Some people just have a way with words-
and after spending the better part of the day reading the posts by fellow shopkeepers on the Marketplace vs Shop sales for Volume Bonus at Cafepress, This shopkeeper says it best!
quote:
Originally posted by AngCP:
Now a question I’m seeing you guys ask – Why only 8 days? This was a difficult decision. We thought it was a better option to give a shorter, quicker notice knowing there will be a transition plan for SKs most impacted. We felt it may be more painful for SKs to have weeks to speculate about how they might be negatively impacted, than to see the actual impact in a shorter time period. And, although we try to aim for a 30 day notice for changes that require SKs to take action such as updating, in this case no immediate action is required. [Yes – you might argue that you could have changed your shop strategy or do more… rest assured we plan to help SKs learn more about marketing shops so you can change your shop strategy.]
No sale.
Angela, I have the deepest respect for you, and you have been a wonderful liaison — but I’m not buying the corporate line. I know you are compelled to say it, but you need to know how it sounds. In a word: snow job.
I’ve been an I.T. professional (with extensive hands-on experience in marketing analysis) since the 1980s — longer, I would guess, than half the CP staff has been alive — and I’ve been an Internet professional since before this thing called the World Wide Web was made available to the general public. I know whence I speak — and I am telling you this eight-day notice is completely unprofessional, and the reason given for it specious at best. Try implementing a major shift that will impact the majority of CP employees negatively, give them just eight days to prepare for it, and you’ll be lucky if they don’t storm the building with torches and pitchforks.
Implementing a decision that fundamentally changes the way a company does business takes time and planning. CP had God-knows-how-long to draft, plan, and implement this move as it would best benefit CP — yet does not have the same respect for us SK’s (for all practical purposes, contract employees) responsible for the very existence of CP.
When chided (usually by apple-polishing SK’s) for “complaining” and “whining,” all we ever hear is how CP is a business, and to succeed in partnership with CP, we SK’s must be businesspeople — and you won’t get any argument from me about that.
The disconnect comes when CP refuses to treat us as fellow businesspeople.
If CP treated any other business entity — its vendors, its suppliers, its landlord, PG&E, AT&T — in the same manner as it treats SK’s, CP would be laughed out of business — just before the offices went dark, the phones went dead, and the “final notice” envelopes started pouring in.
We may be seen as an expendable commodity, but we are the backbone of CP — just as vital as every paid CP employee. You can fire employees and dump suppliers and vendors who object to the way you do business, and replace them again and again — but eventually, nobody’s going to want to work for, or do business with, the company that refuses to deal equitably and professionally with the companies and individuals responsible for getting the bills paid.
Let’s get down to brass tacks about this eight-day time frame.
Have you ever been laid off, Angela? Or found yourself rewriting your resume because the company you worked for suddenly shut its doors?
Lay-offs and shutdowns, at least here in Silicon Valley, come with no notice. Do you know why? Because the company doesn’t want anyone “to have weeks to speculate about how they might be negatively impacted.” It’s quick, and painless — for the company — and devastating for the employee who was called to the all-hands meeting at 10:00 a.m., and by noon is in the parking lot with nothing to show for all the overtime, all the late nights, and all the loyalty, but a cardboard box of cubicle mementos.
If CP had given us a reasonable amount of time to prepare for this (and three months would be reasonable; any less, and you know those SK’s just starting out in the wonderful world of SEO will not be able to get up to speed from scratch in any less time than that), then CP would have projected measurable losses for this doubly-lucrative election + holiday season. It is now to CP’s benefit to make as many sales through the MP as possible, and every day the SK’s would have had to divert sales away from the MP and through our own direct links would have put a ‘dink’ in the plan to save money on VBs.
The upshot: You don’t want us to be able to measure the actual impact over a longer time period, and certainly not during the biggest quarter of the year — especially a year with an unusually high-profile election at stake.
I don’t even understand the sentence, “We thought it was a better option to give a shorter, quicker notice knowing there will be a transition plan for SKs most impacted” — but it sounds like you’re confirming exactly what I wrote in the paragraph above.
You can tell me I’m wrong on this, Angela, but not without an alternate explanation that does not include such a condescending, unprofessional “un-reason” as “We wanted to spare you any pain.”
I’ll handle my own pain, thanks. Just deal fairly with me. As it stands right now, CP is not dealing fairly with any of us. Give us the same consideration and professional courtesy as you expect us to give CP. You are not doing that. Are you really surprised, then, at how angry we are?
Come on, Angela. I’ve met you. I’ve talked with you. You are wicked smart, and damned smarter than this.
But if you’ve really been overcome by the Kool-Aid that’s been forced down your throat, then you give up a third of your paycheck for the good of the company, starting this week, with no finite end in sight, no matter how much the big boys tell you it’s all gonna be OK, and then tell me how good you feel about it. (And let me know what your landlord or mortgage company has to say when you try to meet your payment with “I promise, I’m going to give you double — maybe even triple! — next month, because I have this great plan…!”)
As as far as a “plan to help SKs learn more about marketing shops so you can change your shop strategy”: That’s the message we’ve been getting ever since the CJ.com implementation: Just trust Daddy to take care of you. But Daddy never does — Daddy just leaves us on our own while he goes off on yet another great adventure, never taking into account that 1) the kids gotta eat, and 2) we ain’t kids.
Stop treating us like children, and you’ll get a lot more adult cooperation out of us.
Again, Angela, you have been a great liaison — but this corporate line is as see-through as a chiffon teddy.
If only CP’s plans for the future were as transparent, we might get somewhere — together. I have no doubt the vast majority of SK’s want to work with CP on issues that will affect the bottom line, both yours and ours. But CP does not want to work with us. CP treats SK’s at best like an annoyance, and at worst like adversaries.
Somebody’s got to re-think this hit-and-run policymaking that has become the norm at CP. And that somebody is not any of the SK’s.
We are not an afterthought. We are the lifeblood of the business. To forget that — and to be lulled into a false of security that no one will ever present any real competition to CP — is to doom CP to a long trail of dot-com corpses. (Ever hear of a company called Excite@Home? It was da shizzle bam bizzle in 1999 — and is as relevant as the phrase da shizzle bam bizzle is today.)
CP has done all the hard work. CP was the pioneer. CP set the successful POD business model, and has shown the world how it’s done — and how it’s not done. Smart, hungry businesspeople learn from others’ mistakes — and successes — and start competing from there.
As someone up-thread said, I’m sure the competition is indeed very happy today. I can imagine the conversations: “Did you hear what CP did today? Make a note — we’re never gonna pull that on our SK’s!”
Keep pulling this “Father Knows Best” shtick while we’re still trying to recover our losses from the last cavalier decision (can you say “Commission Junction”?) that didn’t take our bottom line into consideration, wait for somebody with enough venture capital and a business plan based on what CP has done right and wrong, and CP is going to hemorrhage SK’s.
You know, CompuServe used to be the king of online services, and Mosaic was the de facto Web browser. And then somebody found a better way to connect online, and somebody else built a better browser.
Success means never taking your eye off your rear-view mirror. Don’t get too complacent, CP.
– – –
www.LavenderLiberal.com
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Republican National Committee, which has threatened to sue CafePress.com
