Super Staff and Security Guards

It is typical of North American and European retail businesses to keep on hand a minimum of staff which will cover necessary operations while limiting useless expenditure and ensuring a maximum return on labour. Despite this, these days there seems to be a plethora of help wanted signs about, in Vancouver anyways. Since so much of our economy has turned to service industries, it is difficult to find enough workers, and therefore the dependence by staff on an employer is also reduced. Turnover is therefore high.

In the Philippines, the opposite situation is the norm. There are way too many people and simply not enough jobs to go around. The economy here is also moving towards the service sector, as able entrepreneurs are capitalizing on western business models and either franchising existing operations, or more commonly, creating regurgitated doppelgangers of what they think is the paradigm is. As such, and for other reasons I am not really aware of, most of these service sector businesses have an excessively large staff.

When my colleagues and I wandered into an electronics store on our first day in Manila, we were helped by at least five of the 18 staff counted, in what was not a very big store (at home there might have been 5). You get said hello to immediately, and there is always someone showing you what is on offer (could teach the people at the local markets a thing or two). Coming from a culture of "I'm just looking", it is an effort to graciously accept the help. Having experience in retail business at home, North American businesses would have to whip employees to get this kind of enthusiasm out of them. This is the difference between knowing you can easily get another job, and being desperately glad that you have one. Security guards are also stationed at just about every business here. Again, this seems to be more of a custom or a make work opportunity, and you quickly become used to having your bag checked when entering malls or large stores. At the local fast food joint they act more like greeters opening the door for you.

I have been to places in Eastern Europe, where upon seeing police or guards armed with semi-automatic machine guns, I felt disconcerted, not being used to this, but have now been enough places to no longer think it strange. The guards here really don't search people well, so it is clearly more of a deterrent. In Manila many money exchange offices have signs out front that state "Leave all firearms with the guard" as if one should be told that it's not in their best interest to have a weapon when dealing with a cash teller. It is surprising that we don't see more signs like this in the U.S.