The death of professionalism
I'm going to start this post by revealing what you might call my conservative temperament. But don't worry; I'm going to bring things back to the Montagnard side of the aisle before I finish. And I start with the classic attention-getter: an anecdote.
Tonight I spent just over three hours in a UPS office in Landover, MD waiting to pick up a package. The process by which this package was supposed to make it from Florida to my greedy hands has been (pardon the vulgarity) a Godforsaken clusterfuck from start to finish. UPS attempted to deliver my 40-pound parcel on a Friday while I was at work; they left a note saying they'd try again Monday between noon and five. Since I work normal hours these days, that meant I wouldn't be there. After calling UPS and navigating past the Scylla and Charybdis that comprise their automatic phone network, I reached a human (or perhaps a replicant; I'm not picky these days). I was informed of these facts: 1) I could not ask them to deliver earlier in the morning before I left, and I could not ask them to deliver after 5; 2) I could not have the package redirected to my office; and 3) I could not get them to leave the package in the lobby. I asked them not to attempt further deliveries, as I would drive up to Ardwick Ardmore Drive (where I would find both aardvarks and aardwolves) and pick it up the next day. This phone call took place at 9:14 in the AM Monday. I left work early to make the trip today. I arrived there at 6:30 and was informed that their system was down and (what's worse) the package had been sent out again for another delivery attempt, despite my express instructions regarding just that issue. And so I had to wait until the driver returned, and then we were able to get my package off the truck so I could go home and eat ice cream.
But I have only good things to say about the UPS staff who I dealt with in Maryland. The driver may have been taking his sweet southern time, and the people at UPS Customer Service apparently don't know their collective ass from their collective elbow, but the UPS people on the ground in Landover were helpful, informative, and nothing but professional. And that's the kind of thing that seems rare these days. For example, we've been trying to put in a floor in one of our offices at Georgetown. We've been calling various contractors to get this going; of the dozen or so people I called today, only one answered the phone, and not one returned my call. My coworkers have had similar success. Similarly, when I was apartment hunting, I made almost one hundred calls over the course of two days. A grand total of two of those calls resulted in any sort of human contact. What's missing from these transactions is professionalism.
I'm not sure when professionalism started to go out of style, but I'm not happy about it. Even though I loathed my job at Target, I made a point of accomplishing the tasks set out for me in a quick, responsible, and mannerly fashion. I keep the same standards at all my jobs. This means returning phone calls, keeping customers or clients informed, and generally performing the tasks that I get paid to do. What I want is to receive the same treatment at the businesses I frequent. In my experience, such treatment is increasingly remarkable (and the increasing number of compliments I receive for my service suggests that the experience of others parallels mine). Bear in mind that I don't have any numbers to back up this appraisal.
Here's where the conservative part comes in: I think this phenomenon is relatively recent, and I want to roll back the clock and bring back the old ways. I often find that service is superior in small locally-owned businesses, and I try to frequent such establishments for that reason. I suspect that the reason service is better at small locally-owned businesses is that they are tied more tightly to the community, and this rootedness provides a number of incentives toward good service. To wit—local businesses often rely on word of mouth for their advertising, and as such they cannot afford bad publicity. Local businesses also depend on a local clientele, and as such cannot alienate their customers (since the customers can go elsewhere while the business cannot). Finally, the managers and owners for franchise operations and chain stores are essentially anonymous; they aren't visible to the customer most of the time. But the owners of local businesses are typically readily identified, and this means that bad service is associated with a particular businessman. Such a reputation can be hard to shake.
And now I'm going to bring in the liberal sucker-punch. The reason professionalism is dying out is because of American corporate culture. The move toward "big box" stores and franchise operations removes the incentives I've just described. Further, workers are increasingly alienated from the results of their labor (yeah, I'm invoking Marx. What of it?). Drawing on my own experiences as a Target employee (for approx. seven years), I noticed that my effort to provide good service went unrewarded. Now, I made the effort because it is what I ought to have done, and not because I was bucking for a raise—which is good, because if I were bucking for a raise I'd have had the wrong approach altogether. But not everyone was raised to respect professionalism (as I was) and not everyone thinks that professionalism is a virtue (as I do), and such people aren't going to be professional unless 1) they'll be punished if they aren't or 2) they'll be rewarded if they are. And big box stores and franchise operations aren't in the business of giving out generous bonuses for appropriate conduct for their lowest-level employees. And the threat of termination will (to paraphrase Office Space) motivate people to work just hard enough to keep their jobs. In a similar vein, I've noticed an effort to keep people out of the loop as much as possible. Consider the UPS customer service line. When you call, you are asked if you want to track a package, ship a package, etc. In the tracking category, you are asked for a tracking number. If you give them a number, they tell you the information from their website and ask if you have any other numbers. At no point do they let you talk to a human (you can press 0 to get a customer service rep, but they never tell you that). This means that customers can't hold anyone accountable for unprofessional behavior, which in turn means that there's no mechanism to encourage businesses to have their workers behave appropriately. What can I do about my package troubles at UPS? Write a letter to the CEO?
So in summary: professionalism is good. It's dying out, though, due to the proliferation of major chain stores and the concatenant loss of the incentives to promote professionalism. What we need is a reform of corporate culture which encourages businesses to adopt the small, local-owned business model in order to encourage professional conduct.
Tonight I spent just over three hours in a UPS office in Landover, MD waiting to pick up a package. The process by which this package was supposed to make it from Florida to my greedy hands has been (pardon the vulgarity) a Godforsaken clusterfuck from start to finish. UPS attempted to deliver my 40-pound parcel on a Friday while I was at work; they left a note saying they'd try again Monday between noon and five. Since I work normal hours these days, that meant I wouldn't be there. After calling UPS and navigating past the Scylla and Charybdis that comprise their automatic phone network, I reached a human (or perhaps a replicant; I'm not picky these days). I was informed of these facts: 1) I could not ask them to deliver earlier in the morning before I left, and I could not ask them to deliver after 5; 2) I could not have the package redirected to my office; and 3) I could not get them to leave the package in the lobby. I asked them not to attempt further deliveries, as I would drive up to Ardwick Ardmore Drive (where I would find both aardvarks and aardwolves) and pick it up the next day. This phone call took place at 9:14 in the AM Monday. I left work early to make the trip today. I arrived there at 6:30 and was informed that their system was down and (what's worse) the package had been sent out again for another delivery attempt, despite my express instructions regarding just that issue. And so I had to wait until the driver returned, and then we were able to get my package off the truck so I could go home and eat ice cream.
But I have only good things to say about the UPS staff who I dealt with in Maryland. The driver may have been taking his sweet southern time, and the people at UPS Customer Service apparently don't know their collective ass from their collective elbow, but the UPS people on the ground in Landover were helpful, informative, and nothing but professional. And that's the kind of thing that seems rare these days. For example, we've been trying to put in a floor in one of our offices at Georgetown. We've been calling various contractors to get this going; of the dozen or so people I called today, only one answered the phone, and not one returned my call. My coworkers have had similar success. Similarly, when I was apartment hunting, I made almost one hundred calls over the course of two days. A grand total of two of those calls resulted in any sort of human contact. What's missing from these transactions is professionalism.
I'm not sure when professionalism started to go out of style, but I'm not happy about it. Even though I loathed my job at Target, I made a point of accomplishing the tasks set out for me in a quick, responsible, and mannerly fashion. I keep the same standards at all my jobs. This means returning phone calls, keeping customers or clients informed, and generally performing the tasks that I get paid to do. What I want is to receive the same treatment at the businesses I frequent. In my experience, such treatment is increasingly remarkable (and the increasing number of compliments I receive for my service suggests that the experience of others parallels mine). Bear in mind that I don't have any numbers to back up this appraisal.
Here's where the conservative part comes in: I think this phenomenon is relatively recent, and I want to roll back the clock and bring back the old ways. I often find that service is superior in small locally-owned businesses, and I try to frequent such establishments for that reason. I suspect that the reason service is better at small locally-owned businesses is that they are tied more tightly to the community, and this rootedness provides a number of incentives toward good service. To wit—local businesses often rely on word of mouth for their advertising, and as such they cannot afford bad publicity. Local businesses also depend on a local clientele, and as such cannot alienate their customers (since the customers can go elsewhere while the business cannot). Finally, the managers and owners for franchise operations and chain stores are essentially anonymous; they aren't visible to the customer most of the time. But the owners of local businesses are typically readily identified, and this means that bad service is associated with a particular businessman. Such a reputation can be hard to shake.
And now I'm going to bring in the liberal sucker-punch. The reason professionalism is dying out is because of American corporate culture. The move toward "big box" stores and franchise operations removes the incentives I've just described. Further, workers are increasingly alienated from the results of their labor (yeah, I'm invoking Marx. What of it?). Drawing on my own experiences as a Target employee (for approx. seven years), I noticed that my effort to provide good service went unrewarded. Now, I made the effort because it is what I ought to have done, and not because I was bucking for a raise—which is good, because if I were bucking for a raise I'd have had the wrong approach altogether. But not everyone was raised to respect professionalism (as I was) and not everyone thinks that professionalism is a virtue (as I do), and such people aren't going to be professional unless 1) they'll be punished if they aren't or 2) they'll be rewarded if they are. And big box stores and franchise operations aren't in the business of giving out generous bonuses for appropriate conduct for their lowest-level employees. And the threat of termination will (to paraphrase Office Space) motivate people to work just hard enough to keep their jobs. In a similar vein, I've noticed an effort to keep people out of the loop as much as possible. Consider the UPS customer service line. When you call, you are asked if you want to track a package, ship a package, etc. In the tracking category, you are asked for a tracking number. If you give them a number, they tell you the information from their website and ask if you have any other numbers. At no point do they let you talk to a human (you can press 0 to get a customer service rep, but they never tell you that). This means that customers can't hold anyone accountable for unprofessional behavior, which in turn means that there's no mechanism to encourage businesses to have their workers behave appropriately. What can I do about my package troubles at UPS? Write a letter to the CEO?
So in summary: professionalism is good. It's dying out, though, due to the proliferation of major chain stores and the concatenant loss of the incentives to promote professionalism. What we need is a reform of corporate culture which encourages businesses to adopt the small, local-owned business model in order to encourage professional conduct.
posted by Dan @ 11:53 PM
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