Kelly Services

Cary,

You'll be hearing from the site administrators shortly. Or perhaps your mommy might find out what you are up to in your bedroom all day first.

Descartes,

Apparently you didn't read the OP. They didn't determine that the risk posed to a person in their employ was higher than what their tolerance was for potential liability. When Anita reviewed the form, she admitted that she incorrectly scored us at 77 points, when the actual score was 111 points. So, there was no such assessment. I have the form, in her handwriting, as well as the admission of error in an email from her.

You are mistaken.

Does that change your opinion?

No Cary, I am doing what I said and explained. But, thank you for admitting you are here for no other purpose than to stir up trouble, and perhaps tell off people with whom you disagree with generally.

You ask what am I here doing - I've explained. Now ask yourself what, exactly, you are accomplishing for yourself, or anyone else.

I do appreciate a devil's advocate - if you were actually engaging the topic. But, you are making broad assumptions about me, and doing nothing more than making personal attacks. You are wild guessing as to my state of mind, and projecting perhaps what you think are emotions you might have yourself in similar situations. You don't speak for me, so don't try.

In the meantime, if you have nothing else to say about the case I've brought up, perhaps you can go bother someone else, since that is your only reason for being here.

Cary,

Kinda proves that you are here on troll duty. Zero to add to the conversation about the topic at hand. In order to judge me as "easy", you'd have to have experience harassing others.

Meanwhile, seems a bit odd for an ethics professor to be marking up photos calling people names. Just sayin'.

Yes or no, do you have anything to say about what Kelly Services did?

So Cary,

Maybe the problem is WPM - as in words per minute. I'm at my desk, working on accounting today. When I do an upload, or there is something else in Quickbooks that takes 2-3 minutes, I swing over to my other computer and type. These long posts you are complaining about take me a couple minutes. Perhaps you are a hunter-pecker, and such writing would take you hours. That's not my problem.

Glad to hear that you are concerned for my time.

So much so, that you ignore the core issue. If they didn't want to do business with me, the time to say so was BEFORE wasting my time. Think of all the crazy rants I could have typed in that time! Oh my!

Meanwhile, not one peep from a reported professor of ethics at CSU (really Colorado State, we are neighbors?) about the ethics of what these folks over at Kelly have done. Not even a token "Well, they WERE wrong, but in spite of it, you should move on."

I am moving on, in terms of the task at hand - hiring a new employee. We've always direct hired, but were interested in staying focused on our operations vs. trying to do what these "professionals" do every day.

I am not, however willing to let go of the incident due to the time I have or will spend. Because that means that the next person/company that the Fort Collins office treats in this manner received that treatment because management apparently approves of this practice. No government official is going to stop them.

The only thing that will is documentation so that future potential clients can find this information when they do their due diligence online, and perhaps in the public records created by a Small Claims case, which doesn't allow the poker-game lawyers play trying to drain the other party of resources. It's just two parties with their stories and documentation, and a binding decision. Despite your naysaying (and for all I know, you are working for Kelly Services), I am still willing to have my day in court (or a mediator's office, which is actually more likely).

Shame goes a long way to correct some behaviors.

More pictures of the "unsafe" warehouse.

So, Descartes. They "determined" this via a form that they filled out incorrectly. They admitted that. So, that wasn't the real reason.

Again, cut-off for "acceptable business" was 107 points out of 133. We scored 111, when it was scored and totalled correctly. Anita Hall admitted she screwed up the form, and used as an excuse that she was "new to the business".

The original scoring was 77 points, and she excluded points that did not apply (aka Not Applicable or N/A). On some sections we got the points, on others we didn't. She was inconsistent. Also, she conveniently checked "no" for boxes that required asking us if we were "willing" to do something. You can't check "no" when you haven't even bothered to ask us if we are "willing". It makes absolutely no sense.

So, given the fact that we were absolutely within the "safe" parameters even by their own evaluation, it's clear from how they shut down pursuit of the sweetheart deal that they were using that as bait to get us in the door, and then they were planning to push the other more-expensive product upon us, once they knew our timeline would put pressure on us.

You miss again the point that we began meeting with them 5 months before we needed to hire our next employee. The secret surprise safety inspection was 1 day before the hiring process was to begin. If they were so concerned about our safety, then why not perform the safety inspection way back in February before EITHER of us wasted any time on this.

Oh, and to the point of "they didn't want to do business with you", they DID. They kept insisting that we HAD to choose the 20% Hire option, and only when I said "I am not interested in that product", and requested that they fix the problem of sending the original email did they start the process of shutting down the entire relationship. It changed to "we don't want to do business with you anymore" when I pursued TALKING TO ANITA HALL'S SUPERIOR, LEAH.

As far as I am concerned, that is an employee that knows they screwed up, and are using the police and any other means possible to simply sweep it under the rug.

Here's a picture of our unsafe warehouse, and the suspect ladder.

Of course, CaryGrant. I am a nut. More of a freak. Actually, my first entrepreneurial business had a business card that said Chief Executive Freak (which is still on my LinkedIn profile for that era).

Attached is the other half of debnroo. I assume you'll have something negative to say about me and my wife besides where we live, and our mental state of health. Anonymous trolls always do.

Feel free to show your face and let us know where you get your position of superiority to judge others.

Cary,

You can make this personal, call me names, take things out of context. Yet, not a word about what they actually did. There's a name for what you are doing, and it's been around for a while. You are apparently this website's troll-de-jour.

There is plenty of negative commentary about Kelly Services. Glass Door offers a good perspective on what the employees think from the inside too.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-Kelly-Services-EI_IE1564.11, 25.htm

They have a 3.1 rating out of 5.0. Not exactly stellar. 54 of the 204 reviews from employees are dissatisfied or worse. That's a pretty poor record, relative to other companies on the site. Citigroup gets a 2.9, and has similar bad reviews. Apple gets a 3.8, and you can see their employee reviews are skewed towards positive.

No public rating system is perfect, but they do tell a story. And, for Kelly Services, their public record is poor. They mistreat their employees and their customers on a regular basis. Are there good people in the organization? Yep, there always is. However, when the culture becomes dominated by negative folks, and their managers back up the negativity by shooing complainers out the door (or calling the police on them when they demand apologies or fixing the mess they create), then it crosses a line.

That's where Kelly Services is.

The caveat in my statement you miss is that there isn't anything SPECIFIC about the practice of offering Temp-to-Hire, then taking away the sweetheart offer and pushing for the traditional 20% of annual salary to hire with a 30-day guarantee (two different products). That is what is missing from the Internet, and what my public complaint (that they had plenty of time and options to avoid by apologizing, cleaning up their mess, and offering to pay for the lost/wasted time) is here to accomplish.

That specific practice is the heart of the complaint. And, not one word from you about their practice, other than to say "they didn't want to do business with you." You are right. They didn't. Which they could have said before wasting my time. Before dangling a product that was enticing, that they didn't really want to follow through on delivering. Before interfering with my business by sending an email to my employees making a false statement about the overall safety (which they have owned and apologized for in writing). You keep ignoring all that.

Now, troll, besides sitting around all day calling people names and being a right-wing corporate apologist for corporate bad behavior, what is it that you do?

We can presume you use the name Cary Grant (indicating your age, as most people under 30 wouldn't even know who that was) because you want to spew your bile behind the safety of your anonymity. The biggest problem on the Internet, IMHO.

My name, in contrast, points directly to me and my business. I live in the open public square, and I own the material I post and write. And, I stand up for what I believe. I don't snipe at people from behind the presumed safety of fake names and avatars. And, you are free to look up online my "trailer". The one with the garden that I blog about. The one we built in 2007, and there's a blog about that too. Feel free to post a picture of your home.

So, troll, why don't you reveal yourself a little bit, and then comment on the issue rather than make personal attacks?

Cary,

I own the company. Sounds like you have taken a side. That's fine. Meanwhile, doesn't seem like there is much substance to your position - you want this behind closed doors or swept under the rug. Exactly what Kelly Services wants. Typical corporate position. It doesn't make it "wiser", objectively. It simply means you are one who takes orders, follows rules, no matter how unethical or quasi-legal.

Let me guess: You are a republican who has taken some time from posting over at FreeRepublic to razz me.

In the meantime, the purpose of being thorough in public posts is education. Consider this a donation of my valuable time for the benefit of the wider community of business consumers of their services. I did research prior to engaging with Kelly Services, and nothing on the Internet I had found gave me warning about what they were doing prior to doing it. Now there is something to help those who might be confronted with those practices.

If you can't appreciate doing something for the greater good, sounds like you believe in a different world than I do. Meanwhile, if you have any defense of the specific actions taken by Kelly Services, feel free to write up what they are.

There is nothing here that they do not already know - they are clear on both what they did, as well as being confronted regarding their actions. There is no hand to top. I operate openly and honestly.

You can label it however you please (interested in what you feel is the appropriate label) if you don't like bait and switch. The facts are clear: They offered one service (Temp-to-Hire), and marked down the cost to buyout the employee. When it came time to act upon that offer, and once we are in a timeline where we would be pressed to find a matching offer and/or act on our own (what we have been doing for 12 years in business), they surprised us with this bogus claim to back out of the deal. And, were PUSHING the more expensive option in lieu of what was originally offered.

I call that bait and switch.

Regardless, they engaged in a process with us that required us to have out-of-office meetings with them (their choice), required an on-site meeting that turned out to be an inspection, and then stalled us for multiple hours on the phone for two days, in some cases tying up 3 of our managers at a time in conference calls to go over their surprise "safety inspection", which was at best incompetently done. There's no question whatsoever on that, as Anita has admitted to the errors multiple times with multiple witnesses. This is also not to mention there is documentation in her handwriting showing which boxes she checked, how she mis-scored the form, and the obvious issue of questions on the form that required that someone at our company be asked before she checks "no" in a checkbox.

Here's a question: If they "decided not to do business with us", then why do the following:

After putting in writing that "Temp-to-Hire" is not available (due to the "safety evaluation"), why spend 45 minutes on the phone with myself and my GM going through the written documentation point-by-point, only to, at the very end of the call, say "yes, I made these errors" but "no, we won't offer that product to you any longer"?

That is wasting our time (which is money), not to mention interfering with the planned and actual operation of our business (also money + liability due to the erroneous email, for which we already have a written apology).

I understand your point. From a corporate legal perspective. The problem with that approach is that it's actually a poker game, where the company with the most chips bullies the opponent by either using stalling tactics (which would drive up my legal costs at several hundred dollars per hour), or by using methods of intimidation as a bluffing action.

Small Claims court is different. You appear before a mediator, without lawyers, and either work things out, or have the official make a binding decision. The poker game of lawyer vs. lawyer isn't part of that process.

If the case is decided against us, the cost is $45 and a few hours at my local courthouse in my jurisdiction. But the greater point is served - there is a permanent public record of the dispute and their business practice that they can't sweep under the rug, or pay to go away (as with the corrupt BBB). Furthermore, it sets an example for other small businesses that may consider engaging Kelly Services, so that they can have their eyes wide open when Temp-to-Hire is promoted strongly in the sales process, and they ask the sweet and innocent question of "can we just see your place and look around". They will now know to proactively ASK whether it is a safety inspection, and have the right to ask for the form WHICH HAS MULTIPLE PLACES FOR THE CLIENT TO SIGN THE FORM, indicating it was never designed to be done in secret, behind the back of the client.

Only by educating future victims of this practice will there be any effect on how Kelly Services offers and then actually provides these services at the cost they quote. There is no authoritative body that will stop them, or slow them down. They are obviously not going to change their practices, when the head of HR is defending what happened here.

It's ethically wrong, and I think, even though you are critical of my actions, agree.

My goal is to be a guinea pig of the Small Claims legal process, to see whether it can be successfully used to recoup the very real costs to my business. If they "didn't want to do business with us", then step 1 should have been an open/honest evaluation (could be the same form), filled out properly (no assumptions that turn out to be wrong under examination), and then, if we exceeded the "acceptable" threshold, not used as the weak "it's not me, it's corporate policy" reason to then try to push the secondary product when they know we have a business timeline and business plan that requires we hire somebody in short order.

This is no different than a mortgage lender that, 12 hours before closing, surprises the people who have already moved out of their old apartment with a new set of interest rates 2% higher with double the down payment, even though they already signed documents locking in the rate and down payment. That's not a hypothetical, I've seen it happen not only to us, but to others. That's not "they decided not to do business with us", it's an unethical business practice by people who are motivated to make more money by springing a surprise on people who they know are boxed-in in some way. Plain and simple. I call it Bait and Switch, you can call it whatever you like.