Punching In: The Unauthorized Adventures of a Front-Line Employee by Alex Frankel

The Barnes & Noble Review

Intuitively you understand the appeal. Who hasn't bought a drink at Starbucks, shopped at the Gap, or had a package delivered by UPS and wondered -- if only for a moment -- what it would be like to be on the other side of the transaction? True, the idea of spending every working day making complicated caffeinated drinks, selling jeans, or delivering packages probably doesn't have much long-term appeal for most of us, but there is a certain voyeuristic pleasure that comes from knowing what is going behind the door marked "employees only."

Frankel, a freelance journalist, set out to find out. Over the course of two years, he worked on the front lines of the Apple Store and Enterprise Rent-a-Car, as well as the aforementioned Gap, Starbucks, and UPS. As he is quick to point out "I was not so much interested in exposing some sort of corporate evil, but in exposing the workplace: what it felt like to work there, and what culture, if any, was handed down from the top or grew organically from the bottom."

But while that may have been the grander goal, the smaller insights he learned along the way are what make the book truly compelling. For example: want to know the secret to making it through a full day of delivering as many as 180 packages for UPS? Pack an extra pair of socks and change into them after lunch. And Frankel delivers simple but convincing insight on Apple's reputation for superior employees: They hire people who are already fanatically loyal consumers of its products.

Perhaps of even more interest to the rest of us, he learned that while the rental car company Enterprise prides itself on providing excellent customer service -- getting the rental car to the person who needs it -- the vast majority of its training materials are devoted to teaching employees how to sell high-margin insurance to renters.

In many ways Frankel is an interesting choice to write the book. The author of a book on corporate "namers" (2004's Word Craft) he doesn't seem to have much real-world business experience and so was surprised to learn that the computerized tests he takes to try to get hired at places he would like to work -- Best Buy, Home Depot, and Whole Foods -- have been designed to identify employees similar to those who have worked out well in the past. Try as he might, he can't figure out what are the right answers to questions such as these asked by Home Depot:

Suppose we contacted your most recent supervisors (or teachers). What would they say about how often you make snap decisions?

Compared to your peers, how often do you lead others?

From Barnes & Noble

It's just possible that the UPS guy who asked you to sign for a recent delivery was the author of this book. For two years, freelance writer Alex Frankel went undercover to investigate business cultures at large companies including Starbucks, the Gap, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Whole Foods, and The Container Store. What he discovered about laboring in retail and services industries will surprise readers, reassuring some and alarming others. An all-purpose access card into "Employees Only" sections.

From the Publisher

Curious to know just what happens behind the "employees only" doors of big companies, journalist Alex Frankel embarked on an undercover reporting project to find out how some of America's well-known companies win the hearts and minds of their retail and service employees. Frankel knew the only way to find answers was to go native.

During a two-year urban adventure through the world of commerce, Frankel applied for and was hired by a half-dozen companies: he proudly wore the brown uniform of the UPS driver, folded endless stacks of T-shirts at Gap, brewed espressos for the hordes at Starbucks, interviewed (but failed to get hired) at Whole Foods, enrolled in management training at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and sold iPods at the Apple Store.

At the heart of Punching In lies Frankel's quest to find out how some of the giants of commerce turn thousands of average job applicants into loyal—even fanatical—workers. How do they identify and recruit workers who will best fit their companies? How do they indoctrinate employees into their corporate cultures and make them perfect messengers of their brands? Along the way Frankel pauses long enough to wonder why he is so often immune to corporate attempts to win employees over.

In this lively and entertaining narrative, Frankel takes readers on a personal journey into the land of front-line employees to discover why some workers are so eager to drink the corporate Kool-Aid and which companies know how to serve it up best.

What People Are Saying

Dan Gross
"Like an intrepid anthropologist, Frankel immerses himself in self-contained commercial cultures and resurfaces to write with empathy and insight."--(Dan Gross, Newsweek columnist and author of Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy)

Po Bronson
"I see Alex Frankel as the Jane Goodall of the modern Workplace jungle."--(Po Bronson, author of What Should I Do With My Life?)

Rodney Rothman
"Insightful, personal, and funny. Frankel does the impossible-he gives corporate culture a soul."--(Rodney Rothman, author of Early Bird)

Product Details

• ISBN: 0060849665
  
• ISBN-13: 9780060849665
• Format: Hardcover, 240pp
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Pub. Date: November 2007
• Sales Rank: 134,893

• Table of Contents
• Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

The Other Army

After the call came inviting me to interview at UPS that November, I drove over to the building. I was directed to a snack room, where I joined a dozen other applicants, and together we sat in silence. Soon the local head of human resources, Jed Barnes, entered the room to give us an overview of the job. He had salt-and-pepper hair and was of medium muscular build. Those of us hired would ride shotgun in a truck to help reduce the amount of work for each driver during December's uptick in package movement. Barnes emphasized that it would be a fun and "energetic" job.

He handed out a job description with a checklist that reduced our required set of skills to a surprisingly specific group.

You have to be able to: Illustrate spatial awareness; Read words and numbers; Concentrate; Memorize; Recollect; Identify logical connections and determine sequence of response; Process up to two or three steps ahead.

The sheet noted that we would handle packages of up to 150 pounds and that the average package weighed 11 pounds. Barnes cautioned that we would be exposed to the season's inclement weather and that we had to like that in a job.

As he told us that UPS would supply us with uniforms, I stifled a smile—if I was going to go undercover, I wanted to look and feel the part. He said we would be paid $8.25 an hour and charged a union fee. He then handed out applications.

Before I joined UPS, I felt that I knew a fair amount about its brand, one that had held up remarkably well for decades. The image ofthis company in my mind was one where solid customer service and cutting-edge technology reigned, where the customer was always right, and where there was tremendous goodwill between customer and company, personified by its eager and enthusiastic, competent drivers. Like many others in the room that day, I had been exposed to global UPS advertising that recast the company simply as Brown and asked, "What can Brown do for you?"

UPS used that tagline in everything from recruitment advertising to prime-time TV ads, reaching both internal and external audiences. By extolling the importance of the organization to the world at large, UPS gave its employees a rallying cry, a connection to the brand, another reason to want to be a part of UPS. There was an unstated equation that also shaped how the UPS troops thought of the company: UPS = Brown—>Brown = me—>I am Brown What can we do for you?

Whereas the relative newcomer FedEx was known mainly for the speed of its deliveries ("When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight," declared its classic slogan), UPS was known for the care and responsibility with which it delivered. I wanted to know what it felt like to wear the brown uniform—to be Brown.

As I filled out my application, I struggled to make my real employment background fit into the boxes on the form. I stated that I had been mostly self-employed and listed a friend who could vouch for several years of self-employment. My main goal was to not raise any red flags, to sneak in unchallenged; knowing that I would do the required work, I was not concerned with falsifying my work history.

After we completed the paperwork, we were called next door, one by one, into a cluttered conference room. Barnes's colleague Lou, dressed in a cheap blue suit, was lower in rank and less articulate than Barnes. He asked me why UPS should hire me.

"I am responsible, and I'll work well as a team player with the driver. I am fit," I told him. "As a customer of UPS, I am a big fan of the brand, and I think that working here will be a good experience. I am available during the dates you would need me." And that was the extent of our dialogue. I got a call about five days later asking if I was still available and interested. I said yes and was told to come in the following week for a four-hour orientation.

My first day on the clock was this half-day orientation, which was loosely broken into four segments: filling out more paperwork, getting a security briefing, learning how to use the UPS handheld field computers, and listening to a safety overview in which our group checked out the inside of the iconic brown trucks for the first time.

Although most people think the approachability of UPS's drivers is one of the company's stellar qualities, we were given only a brief lesson in how to treat customers. It went something like this: If a customer is angry at you or upset that a package has not been delivered, tell them that you are sorry. Do not confront them or engage them.

The local UPS loss-prevention director came in and stared at the dozen of us filling out forms. "It takes a lot of paperwork to get a job at UPS," he said, "but very little paperwork to lose your job here." He told us that we were not to open boxes or look inside them, and that we could not conceal anything in our pockets.

We were paired up, handed a delivery information acquisition device, or DIAD, and taught how to use it. The clipboard-size computers were covered with buttons and had small screens and a user interface that was not intuitive. We practiced entering information about a hypothetical delivery, and I quickly got lost. The boards we would have in the field, we were told, were the newest technology and would allow us to move on autopilot; simply scanning bar codes would be the drill.

Bruce, the tall, skinny, middle-aged manager who had shown us how to operate the DIADs, offered some advice. He'd worked as a driver years before, he said, and the winter months could be cold. . . .