Don't Kill the Goose That Lays the Golden Eggs!

In case anyone doesn't know the old fable: A fellow found that his goose was laying golden eggs. He became wealthy by selling the gold; every day or so there was another egg! But after a while he got greedy and wanted to find the source of the gold, which he figured was somewhere inside the goose. He killed the goose, and that was the end of it; there was no gold inside, and the goose naturally laid no more eggs. (I think he had to sell off his mansion and lands after that!)

There's lots of arguing and posturing going on in America about taxes, unemployment, recession, etc. Somehow most of it seems to fail in getting to the point or doing any good.
In brief, here's the golden egg analogy: when corporations try to minimize payrolls by automating and outsourcing as many jobs as possible, people are put out of work. And people who are out of work don't have the money to buy the widgets the corporations are selling! Yes, the worker is the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Take the City of Milwaukee, for example. When it was a hotbed of factories and manufacturing companies -- the Heil Company; Pabst Brewery; Ambrosia Chocolate; Allen-Bradley, to name a few -- it may not have been the coolest or most trendy city in America. Okay, it wasn't; the preponderance of blue-collar workers didn't make it a San Francisco, a New York City, or even a Chicago. But back in the 1950s and 1960s Milwaukee did have great schools; clean, attractive streets; and overall, a wholesome and thriving feel. Now it's a kind of sad testament to the past, with an amazing number of buildings that haven't changed for forty or fifty years except by getting older.

What changed? Well, all the companies I've listed above are gone. There were probably many more - some of them smaller, like Kearney & Trecker; some larger. Where'd they go? I heard that Allen-Bradley moved a lot of its operations to Texas, where wages are lower and unions weaker -- someone can write and correct me if that's wrong; I know that A-B was bought by Rockwell. The huge wide monolith of a factory building that stands in the near South Side of Milwaukee, with "Big Stash" (pronounce that 'stosh', please), the largest four-sided clock in the world at its top, is largely inactive; the marble bus-stop inserts at its corners are little-used now.
So some would say that the unions killed Milwaukee (some would say it was the welfare system, designed for out-of-work factory workers but mainly used by others, some of whom traveled to Milwaukee for that purpose), but I think this is a clear case of Golden Goose Death.
When the workers were well-paid, they bought all sorts of things -- houses, lawn mowers, beer (I guess they still buy beer, no matter what), baseball tickets, televisions, all of it. When the workers are out of a job, they buy almost nothing. Some move away, but a lot of them stick around, since their relatives are in the area -- the tendency of people to think they should be able to thrive anywhere is an interesting topic.

What do corporate leaders want or expect these workers to do? Work for lower wages? Not work at all? Live in "group houses" if they can't afford their own homes? Not have children if they can't afford them? Move to (where??)?

Corporations are not charities. I get that. But they could take a view of workers as partners and raisons-d'etre, instead of as enemies. Corporate leaders could remind themselves that money can't be made when nobody has any, because they've taken it all. Nobody in America will buy your widgets if all your widget-makers are machines and all your office workers are in India.

Because, duh, American workers won't have any money.

Proud To Be Of Service?

I can see the direction that American society’s “manners” are taking. Nobody wants to call people “Ma’am” or “Sir” - (especially not Ma’am; that topic deserves its own separate discussion). Instead service personnel, who should be saying “Good morning, Ma’am, may I help you?” say “Hi, how are you?” and even expect an answer.

I suppose if you live in a small enough town, you might know the store clerk who asks how you are, and the clerk might even care how you are. In the city, however, normally these people are strangers. “How are you?” is actually a can of worms which neither party wants to open. In that How Are You area could be dead or dying relatives, cancer diagnoses, painful joints, autistic children, lost jobs, cracked-up cars, alcoholism or drug problems, money problems, and more. Does the 7-11 clerk really want to hear about all that? NO! And s/he shouldn’t want to. That’s why s/he should just say “Good morning (afternoon/evening), Ma’am, may I help you?”
Clerks also need to say, at the end of each transaction, “Thank you” – and they should mean it.

There is a growing trend for clerks to try to manipulate the conversation so that the customer thinks s/he is supposed to say Thank You instead of the clerk’s saying it. This trend apparently comes from resentment of the service status. The clerk thinks s/he is waiting on you (which is different from waiting FOR you - topic for another discussion) and thinks s/he should be thanked for making change, or whatever it was s/he did. The clerk is missing the point! That customer is a patron of the business which employs the clerk/waiter/whatever, and without customers there would be no business and no job. The clerk/waiter/whatever should see herself as an extension of the business and the business owners, and should thank the patron (Remember this by thinking pay-tron! The one who PAYS is the Pay-tron, NOT a client. Learn your history!). If personal thanks are impossible due to a mean-spirited attitude on the part of the service person (obviously I suspect that), s/he should say “Thank you for shopping at (Seven-Eleven, CVS, Giant, whatever).”

I suspect these bad-manners problems are exacerbated by customer-service training which focuses mainly on loss-control (read: THEFT). Certainly, there is theft from shops and stores. That is not an excuse for being routinely rude to customers. I suspect that a lot of these clerks see themselves as cops, not cashiers, and the customers as Ones That Stole and Got Caught, Ones that Probably Stole and Didn’t Get Caught, and Ones That Probably Didn’t Steal – This Time – So I Won’t Assert My Authority – This Time. Note that this kind of training and attitude places the clerks above the customers instead of as service workers for them!

I further suspect that some workers – in restaurants especially – are carefully trained in BAD MANNERS. They are told to be FRIENDLY and are not taught to be respectful. “Hi, I’m Curtis and I’ll be taking care of you today.” (What are you, Curtis, a nurse? Am I hallucinating - is this a hospital?) The restaurants are probably walking a fine line and are somewhat aware of it. They don’t want the waiters to get disgruntled from realizing that they are in a service occupation; they want them to feel important and empowered (sort of) and enthusiastic about their jobs. They also want them to get tips so the restaurant won’t have to pay them a living wage. They also don’t want to alienate customers who have no manners by demonstrating too much high-quality behavior!

All this is complicated in large cities nowadays by the presence of varied cultures. I had one clerk ask me to PLEASE PLEASE explain the difference between Ma’am and Mom. Another clerk caused me to jump by saying loudly, “Hi, Mom!” (I do have two adult children, but . . . . she wasn’t one of them.) I am afraid that some service workers fiercely hate their jobs and especially hate waiting on women, whom they consider to be slime-bag animals. These men will call a male customer “Sir” over and over again in an obsequious manner (“Can I help you, Sir? Here you are, Sir! Thank you, Sir!”) and then turn to a female and say “Uh!” They do this with an air that sends a clear message: Women are nothing. (Can’t we give those guys jobs in the back room somewhere?!) The clerks who behave in this way make their views clear by using the multi-Sir approach even for workmen in soiled, busted-out work outfits and then using the Uh! approach as a woman steps up to the counter in a natty black business suit. (No! No! No! I am not saying that clerks should discriminate among various social classes of customers. I am saying that to some people, all women are automatically trash, especially compared to all men.)

All these problems almost - but not quite - make me like automatic checkout machines.

On Wisconsin

February, 2011 - Have you noticed what's going on in Wisconsin?
Have you really thought about it?
Consider this mess in the light of How You Would Like the World To Be. What kind of America do these conservatives want, anyway?
And: why are the police and fire unions staying out of this mess/immune to the current attacks on unions?
Could there be a link here?
YES!
Police and fire workers are mostly men. Teachers are mostly women. This whole hoo-ha is partly a gender-based attack on women's work and pay. Some conservatives would like to stuff women back into the kitchen (and bedroom) and get us out of workplaces.
This is nothing new. Many years ago a young male student of mine (I was giving him technical training in the workplace) told me that the Big Boss had told him "We're going to have all the women where they should be - putting things on the shelves for YOU and the other guys." In other words, Big Boss did NOT like having women in responsible jobs! Never mind our training and education, our intelligence, our commitment, never mind any of that! Then as soon as this student graduated (he was overbearing and obnoxious, BTW), Big Boss gave him a nice job. (I wouldn't have hired him at all.) Big Boss was also a sexual harasser - any surprise there? (Oddly, his wife was a very highly educated specialist in a fairly elite field.)
Yes, this happened in Wisconsin. That is a rather backward place in some ways, SORRY! I lived there for a long time and I know.
So back to the current mess. The governor of Wisconsin wants to throw the women and children overboard first. MEN should have jobs! MEN who work only for private corporations! I suppose the women are supposed to be dependent on the men. The ones who don't get married can live in little lean-tos attached to the houses of their married sisters, and do ironing and sewing for their meal scraps.
Pfui!
Go check out Rachel Maddow's rant on the Wisconsin mess at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7e4bj5rrd8
Though she has a powerful message, she omitted the gender-attack aspect of the problem.
So I'm pointing it out.