouldn’t own, and you should be having good enough designs to instill that pride.
Also, while I have no problem with asking them to park the vehicles out of sight of prospective customers, the Chrysler people should be busily quizzing those employees to find out what reason they have for buying another product - not for termination or discipline reasons, but to find out how to fix their own stuff.
So?
exactly. GM Tech Center has some GM product only parking lots. Needless to say, they are preferred.
It’s not about the quality of the cars. It’s about the quality of the relationship. This concept escapes you. Some circumstances which occur when you are in the employ of another are not easy to swallow. That’s why if you think it’s that important that you make a statement to Chrysler by driving the competetor’s products as an employee of Chrysler, maybe you should consider working somewhere else.
One place where I worked had a KFC next door; a year later, a McDonalds opened on the other side of us.
Next year we could watch the employees walk past each other to lunch.
I know. When you work with the stuff all day you get sick of looking at it..............I ate at Burger King in secret so my boss didn’t see me. I don’t know where he ate......
Post#27 not directed toward you. Sorry.
“No wonder so much American manufacturing sucks.”
I know that BMW, Mercedes, Acura, Honda, Toyota, Mazda, Subaru, Nissan and probably others do manufacture in the USA.
It is therefore NOT the location; it IS the standard set by the companyies’’management decision makers.
Quality control was invented by American Dr. Edward Demming, but most effectively implemented by Japanese car makers in the 70s and 80s, when as you say American manufacturing was in dire trouble.
What about workers who already owned a car from another manufacturer when they began working there?
Actually my "coke and smoke" example happened in 1958. Wasn't being disrespectful, just uing a common expression back then.
Along the same lines...
When bidding suppliers come in for technical reviews, they put up a slide of all the OEMs they do business with.
It jumps right off the page when the company they are presenting to is at the bottom of the list, or in a smaller font/graphic then competitors on the page. Non-prominent.
Happens all the time. Simple, but hughly stupid mistake.
Note to self: if ever in the job market again, don't accept job with Chrysler immediately after entering into a two year lease agreement with a Toyota dealer.......
Similiar rule for Hegewisch’s Taurus plant, except it’s for imports, not non-Fords
This is rubbing salt in the wound.
Chrysler will be closing that plant next year, taking 1500 good jobs with them.
File this under: What’s the point?
My first job in high school was in a restaraunt, washing dishes. Before every shift, the cook would cook anything you wanted on the menu for free and you had a half hour to dine "off the clock" before you started. Some employees complained that they wanted to be paid for that time and filed a complaint with the state. The owner of the business stopped the practice. No longer did all your coworkers sit together, chat, build a relationship with each other, and enjoy the meal. Those people who didn't want the free meal as employees didn't have to clock in for it. They just wanted it both ways.
When "Coke" meant Coca Cola.
Actually, every carbonated beverage was called coke. It was common to ask for a coke in a restaraunt and be asked “what kind of coke do you want?” A regional thing.
Of course there’s a bit of difference between golf balls and cars. People probably won’t be driving by the golf ball company seeing a bunch of competing logos in the parking lot, and they sure don’t cost as much as cars.
Dog Food is a serious concept in most companies, if you wouldn’t eat it you shouldn’t serve it.
You'd trust them when they tell you that?
They make Jeeps.
Problem solved.
Alternatively you could only hire employees stupid enough to buy your product. The UAW springs to mind. Real polite crowd I hear.
Reminds me of fellow students in school who would stupidly get caught with an open alcohol container.
A container is a container. Who cares what’s on the label as long as one knows the contents? I would fill a 7UP can with a bevvie of my own choosing and carry on.
I'm old enough to remember but my reference was to the fact that when you were going to have a Coke it did not mean cocaine.
I worked in a ware house when I got out of the service, we had a Tow Motor fork truck, everyone referred to it as “The Hyster”.
Sure enough when it broke down and we got a new Hyster fork truck, it was called a “The Tow Motor”.
In Canada I purchased no, my wife had a part legacy from England, She bought me a 1997 Voyager brand new. I had great performance, though a defect cost me. Just out of the four year warranty.
I was urged to buy a little $12,000 car of Japanese/Korean make, next time, by my spouse. I held out for a 2007 Chrysler Caravan and it was a demonstrator. I have to make the difference in payments myself. (laughs)Funny thing is that I feel so damn good about buying, where I got well treated.
I paid over $2000 to get a transportation safety on the 1997 Voyage before I could give to my daughter, as a "Moms taxi".
I guess the bottom line in answer to the post is a simple word "Loyalty". Or if not, yer dances with them that brings yer.
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