When You Work on the Frontline, Everything is Your Fault
Don't fall for it
When you work on the frontline, everything is your fault.
When customers are upset, they come to you. When metrics are down, corporate turns to you. New idea that sucks? Why isn’t it working? Must be something you did wrong because people in offices spent months hashing this out.
On Friday, New Jersey Transit’s locomotive engineers walked off the job.
I caught part of a press conference with the governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy. My blood pressure immediately spiked as he was talking. I had this flash of anger—quick and hot. I felt my hair follicles electrify.
“What the people of New Jersey need right now is for the members of the BLET to step up and meet their obligations to the public,” Murphy said on Friday.
Right. So, it’s the frontline workers' fault. They need to get back to work. They’re letting people down. That’s what’s going on here? I don’t think so. But nice try passing the blame around like a fruitcake at Christmas. Nobody wants that.
What’s really going on? If you guessed it’s not the fault of the frontline, you’d be right.
“They have money for penthouse views and pet projects, just not for their frontline workers. Enough is enough,” - Union National President Mark Wallace.
That seems more accurate.
Let’s see.
The engineers had been working without a contract since 2019.
According to NBC, the NJ Transit engineers had not received a raise in the last five years. The union said its members were the lowest-paid locomotive engineers at a major passenger railroad in the country.
“We’re just looking for some sort of equal pay for equal work,” an anonymous striking locomotive engineer said Friday. The man said Amtrak and the Long Island Railroad pay around $10 an hour more.
Now, I went down the rabbit hole on Reddit, and there were many people saying:
They get paid enough.
They should just go work for Amtrak then.
C’mon. Yeah, it’s so easy to get a job these days.
Other people were with the striking workers.
I’m for everyone on the frontline getting more money no matter what. Have you ever gone five years without a raise? It sucks. It makes you resentful. Then to watch as money is spent on frivolous crap as inflation soars.
Excuse me while I walk into the desert and lie down.
They know
Back, oh I don’t know, ten years or so, my employer was just getting into collecting email addresses. They wanted us to ask for emails when we rang people up. They came up with some sort of rewards program.
It was so confusing.
1 point = 100 If you get 100, 569 points, or whatever, you get a free mug or something.
Or a t-shirt that has been lying in the corporate office that no one wanted.
It was impossible to sell because it was impossible to explain. Also, the prizes sucked.
I kept getting heat because our email capture numbers were not that great. After about six to nine months of participating in this program, I got frustrated and said something.
“The problem here is that this program isn’t any good. No one wants it. It’s confusing; the prizes are terrible, and people can’t be bothered to hand over their email when they don’t understand what they’re getting.”
Want to know what my regional manager said?
“We know. We’re working on a new loyalty program.”
There it is.
They know.
They always know, but they want to put the blame on the stores.
Keep being loud
You think the governor of New Jersey didn’t know that the transit workers hadn’t had a raise in five years? You think he didn’t approve budgets for other things? He knew. But he stood up there behind a podium, went on national TV, and blamed the frontline workers.
They’re letting everyone down.
They need to step up.
They have obligations to the public.
So does he.
He has obligations to the frontline.
Frontline workers can grind this country to a halt. They just proved it again. Robots taking all our jobs is still a ways off. Here’s the truth: they need us. They hate that, but they need us.
True power is in us.
When we come together, we can do anything. That’s why politicians are always trying to divide us. They blame immigrants, protesters, and universities. They keep you distracted so you won’t turn your attention to them.
They want you tired and making just enough money to buy food so you don’t notice the wage theft or their new penthouse. Don’t take the blame.
Keep your head up. Keep coming together. Keep being loud. They don’t like it, but guess what?
It works.
More from The Voice of the Frontline
Kit Campoy is an accomplished retail expert and author. She leverages her two decades of leadership experience to inform and inspire.
They know....a perspective I keep forgetting. I keep thinking they need to have it explained more. No. It's too obvious. It's just hard to think they are so callus. But it's true.
Thanks for this!