Loyalty

The GBE2 prompt for this week is "Loyalty"

In years gone by it was always my belief that employers felt a certain amount of loyalty to their employees for supporting the company, creating strong customer bases, building a great product, doing whatever the company needed to be successful.  That the employees who went above and beyond would be given special treatment now and again because they were such a loyal and important part of said company.  I was shown this type of loyalty for many years.

I also believed that employees felt loyalty to their employers because they received a pay check from them and that in turn paid their bills and made their life better.  I always felt I owed my bosses my best and I gave it.  I felt I owed them my loyalty and I gave it.  

That was then.  Today, working relationships between bosses, owners or managers and their employees is not the same.  The loyalty seems to have disappeared.  You are a valued employer as long as no one is offering more money for less work.  You are a valued employee as long as no one is willing to do your job for less.  Loyalty for past performance or dedication on either side, has evaporated for most.  

Perhaps, this is why I am enjoying my retirement so much.  I last worked for a company that I loved.  I mean loved.  I wanted the success of that particular salon (one of thousands owned by the corp.) much more than anyone at corporate and more even than the district manager.  She had other salons to worry about and I had only this one.  I also had no say about anything!  Just a chair and a sink, product and skill.  I was the business to every person who sat in my chair.  No one at corporate existed to my clients.  My loyalty was to my clients.  My loyalty was not to the faceless voices who sent down orders and rules.  My clients were loyal to me.  They didn't care who else called the shots, they cared about me and my ability to make them look good.  They were loyal to me, because I did that.  I was loyal to them because they paid my bills.


I was loyal to them because I liked them.  

I think I liked that way of thinking much more than the corporate rules and regulations of how to talk to, how to deal with, how to be a hairdresser in the new millennium.  I'm old, but I still know how to respect people and earn their respect.  Sadly, that is just not that common now.


The corporate life is good for many people, but I think for me, it was time to hang up my license and not try to build a bridge of loyalty between myself and an entity that could care less about employee number 357206523-Durand.  Yeah, that's not for me.


Jo