Silly contest at work

At work this week, we were informed of a new contest between departments. The department who gets the most calls to corporate about how good they did, gets a free steak dinner. The department who gets the least, has to cover the other department while they go to dinner.

What they want us to do, is hand out a card to every customer and ask them to call head office and tell them how great we did today. Am I the only one who thinks this is stupid? I am not going to hand a card to a customer and beg them to call and tell some people how good I was. If they want to do that on their own, that's fine. I will not solicit a customer to try and make myself look good. If I was in a store shopping, and someone came up to me asking the same thing, I would feel very awkward. I would likely not call at all, and I may not go back to that store again for a while because that employee put me on the spot.

This is really one step further than being expected to leave a tip when you go to dinner. It is supposed to be a courtesy thing based on how well you did. We get so many customers that some of them may call anyway, or tell their friends to come shop here since we were so good. This is the real goal, not telling our "parents" how good we are behaving at work. That won't get us more business.

With any luck however, I will be gone from this retail working environment within the next year and my wife and I will be free of this kind of thing.