Just Some Short Stories

There are lots of different things that I have been thinking about over the past little while. I thought that what I would do this time in one of my Blog articles is post a few of them in which I hope I have made some interesting comments for you.

Here are the stories that I thought that I would set out.

WILL EMPLOYMENT NUMBERS DECREASE

One of the interesting things that I have seen these days is how employees are being treated by some of their employers. So many employees are effectively being laid off for a period of time that is unknown to any of them right now. I am sure that most of those employees expect to return to work probably by the end of this month. Hopefully, many of them will receive their salary money even though they are not going into work.

However, I wonder if all of these people will have a job when the crisis is over. Or, is there a totally different reason why people are going to be laid off supposedly temporarily. Here is the news article which prompted my comment:

“Bank of Montreal said on Tuesday that it will temporarily close around 130 bank branches, approximately 15 per cent of its branch network in Canada. It will also cut operating hours, although the new hours have not yet been announced...

The Royal Bank of Canada said on Tuesday that it will temporarily close “a number of branches, starting this week,” although it did not specify how many…

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce said late Monday night that it would close 206 “adviser centres,” which do not offer over-the-counter teller services.” (Mark Rendell, Globe and Mail, March 17, 2020)  

Do you see what I mean? Is this nothing more than the Banks, which may be already planning to reduce their operation by getting rid of a number of bank branches, merely experimenting right now to see what happens using the branches that they are dealing with today?

NEW PLACES FOR EMPLOYEES TO WORK

I wonder if companies in the future are going to need the size of buildings that they have now to carry on their business. They have a lot of employees who are doing work for them in their various office complexes.

However, a number of years ago I had a problem with one of the operations in my house and had to call the provider’s Customer Service Office to talk to them about sending one of their service people to my place to fix the problem. It was a rather difficult conversation that lasted quite some time but ultimately I was successful. However, notwithstanding how difficult our conversation was, the operator and I got along very well and she made sure that a good service person would be sent to my house as soon as possible to fix the problem.

No big deal, right? Yes it was! I found out that the person was in fact not working at the provider’s Telephone Centre but rather was working from her own home. That is right, people in her Department did not have to go in every day to her employee’s office to do her work. Rather, she did it from her own office.

Interestingly, something similar happened to me recently once again. A problem arose with one of the companies with which we deal when we buy a certain kind of food. Something that my wife and I purchased at a grocery store seemed to be quite dirty inside the package when we opened it up. I was quite nervous about eating that food at all. I spent about 15 to 20 minutes with the person on the phone discussing the issue. Again, it was quite a good conversation and the lady with whom I was dealing agreed to provide us with coupons to buy their product to replace the ones that we had to throw out.

The lady with whom I spoke had a very interesting accent. When the conversation about the product was over, and before we both hung up the telephone, I asked her where she was working. I assumed that she worked in Canada. However, I was wrong. She actually lived in the United States working for the parent company of the Canadian one. While her function was to deal with Canadians who called, she did not live in Canada. Moreover, as we spoke, I learned that she was not working in an office dealing with the issue but rather was working in her own home.

This is not the first time that I spoke to someone who represents a Canadian business but who lives in the United States.  How many other times will it happen where the employee is not Canadian? What will that do to employment numbers in Canada!