Tim Hortons and Its Bad Press

How would you like to be an executive with Tim Hortons these days?  Sure, I’d like a lifetime supply of steeped tea and raisin biscuits (those are “scones” to most people), but I wouldn’t wish to deal with all that bad press.  As we all know, Canada’s favorite coffee chain recently had icing sugar all over its collective face after a server was, temporarily, dismissed for giving away a free timbit to the cranky child of a harried regular customer in London, Ontario.  Now, it is reeling from the story of a customer chastised by an employee for bringing into a Toronto store a homeless person and buying her a meal.  It appears that the homeless woman had, in the past, been disruptive.

 

On the surface, we might conclude that Tim Hortons, along with the people who make up the organization, has no compassion.  But I think the issue actually has to do with the hiring and training of service employees in a tight job market.  I recently wrote in this space of the problems I had with the airlines when it appeared that its employees were prevented from (or perhaps unwilling to) use common sense to problem solve in the workplace.  Would this not explain the actions at Tim Hortons, as well?

 

In the first case, an overzealous manager did not differentiate between giving a sweet to a child and a rule against giving away free food.  Now, I hope most sensible people would see that the provision is intended to keep the chain from providing free meals, unknowingly, to the friends and relatives of its employees.  Most sensible people would be able to interpret the intention of the policy, but are we sure that corporations are genuinely interested in having their employees use such discretion?  Would it not be easier to enforce uniformity and put out a few public relations fires along the way?  I still believe, as I did in discussing Air Canada and WestJet, that employers are encouraging fleets of automatons in the workplace.  And, as a result, employees no longer have the polished ability to solve problems.  In this latest case, the employee may well have been doing the right thing in securing the restaurant against a disruptive presence.  But who is to blame when the employee demonstrates no ability to implement the correct policy in a fashion that is appropriate to an idiosyncratic circumstance?  Did Tim’s hire this person with an eye to how she might handle a customer in good standing when that customer unwittingly introduced a disruptive presence?  Or was Tim’s concerned, again, only with the employee’s ability to read and implement policy to the letter?

 

I have been across the table from prospective hires who, when asked how they would deal with a particular situation, commented only that they would be sure to follow the organization’s policy on the matter.  In our desire for uniformity and corporate efficiency, we are now surely reaping what we have sown.