Company Culture: Gone Wild

After all the praise I have heaped on positive company culture, I just witnessed culture taken to a non-productive extreme.

I can tolerate the endless "hellos" from every employee on the floor at Von's and the painted on kind of toy soldier cheeriness at In 'n Out.

But today at Whole Foods, a well run non-union operation, I witnessed two gaggles of employees on some sort of culture building effort swoop into the store in which I was shopping. One bunch of red t-shirt wearing folks with a mobile flip chart cornered seemingly unsuspecting store employees. Problem was that they completely blocked three aisles that I saw and prevented customers from passing and buying.

Another bunch formed some sort of discussion circle around a giant cookie display and for the duration of their exercise not one package of cookies was sold.

Both efforts were not well thought through and the participants were so intent on their activities that they were oblivious to being aware of customer inconvenience.

I guess we file this one in the "too much of a good thing" folder.

Lance