Stronger By Any Measure

Here are just a few:

(1) Months worth of posters are hung around a gym. The signs proclaim “Need help with equipment? Just ask the yellow t-shirts!”  Only problem — none of the customers ever see an employee wearing the yellow shirt.  After almost a year, the posters come down.

(2) Go to the gym at 7:00am in Newport Beach.

“Sorry, we’re not open yet.”

“Huh?  This is called 24-Hour fitness!”

“That’s only for some of the clubs.”

(3) Customer to the front desk at 24-Hour Fitness, Ocean Ranch:

“Hardly any of the head jacks work on the treadmills.  A bunch of us have asked and asked to have them fixed. What’s up?”

“We decide what kind of repairs we can do based upon the number of people who remember to sign in. We will only do a few at a time. Maybe this will force people to sign in.”

“Great punishment. Will drive the rest of us away. Smaaart!!!

(4) The only remaining non-spin class at 5:30am on Tuesdays is cancelled despite the fact that it always has a solid attendance. Customers are told, “You can just go find a another class later in the day if you don’t like spin.”

“But we all have to be at work. We can’t come later. Can we have the phone number of the corporate office or the general manager?”

“Sorry. I don’t know it. You can call the maintenance guy and he might have it.”

“Duh. We think he’s fixing headphone jacks in another state… or else ripping the numbers off the hand weights so we have to guess at the poundage.”

All are Bonehead leaders–no–make that bosses.   No one worthy of the title “leader” would ever pull such stupid moves.

What are some of the bonehead moves you’re seen lately?

Geoffrey James, Sales Machine, writes about bonehead bosses on BNet just in time for National Bosses Day on October 16th.  Some of the stories are ones you might already know but a few of them were new to me.  My favorite is number six when a VP order employees to take a lie detector test to determine who is stealing from a lumberyard.  When police catch the culprit it is, of course, the VP who ordered the lie detector tests!  To read the entire story and the 39 others visit Top 40 Bonehead Boss Stories.