CARTER CLEANING COMPANY

 Jennifer Carter graduated from State University in June 2005, and, after
considering several job offers, decided to do what she always planned to do go
into business with her father, Jack Carter. Jack Carter opened his first Laundromat
in 1995 and his second in 1998. The main attraction of these coin laundries
businesses for him was that they were capital- rather than labor-intensive. Thus,
once the investment in machinery was made, the stores could be run with just one
unskilled attendant and none of the labor problems one normally expects from
being in the retail service business. The attractiveness of operating with virtually
no skilled labor notwithstanding, Jack had decided by 1999 to expand the services
in each of his stores to include the dry cleaning and pressing of clothes. He
embarked, in other words, on a strategy of related diversification by adding new
services that were related to and consistent with his existing coin laundry
activities. He added these for several reasons. He wanted to better utilize the
unused space in the rather large stores he currently had under lease. Furthermore,
he was, as he put it, tired of sending out the dry cleaning and pressing work that
came in from our coin laundry clients to 5 miles away, who then took most of
what should have been our profits. To reflect the new, expanded line of services,
he renamed each of his two stores Carter Cleaning Centers and was sufficiently
satisfied with their performance to open four more of the same type of stores over
the next 5 years. Each store had its own on-site manager and, on average, about
seven employees and annual revenues of about $500,000. It was this six-store
chain that Jennifer joined after graduating. Her understanding with her father was
that she would serve as a troubleshooter/consultant to the elder Carter with the
aim of both learning the business and bringing to it modern management concepts
and techniques for solving the business s problems and facilitating its growth.

Questions
1. Make a list of five specific HR problems you think Carter Cleaning will have to grapple with.
2. What would you do first if you were Jennifer?

 As a recent graduate and as a person who keeps up with the business press,
Jennifer is familiar with the benefits of programs such as total quality
management and high-performance work systems. Jack has installed a total
quality program of sorts at Carter, and it has been in place for about 5 years.
This program takes the form of employee meetings. Jack holds employee meetings
periodically, but particularly when there is a serious problem in a store such as poor-quality work
or machine breakdowns. When problems like these arise, instead of trying to diagnose them
himself or with Jennifer, he contacts all the employees in that store and meets with them as soon
as the store closes. Hourly employees get extra pay for these meetings. The meetings have been
useful in helping Jack to identify and rectify several problems. For example, in one store all the
fine white blouses were coming out looking dingy. It turned out that the cleaner/spotter had been
ignoring the company rule that required cleaning (boiling down) the perchloroethylene cleaning
fluid before washing items like these. As a result, these fine white blouses were being washed in
cleaning fluid that had residue from other, earlier washes.
 Jennifer now wonders whether these employee meetings should be expanded to give the
employees an even bigger role in managing the Carter stores quality. We can’t be everywhere
watching everything all the time, she said to her father. Yes, but these people only earn about $8
to $15 per hour. Will they really want to act like mini-managers? he replied.

Questions
1. Would you recommend that the Carters expand their quality program? If so, specifically what
form should it take?
2. Assume the Carters want to institute a high-performance work system as a test program in one
of their stores. Write a one-page outline summarizing important HR practices you think they
should focus on.

 Based on her review of the stores, Jennifer concluded that one of the first matters
she had to attend to involved developing job descriptions for her store managers.
As Jennifer tells it, her lessons regarding job descriptions in her basic
management and HR management courses were insufficient to fully convince her
of the pivotal role job descriptions actually play in the smooth functioning of an
enterprise. Many times, during her first few weeks on the job, Jennifer found
herself asking one of her store managers why he was violating what she knew to
be recommended company policies and procedures. Repeatedly, the answers were
either Because, I didn’t know it was my job or because I didn’t know that was the
way we were supposed to do it. Jennifer knew that a job description, along with a
set of standards and procedures that specified what was to be done and how to do
it, would go a long way toward alleviating this problem. In general, the store
manager is responsible for directing all store activities in such a way that quality
work is produced, customer relations and sales are maximized, and profitability is
maintained through effective control of labor, supply, and energy costs. In
accomplishing that general aim, a specific store manager s duties and
responsibilities include quality control, store appearance and cleanliness,
customer relations, bookkeeping and cash management, cost control and
productivity, damage control, pricing, inventory control, spotting and cleaning,
machine maintenance, purchasing, employee safety, hazardous waste removal,
human resource administration, and pest control.

Questions
1. What should be the format and final form of the store manager s job description?
2. Is it practical to specify standards and procedures in the body of the job description, or should
these be kept separate?
3. How should Jennifer go about collecting the information required for the standards,
procedures, and job description?
4. What, in your opinion, should the store manager s job description look like and contain?

 If you were to ask Jennifer and her father what the main problem was in running
their firm, their answer would be quick and short: hiring good people. Originally
begun as a string of coin-operated Laundromats requiring virtually no skilled
 help, the chain grew to six stores, each heavily dependent on skilled managers,
cleaner/spotters, and pressers. Employees generally have no more than a high
school education (often less), and the market for them is very competitive. Over a
typical weekend, literally dozens of want ads for experienced pressers or
cleaner/spotters can be found in area newspapers. All these people usually are
paid around $15 per hour, and they change jobs frequently. Jennifer and her father
thus face the continuing task of recruiting and hiring qualified workers out of a
pool of individuals they feel are almost nomadic in their propensity to move from
area to area and job to job. Turnover in their stores (as in the stores of many of
their competitors) often approaches 400%. Don’t talk to me about human
resources planning and trend analysis, says Jennifer. We are fighting an economic
war and I’m happy just to be able to round up enough live applicants to be able to
keep my trenches fully manned.

Questions
1. First, how would you recommend we go about reducing the turnover in our stores?
2. Provide a detailed list of recommendations concerning how we should go about increasing our
pool of acceptable job applicants so we no longer face the need to hire almost anyone who walks
in the door.

 Jennifer Carter, of the Carter Cleaning Centers, and her father have what the latter
describes as an easy but hard job when it comes to screening job applicants. It is
easy because for two important jobs the people who actually do the pressing and
those who do the cleaning/spotting the applicants are easily screened with about
20 minutes of on-the-job testing. As with typists, Jennifer points out, Applicants
either know how to press clothes fast enough or how to use cleaning chemicals
and machines, or they don t, and we find out very quickly by just trying them out
on the job. On the other hand, applicant screening for the stores can also be
frustratingly hard because of the nature of some of the other qualities that Jennifer
would like to screen for. Two of the most critical problems facing her company
are employee turnover and employee honesty.

Jennifer and her father sorely need to implement practices that will reduce the rate of
employee turnover. If there is a way to do this through employee testing and screening
techniques, Jennifer would like to know about it because of the management time and money
that are now being wasted by the never-ending need to recruit and hire new employees. Of even
greater concern to Jennifer and her father is the need to institute new practices to screen out those
employees who may be predisposed to steal from the company. Employee theft is an enormous
problem for the Carter Cleaning Centers, and one that is not limited to employees who handle the
cash. For example, the cleaner/spotter and/or the presser often open the store themselves, without
a manager present, to get the day s work started, and it is not unusual to have one or more of
these people steal supplies or run a route. Running a route means that an employee canvasses his
or her neighborhood to pick up people s clothes for cleaning and then secretly cleans and presses
them in the Carter store, using the company s supplies, gas, and power. It would also not be
unusual for an unsupervised person (or his or her supervisor, for that matter) to accept a 1-hour
rush order for cleaning or laundering, quickly clean and press the item, and return it to the
customer for payment without making out a proper ticket for the item posting the sale. The
money, of course, goes into the worker s pocket instead of into the cash register. The more
serious problem concerns the store manager and the counter workers who actually handle the
cash.

According to Jack Carter, you would not believe the creativity employees use to get
around the management controls we set up to cut down on employee theft. As one extreme
example of this felonious creativity, Jack tells the following story: To cut down on the amount of
money my employees were stealing, I had a small sign painted and placed in front of all our cash
registers. The sign said: YOUR ENTIRE ORDER FREE IF WE DON T GIVE YOU A CASH
REGISTER RECEIPT WHEN YOU PAY. CALL 552 0235. It was my intention with this sign
to force all our cash-handling employees to give receipts so the cash register would record them
for my accountants. After all, if all the cash that comes in is recorded in the cash register, then
we should have a much better handle on stealing in our stores. Well, one of our managers found
a diabolical way around this. I came into the store one night and noticed that the cash register
this manager was using just didn’t look right, although the sign was placed in front of it. It turned
out that every afternoon at about 5:00 P.M. when the other employees left, this character would
pull his own cash register out of a box that he hid underneath our supplies. Customers coming in
would notice the sign and, of course, the fact that he was meticulous in ringing up every sale. But
unknown to them and us, for about 5 months the sales that came in for about an hour every day
went into his cash register, not mine. It took us that long to figure out where our cash for that
store was going.

Questions
1. What would be the advantages and disadvantages to Jennifer’s company of routinely
administering honesty tests to all its employees?
2. Specifically, what other screening techniques could the company use to screen out theft-prone
and turnover prone employees, and how exactly could these be used?
3. How should her company terminate employees caught stealing, and what kind of procedure
should be set up for handling reference calls about these employees when they go to other
companies looking for jobs?

 Like virtually all the other HR-related activities at Carter Cleaning Centers, the
company currently has no organized approach to interviewing job candidates.
Store managers, who do almost all the hiring, have a few of their own favorite
questions that they ask. But in the absence of any guidance from top management,
they all admit their interview performance leaves something to be desired.
Similarly, Jack Carter himself is admittedly most comfortable dealing with what
he calls the nuts and bolts machinery aspect of his business and has never felt
particularly comfortable having to interview management or other job applicants.
Jennifer is sure that this lack of formal interviewing practices, procedures, and
training account for some of the employee turnover and theft problems.
Therefore, she wants to do something to improve her company’s batting average
in this important area.

Questions
1. In general, what can Jennifer do to improve her employee interviewing practices? Should she
develop interview forms that list questions for management and non-management jobs? If so,
how should these look and what questions should be included? Should she initiate a computer-
based interview approach? If so why and how?
2. Should she implement an interview training program for her managers, and if so, specifically
what should be the content of such a training program? In other words, if she did decide to start
training her management people to be better interviewers, what should she tell them and how
should she tell it to them?

 The Carter Cleaning Centers currently have no formal orientation or training

policies or procedures, and Jennifer believes this is one reason why the standards
to which she and her father would like employees to adhere are generally not
followed. The Carters would prefer that certain practices and procedures be used
in dealing with the customers at the front counters. For example, all customers
should be greeted with what Jack refers to as a big hello. Garments they drop off
should immediately be inspected for any damage or unusual stains so these can be
brought to the customer s attention, lest the customer later return to pick up the
garment and erroneously blame the store. The garments are then supposed to be
immediately placed together in a nylon sack to separate them from other
customers’ garments. The ticket also has to be carefully written up, with the
customer s name and telephone number and the date precisely and clearly noted
on all copies. The counter person is also supposed to take the opportunity to try to
sell the customer additional services such as waterproofing, or simply notify the
customer that Now that people are doing their spring cleaning, we’re having a
special on drapery cleaning all this month. Finally, as the customer leaves, the
counter person is supposed to make a courteous comment like Have a nice day or
Drive safely. Each of the other jobs in the stores pressing, cleaning and spotting,
and so forth similarly contain certain steps, procedures, and most importantly,
standards the Carters would prefer to see upheld.

The company has had problems, Jennifer feels, because of a lack of adequate employee
training and orientation. For example, two new employees became very upset last month when
they discovered that they were not paid at the end of the week, on Friday, but instead were paid
(as are all Carter employees) on the following Tuesday. The Carters use the extra two days in
part to give them time to obtain everyone s hours and compute their pay. The other reason they
do it, according to Jack, is that frankly, when we stay a few days behind in paying employees it
helps to ensure that they at least give us a few days’ notice before quitting on us. While we are
certainly obligated to pay them anything they earn, we find that psychologically they seem to be
less likely to just walk out on us Friday evening and not show up Monday morning if they still
haven’t gotten their pay from the previous week. This way they at least give us a few days’
notice so we can find a replacement. There are other matters that could be covered during
orientation and training, says Jennifer. These include company policy regarding paid holidays,
lateness and absences, health benefits (there are none, other than workers compensation),
substance abuse, and eating or smoking on the job (both forbidden), and general matters like the
maintenance of a clean and safe work area, personal appearance and cleanliness, time sheets,
personal telephone calls, and personal e-mail. Jennifer believes that implementing orientation
and training programs would help to ensure that employees know how to do their jobs the right
way. And she and her father further believe that it is only when employees understand the right
way to do their jobs that there is any hope their jobs will be accomplished the way the Carters
want them to be accomplished.

Questions
1. Specifically, what should the Carters cover in their new employee orientation program and
how should they convey this information?
2. In the HR management course Jennifer took, the book suggested using a job instruction sheet
to identify tasks performed by an employee. Should the Carter Cleaning Centers use a form like
this for the counter person’s job? If so, what should the form look like, say, for a counter person?
3. Which specific training techniques should Jennifer use to train her pressers, her
cleaner/spotters, her managers, and her counter people? Why should these training techniques be
used?

 After spending several weeks on the job, Jennifer was surprised to discover that
her father had not formally evaluated any employee s performance for all the
years that he had owned the business. Jack s position was that he had a hundred
higher-priority things to attend to, such as boosting sales and lowering costs, and,
in any case, many employees didn’t stick around long enough to be appraisable
anyway. Furthermore, contended Jack, manual workers such as those doing the
pressing and the cleaning did periodically get positive feedback in terms of praise
from Jack for a job well done, or criticism, also from Jack, if things did not look
right during one of his swings through the stores. Similarly, Jack was never shy
about telling his managers about store problems so that they, too, got some
feedback on where they stood.

This informal feedback notwithstanding, Jennifer believes that a more formal appraisal
approach is required. She believes that there are criteria such as quality, quantity, attendance, and
punctuality that should be evaluated periodically even if a worker is paid on piece rate.
Furthermore, she feels quite strongly that the managers need to have a list of quality standards
for matters such as store cleanliness, efficiency, safety, and adherence to budget on which they
know they are to be formally evaluated.

Questions
1. Is Jennifer right about the need to evaluate the workers formally? The managers? Why or why
not?
2. Develop a performance appraisal method for the workers and managers in each store.

 Carter Cleaning Centers does not have a formal wage structure nor does it have
rate ranges or use compensable factors. Wage rates are based mostly on those
prevailing in the surrounding community and are tempered with an attempt on the
part of Jack Carter to maintain some semblance of equity between what workers
with different responsibilities in the stores are paid. Carter does not make any
formal surveys when determining what his company should pay. He peruses the
want ads almost every day and conducts informal surveys among his friends in
 the local chapter of the laundry and cleaners trade association. While Jack has
taken a seat of- the-pants approach to paying employees, his salary schedule has
been guided by several basic pay policies. Although many of his colleagues
adhere to a policy of paying minimum rates, Jack has always followed a policy of
paying his employees about 10% above what he feels are the prevailing rates, a
policy that he believes reduces turnover while fostering employee loyalty. Of
somewhat more concern to Jennifer is her father s informal policy of paying men
about 20% more than women for the same job. Her father s explanation is, they’re
stronger and can work harder for longer hours, and besides they all have families
to support.

Questions
1. Is the company at the point where it should be setting up a formal salary structure based on a
complete job evaluation? Why?
2. Is Jack Carter s policy of paying 10% more than the prevailing rates a sound one, and how
could that be determined?
3. Similarly, is Carter s male female differential wise? If not, why not?
4. Specifically, what would you suggest Jennifer do now with respect to her company s pay plan?