Devaluing Sales Practices

Using the "scare tactic" to motivate employees to produce is degrading, counterproductive, and devaluing.
This is a subject that's been bugging me for a long time. I can't get over how some businesses are still using this strategy. Especially sales oriented companies. I was in sales and customer service for over 25 years and I've seen it all: bad management, negative reinforcement, poor customer service, verbal bashing, and lack of validation from management. Whatever way you look at it, it's ALL counterproductive.
The practice that really irks me is negative verbal bashing in the workplace. I had a manager who was not above berating an employee in front of others, including me. This manager had no respect for employees as people. Job performance was recognized by an "atta boy", followed by "But......". When a situation arose that made it necessary to justify or defend a particular business related decision, we were interrogated to the point of humiliation. Once our incumbency was confirmed "correct", this manager would acknowledge the action as positive, then immediately follow the positive affirmation with a negative, "Yes, but you......", meaning ‘yes you made the right decision but you didn't ..blah blah blah...' It created a demoralizing environment, to say the least.
We employees were often at odds with each other and the atmosphere was negatively charged. It seemed that everyone walked around on pins and needles waiting for the next eruption. In addition, the attitude spilled over into the manager's treatment of patrons. There were repeated customer complaints against this manager regarding attitude, lack of tactful customer service, and blatant rudeness. Many of the complaints were directed to me. In other words, instead of going to the top (human resources at the corporate office), the disgruntled customers usually came to me with their grievance. When I advised them to report the incident to home office, they never followed through, as far as I knew.
Here's another one: if your sales aren't what they want it to be, you'll be fired. In other words, Sell, or else! The old "ultimatum" motivator. Whatever happened to , "We work as a team to meet quota. Let me know how we can work together to achieve our quotas". I had a manager tell me 'Sell or you're fired' on the day I was hired. (Hired, not fired). I brushed it off as a possible "misunderstanding of meanings". Sure, it was a sales job, hourly wage plus commission. But you don't come at a new employee that way if you expect them to produce! And, get a load of this: this little sales manager was fresh out of college with a Bachelor Degree in Business Administration (I guess that qualified him to manage a sales team, duh!), with NO PRIOR SALES experience, other than what he received in training. Training for what? The Sales Manager position! He turned out to be verbally abusive, as well as incompetent. I left the company after 6 months. I had developed extreme abdominal pains, stress, and paranoia to the point of borderline schizophrenia. He was fired a year later. For what? Inability to meet sales standards for his branch!
I had another manager who was a real wonder. This one often asked me to cover his blunders in order to save his butt. In addition, I watched this manager tell a bald-face LIE to an employee. This supervisor stood right there and told the employee her check had not come in yet, when, in fact, it was sitting in the desk drawer the whole time! I never could figure out why this particular manager treated employees this way. It happened on several occasions and absolutely infuriated me! This was the "management role model" that was supposed to motivate me to produce sales. My bad for not reporting it to the corporate office, but they wouldn't have believed me anyway. The manager had already ruined my credibility by convincing upper management it was my doing on some major blunders. I was the company "Patsy".
Yes, using the "scare tactic" is similar to subliminal bashing. Actually, it's rather blatant. I want to stress how counterproductive and devaluing it is for employees to be subjected to this negative type of "motivation". I understand why the quality of customer service has decreased so much in the last 10 years: using the "scare tactic" doesn't work! Bad management and negative reinforcement have both contributed to the the decline in good customer service. I'm convinced that the root of poor customer relations originates from within the management circle. I speak from experience.