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People are strange, or vignettes from life

words and images Posted on June 13, 2007 by dlschirfJune 13, 2007

Twenty-eight years of living in Chicago haven’t filled in all of the blanks left by my sheltered upbringing. The behavior of people still surprises me. I don’t mean things like the utterly incomprehensible actions of parents who kill their children. I mean the things that people do every day that simply make no sense.

A car sideswiped the bus I was on; I didn’t feel or hear it (earplugs), but I could see an impressive scrape along both doors on the car’s passenger side, where the rearview mirror was also dangling. The light was red, so the bus driver got out and looked at the bus (no damage, he declared) and pointed out to the car’s driver that the mirror had been knocked off and that the doors were dented and scratched. I don’t know what she replied, but she opted not to get out to look, and as soon as the light changed to green she drove off with the mirror still swinging away by a few wires. According to the bus driver, who was shaking his head in amazement, she’d been talking on her mobile phone and hadn’t noticed “this big old bus.” How will her insurance claim work, I wonder?

There were the two women, strangers to one another, who boarded a bus on a busy downtown route and promptly planted themselves back to back on either side of the aisle by the door, with only a few inches between them for anyone behind them who wanted to get on (me) or to get off. Only when a blind man tried to get past their human barrier did one of them move but only to the other side of the aisle. This freed up some room, but not enough for others to get by without contorting themselves. “I’m on, and all that matters. Now don’t you dare bump me.”

Walking north on State Street, the lone woman was gesticulating angrily to someone only she could see. “Don’t raise your voice to me,” she said loudly, stomping obliviously forward while stabbing the air with an irate finger. No one looked, even surreptitiously, at this mad display, for of course a cell phone was flipped open at her waist, and no doubt a Bluetooth device was planted in her ear. As with so many similar one-sided public quarrels, we’ll never know what the offending tone of voice was.

When I walked out the front door of The Flamingo on Saturday, I heard the unmistakable, eardrum-shattering noise of a motorcycle. It turned out to be a tiny one, with a little boy, perhaps eight years old, in the driver’s seat. I could mention that he’s going to suffer hearing loss, if he hasn’t already, and that this is a weird lesson to be teaching a future generation in an age of dwindling resources and climate change. Even more basic than that, however, he was riding his little motorcycle on the street, a street which culminates in a busy parking lot where cars are continually pulling in and out. The motorcycle was so small that most drivers could not have seen him. If his parents were nearby, it was hard to tell because no one seemed to be paying attention to him. I tried, but I could not make myself understand how or why the parents could allow this, let alone encourage it, or imagine how they or the unfortunate driver would feel if the worst happened. Is this the norm for acceptable parenting? Am I so much of a relic that I find this, at the very least, irresponsible?

People are strange. Their behavior is strange. What goes unremarked or unnoticed is strange.

Or perhaps I am strange.

Posted in Commentary, Rumination, Society | 1 Reply

Jean-Luc Picard, CEO

words and images Posted on April 22, 2007 by dlschirfApril 22, 2007

One day a few years ago as I was watching a rerun of Star Trek: The Next Generation, it suddenly struck me: Captain Jean-Luc Picard runs the Enterprise like a CEO runs a corporation. After that, I could never enjoy the show as much or in quite the same way as I had before. It began reminding me too much of work.

I am not sure what triggered this minor epiphany. When I began working in 1983, it was not in a conventional corporate environment. Although I had a supervisor, I rarely saw her in that role. There were no regular meetings, no status reports. We got together primarily for the obligatory biannual evaluation and obligatory pat on the back, and that was pretty much it.

As for teamwork, I was part of a tiny department, with two or three full-time people and one or two temporary employees. We had no team meetings and no formal discussions about the team, our processes, or our issues. We did our jobs, trying to stay on schedule so as not to cause problems for the next person. We had few of the trappings of a team and virtually no leadership, but perhaps that is why we were as cohesive a team as any that invests time and efforts in meetings, retreats, bonding, outings, and so forth.

So when Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted in 1987, I didn’t recognize the officers as a corporate-style team or Jean-Luc Picard as a CEO. Now I do.

Picard’s style of leadership marked a departure from that of James T. Kirk, whose command was more militaristic. Subordinates kept him informed and sometimes made recommendations; he made command decisions. On rare occasions, Kirk might call a meeting of the senior officers to talk about the situation, but much of the discussion seemed to be within his own mind, where often he seemed to have made his decision already. Sometimes, Spock, Dr. McCoy, or Scotty questioned his actions or followed his orders only reluctantly, but in most cases only when he would prove to be impaired in some way. Generally, his word was final. It was this combination of rapid internal weighing of the options and quick, incisive decision making that gives some fans the impression that Kirk was a better leader than Picard. For the 1960s, he may have been. But Picard was a 1990s kind of captain.

The bridge between styles may have been Spock. In “The Galileo Seven,” he made command decisions that his subordinates did not agree with, partly because to them the needs of the individual should carry as much weight as the needs of the many. The crew questioned Spock’s decisions and orders openly while Spock, who was not a natural leader, defended his logic and thereby exposed his weakness as a leader. In our society, leaders do not defend themselves or what they do.

At one point, Spock began to question his own choices, just as the crew did. Spock fails to achieve full leadership, while the crew does not gain true democracy.

The 1990s corporate dynamic of leadership culminated in Jean-Luc Picard, whose answer to nearly every crisis was to call a meeting of the senior staff. Fortunately, such crises announced themselves hours before a solution was needed, or the threatening aliens were courteous enough to allow a grace period long enough in which to hold a meeting, even an impromptu one. This gave Picard the opportunity to demand, “Options?” at which point Geordi, Data, Wesley, Worf, Crusher, or O’Brien came up with a technological or, less often, tactical solution. After a brief discussion of the risks and possible outcomes, Picard visibly weighed the ramifications and then said, “Make it so” or “Proceed” in his deepest, most decisive, and most authoritative tone.

Sometimes, two choices were proffered, and Picard had to make two decisions — to do something or to do nothing, and to use Officer A’s suggestion or Officer B’s idea. In at least one episode, “Cause and Effect,” he made the wrong choice not once, but several times,leading to the demise of the Enterprise over and over again. Only in an entertainment vehicle does a commander get to make the life-or-death error multiple times and still emerge with his ship and crew intact and unscathed.

In “Attached,” he and Dr. Crusher had to decide which way to go to escape. He paused for an instant. Then he said:

“This way.”
“You don’t really know, do you ?”
“What ?”
“I mean, you are acting like you know exactly which way to go, but you are only guessing. Do you do this all the time ?”
“No, but there are times when it is necessary for a captain to give the appearance of confidence.”

No, leaders do not always know what they are doing, or they do know but hope to evade the consequences (like the executives of Enron, Arthur Andersen, and so on and on and on).

The key to leadership lies not only in making good or correct decisions, both routinely and under duress. Many people are capable of consistently making good choices; I am, and so are you. Otherwise. more of us would be utter failures at managing the business of our own lives. (Yes, sometimes we do fail, but mostly we make good choices.)

But I am not, and do not wish to be, a leader. A strategist, yes; a leader, no. A leader’s intellect, ability, and personality combined inspire confidence and belief. People don’t argue with leaders because they fear them or what the leader can do to them; they don’t argue with leaders because they respect and trust them. Both Kirk and Picard, and every senior officer portrayed on their ships, had earned that respect and trust from the crew.

The corporate environment is not so different in its day-to-day operations. Of course, there is usually no threat of Romulan or Cardassian ships hanging off the starboard bow, and imminent danger to life. There are, however, bad leaders at all levels — those ho consistently make questionable decisions, and others who are neither respected nor trusted. They rise to their leadership position through their connections, self-marketing, ability to take credit for the ideas and work of others, and plain luck. Their lack of genuine leadership ability soon shows to everyone they fail to inspire or lead. At best, the organization muddles along, failing to thrive. At worst, it rots from the inside out.

It disappointed me to think of Picard as a CEO, but he is at least a CEO with a an adventurer’s heart and a poet’s soul. That is why I think I would respect and trust him, despite my inherent distrust of leaders and the very idea of leadership.

And that is why he is captain of the Enterprise, not the chairman of Federated Conglomeration of United Intergalactic Foods.

To serve with such a leader would be a challenge, a thrill, and an inspiration.

Instead, I work with what I have.

Posted in Rumination, Society | Leave a reply

Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day

words and images Posted on November 21, 2006 by dlschirfJanuary 30, 2021

In 1993, the Ms. Foundation came up with Take Our Daughters to Work Day. The idea, as explained to me, was to give girls greater exposure to career opportunities and to boost their self-esteem. The premise was that girls tended to receive less attention than their male siblings.

I remember the first several years of TODTWD. My firm brought in clowns, face painters, local celebrities, even zoo docents (me) with animals. There were coloring contests and other planned activities, and it was the one day when Mom would forego her calorie consciousness and take the children to McDonald’s for hamburgers. None of the parents got much work done, and the childless among us (me again) braced for six hours of constant noise, interruptions, and childish chatter. I recall the daughter of one of our attorneys making colored marks all over paper; I told her, “Wow, that’s exactly what your mom does all day.”

In short, the girls, many eight years or under, must have come away with the idea that “work” means face painting and other kinds of fun.

By 2003, the original purpose of TODTWD had become lost or irrelevant, and our sons were now included. With the passage of time at my new employer, I noticed that this had become less and less structured, until even the coloring contests were no more, or at least were not promoted. The children come in and meet other children, chase each other around, play on the computers, and color on their own. This year, a coworker’s nephew made us personalized door hangers.

In other words, the children still don’t really understand what their parents do, other than sit at desks, working with phones and computers.

I’ve gotten the impression that this how the day goes at other corporate offices, that it’s increasingly downplayed, and that it seldom lives up to its purpose. I also can’t imagine that this event is widely implemented in non-offices or in more hazardous white- or blue-collar settings. Do night-shift emergency room nurses bring their children to work? Nuclear power plant workers? Sawmill workers? Stevedores? Airport security personnel?

I suspect that TODASTWD boils down to a day spent in an office rather than at school, a feel-good opportunity for office workers to show off their children to their coworkers and their offices to their children. Some parents may explain to the older children what they do, but for the most part the children seem to play and socialize until they get bored.

If the Ms. Foundation wants to make the day educational and meaningful for the daughters and sons, I have some ideas for structured activities. The day itself is the last Thursday in April, so now is not too early to begin planning.

  • Invite the children to a two-hour department meeting where many carbohydrates and fats are served and where, after much wrangling and tension, nothing is decided.
  • Have the children join their parent for a weekly project status update with the boss so they can witness the humiliating consequences of not being able to read a superior’s mind.
  • As an extra activity, have the children jot down every time the superior interrupts Mom or Dad to read personal email and take personal phone calls.
  • Have Mom or Dad submit a small project that day so the superior can demonstrated the fine art of criticizing work that he or she cannot do.
  • Make sure the children participate in an informal gripe session among two or more lower-level employees. Point out to them the furtive glances and the lowered voices, especially when Self-Important Leaders pass by. As a bonus, have the Leader stop and address someone in the group and have the children watch the attitude change instantly from sullen to solicitous.
  • Do not offer them a lunch break. If the children are to experience corporate office life, they will need to get used to doing without food and breaks and to working through the day until at least 7 or 7:30 p.m.
  • Be honest with them. Tell them that what they have experienced is what Mom or Dad faces every day until retirement or until those lottery numbers finally come through.

It seems to me that TODASTWD is the perfect opportunity to prepare the next generation for corporate slavery. It would give all those daughters and sons who are short on self-esteem and starving for positive attention something to look forward to.

Posted in Rumination, Society | 3 Replies

Uncommon sense

words and images Posted on August 3, 2006 by dlschirfAugust 3, 2006

I’m not telling you anything you don’t know when I say that an amazing number of people are lacking in not-so-common sense and courtesy.

This is not a new observation or a sign of the times. My understanding is that the ancient Romans and Greeks were known to lament the lack of these qualities in their youth. Consternation at rudeness, particularly that of the young, is a time-honored tradition.

Still, displays of rudeness and lack of sense astound me, no matter the age of the offender.

Case in point #1: A woman in the bathroom at work, in a stall, sitting on a toilet, is holding a cell phone conversation. In a stall. Sitting on a toilet. Performing bodily functions, like you do in a stall on a toilet. While talking on her cell phone.

And then, mid-conversation, she flushes.

Several years ago on an AOL message board, I mentioned how rude this behavior seems to me, and how weird it seems to me that any sophisticated, educated person could consider this acceptable. To my surprise, then horror, several people disagreed. It was normal to them.

This may be why I communicate primarily by e-mail, instant messages, and snail mail. If you read my letter while you’re sitting on the toilet, at least I don’t need to know about it. Or experience the sound effects.

Case in point #2 (also cell phone related): My dentist has a sign posted in her waiting room about considerate/inconsiderate cell phone use. I thought this might refer to people talking loudly. I asked the hygienist, who seemed grateful that at least one person had read the sign. Volume is an issue, she said; for some reason, some people think they need to shout when using a cell phone. That isn’t the primary problem, however. They have had a number of patients who make and accept cell phone calls while getting their teeth examined, cleaned, or filled. The hygienist or dentist is supposed to stop what she is doing every time Suzy Patient wants to have a mundane conversation about where she is or what she is doing. To add proverbial insult to proverbial injury, the patients who do this are the most likely to have been late to the appointment.

If it were my dental practice, I’d confiscate the cell phones of known offenders at the door. If you behave like a child with no impulse control, I will treat you like one.

Case in point #3: As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve noticed that most people feel compelled to answer their cell phones, as though there were no other choice. When the phone rings (sings, chirps, meows, barks, whatever), I must answer no matter what — even if I am in a restaurant having lunch with a friend, who apparently does not deserve as much of my attention as my cell phone does; even if I am a cashier in the middle of checking out a customer; even if I am an office worker with whom others are trying to have a work-related discussion. Any cell phone call is worth interrupting whatever I was doing and putting off the person who is physically in front of me. These “can’t miss” conversations usually involve no more than, “Yeah, I’m at lunch. I got home around 9 last night. Where are you?” etc. Not exactly headline news at eleven.

Case in point #4: A driver is at an intersection with a green light, waiting for the pedestrians to cross before making a left turn onto a one-way street. The driver of the third care in the lane honks his horn. Again. Again and again. Soon, he’s lying on it. The pedestrians passing by on the sidewalk don’t look enthused about having their eardrums blasted. Even other drivers start looking askance at the impatient one. It is not clear what he wants, except perhaps for the driver in front to mow down, maim, and kill pedestrians who have the right of way in the interest of shaving five seconds off travel time. Finally, the light changes, the pedestrians stop, and when #3’s turn comes, he turns the corner with a squeal, almost on two wheels.

Maybe he was in a hurry to get home to relax. I would be, too, if everyone drove like that.

Posted in Rumination, Society | Leave a reply

Student life, then and now

words and images Posted on August 1, 2006 by dlschirfFebruary 6, 2019

7.22.06
Café Verde in Ann Arbor, Michigan

Where there are college students, there are the four necessities of life: the notebook computer, the iPod or equivalent, the cell phone, and, of course, the Internet connection. I don’t know if the poorest students have all of these, but I suppose they have access to computers, printers, and the Internet in a center or at the libraries on campus.

Could today’s student imagine my college life 23–27 years ago — a lifetime for them? The only computer was a mainframe; 100 hours of use per quarter (or year?) was included in tuition, and students like me, ignorant about computers, used it mainly to play a DOS-based text game called “Adventure” (in my case, badly). More sophisticated students used it to store and retrieve data, including papers, and undoubtedly for research and other purposes, but I would have not known how to do this and was too reticent to ask anyone who might have known.

In my dormitory, there was one communal telephone in each hallway, from which you could call campus numbers. Off the lounge was a pair of pay telephone booths from which you could call your parents collect (no prepaid calling cards then). A few of us, including me, went to an event where you could get a telephone and connection from what was probably known at the time as Illinois Bell. The big new convenience was that the new jacks were modular, meaning that no wiring was involved — it was plug and play, so to speak. And my phone didn’t chirp, meow, bark, sing, or play music — it rang. The bell added to its heft and feeling of substance. Also at the time, phones were still rented from the local phone company. When you canceled your account or moved, you were expected to return the phone. At some point, I did buy mine (it was sky blue), but I no longer have it. I wish I did, because I’m enough of a fogy to prefer a loud, mechanical bell ring to an electronic chirp.

For me, portable music was a huge, now vintage, GE Superadio (which I still have) and an aesthetically unpleasing, monaural white earplug. I did not take it anywhere that I can remember other than perhaps the courtyard. The more affluent students had stereo systems. I don’t think the once-ubiquitous Sony Walkman was in common use yet.

As far as I know, the Internet was still a university/military construct and was not in wide use. When I needed to do research, I waded through the library card catalogue, drawers and drawers of typed, much-fingered, manila cards listing books, journals, and other works in the library’s collection. The next step was to locate the items in the stacks or wherever they resided in the collection. Now, I suppose students search the Internet and the electronic card catalogue, then the physical collection. It’s also probably easier to query other university libraries.

RoyalSABRE

Finally, I used to write my papers in pencil, always at the last minute, then, in the wee hours of the morning on which they were due, type them laboriously slowly on a Royal Sabre manual typewriter. Some professors permitted the use of erasable paper; others forbade it. When I was tired enough, I could make mistake after mistake, and depending on what it was and where it was on the page, I might have to retype a page — sometimes more than one, sometimes more than once. Typing even a short paper might have taken one to three hours. A computer with spell check and a printer (not to mention e-mail) would have been quite handy — and would have saved some exhaustion-induced delirium.

I wonder what students today in situations similar to mine can afford or manage, for example, if they have notebook computers (which are relatively inexpensive at “big box” stores) or cell phones. I imagine that they do, because, as is typical of a product life cycle, such things have come down in price and become “necessities,” not luxuries. I wonder if having a computer would have helped me be more disciplined, given my dread of typing papers, or if I would have frittered away even more time on e-mail, instant messaging, or random reading unrelated to coursework. I wonder if students realize how freeing it must be to sit in a café comfortably; to correct mistakes instantly; to focus on rewriting, not retyping; and to focus on ideas, not logistics.

And I wonder if they can imagine how different this aspect of student life was, only 23–27 years ago. Can I even remember it myself?

Pass the Celestial Seasonings Morning Thunder. It’s going to be a long night.

Posted in Blog, Rumination, Society | Leave a reply

The golden rule

words and images Posted on July 3, 2006 by dlschirfMarch 20, 2019

(I have written briefly on the golden rule before.)

“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” Matthew 7:12 (KJV)

I’m reading Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, and I keep returning to how much of what is called “emotional intelligence” is based on the golden rule and all the spiritual variations on it. I would not have men treat me with contempt, scream at me, or belittle me, but this is modus operandi for so many people with whom I have worked and dealt. The golden rule seems to be essential for a world as crowded, stressed, and overtaxed as ours has become, and yet it sometimes seems to be as endangered as the Micronesian kingfisher — dependent on men to decide to save it.

Saturday, in the course of one expedition to market, I saw three examples of what might be called emotional obliviousness. None of the individuals was doing anything harmful or openly negative; they simply had no idea of how their actions affected others — or perhaps that their actions affected others.

The first was a store employee. I asked him to retrieve a box that was too far back on a high shelf for me to reach. He asked if I wanted just one, and I said, “Yes.” He gave me one, I thanked him, and he left. What struck me after a few moments was that he didn’t think to pull the two or three remaining boxes to the front for the next person. It’s something I would have done instinctively, but it never occurred to him. As I said, this hurt no one, but it is a form of me-centered thoughtlessness that isn’t aware on a subconscious level of others and their needs.

Then there was the woman who came to the store with someone else and who was not shopping. It was a busy afternoon; the store was crowded; yet she would park herself in the middle of an aisle in such a way that no one could get around her without having to ask. She would gaze at shelves in a desultory way. At one point, she blocked two doors to a freezer case while three people waited for her to choose something; they didn’t know she was window shopping only. After a minute or more, she wandered off slowly; then the people behind her realized they had been waiting politely for no reason. She was simply unaware of what was obvious to me — the people around her and what they wanted.

I came back to my building with a full shopping cart and went in the back door. This double set of doors leads into a short hallway next to the fitness room. Spread inside the inner door and across the hallway, completely blocking it, were two women with two babies, putting their street clothes on over their bathing suits and fussing over the babies. They and their clothes, babies, blankets, and other paraphernalia were sprawled all over the hallway.

It does not seem to have occurred to them that they could have changed clothes and fussed over the babies in the pool/garden area, which is probably a half acre in size and which has chairs, tables, etc. More to the point, I and another resident came in through the door and couldn’t go anywhere because they were in the way. The other building resident stepped over them all carefully. That left me with my cart. One woman was on her cell phone (multitasking); the other finally noticed me and signaled to her friend, and they made a narrow path down which I had to struggle with the cart (with the one woman never pausing in her cell phone conversation). As with the others, I don’t think their behavior was meant to be malicious, but I cannot imagine the irritation they would have felt if someone had blocked their entrance way to dress.

Given the way people sometimes act, it’s perhaps best that all of us don’t follow the golden rule. Many people clearly don’t want to be treated well at all.

Posted in Rumination, Society | Leave a reply

Bless the beasts and the children

words and images Posted on June 22, 2006 by dlschirfJune 22, 2006

Last Sunday at Promontory Point I saw two rabbits in a challenge for territory. Their posturing brought them out of their rocky warren into the open, where they stayed for longer than was wise.

People saw them. The first, two young men, tried to surround and corner them against the rocks.

A couple with a dog noticed them, although they had retreated to some shelter between rocks. When the man, who was walking the dog, realized he’d spotted rabbits, he turned the dog around to point out the warren. The dog sniffed anxiously around where the rabbits were wedged and started to get excited. The man pointed this out to the woman, who laughed. Teasing animals, even your own pet, is apparently amusing, never mind the undoubtedly terrified rabbits.

Later, two small children came along. I noticed them staring intently between the rocks and asked them if they could see the rabbits. They said yes and asked me what they were doing. I told them that the rabbits were hiding and that they might be looking for food. At that, both children tore leaves off the weeds and tried to tempt the rabbits out, with no luck. They soon gave up.

Only the children showed curiosity about and empathy for the rabbits. Unlike the adults, who knew their actions would be distressing to the prey animals, the children seemed less interested in demonstrating their mastery over the creatures than in finding out what they were doing and what they wanted. By trying to lure the rabbits out with food, they hoped both to see them better and to give them something to eat — win-win, so to speak.

I hope that, in 10 years, and 20, those children still have a sense of connection with fellow creatures, even rabbits.

But then I remember that the two young men, the man with the dog, and the woman who laughed also were children once. What kind?

Posted in Nature, Rumination, Society | Leave a reply

Reflections on offshore outsourcing

words and images Posted on May 8, 2006 by dlschirfMay 8, 2006

Some time ago I heard a man — whether businessman, public official, or politician, or all of these, I do not know — on television talking about offshore outsourcing and why it is good for the United States and her citizens. He contended that outsourcing frees Americans to do other, “better, more important” things.

I could not believe my ears. And I could not imagine that anyone viewing this would believe it, either.

The offshore outsourced jobs I’m most familiar with are technical support and customer service. Ten years ago, when I called or e-mailed my ISP for help with a problem, I would get a person located at the corporate office who would ask me good questions and resolve the problem or escalate it if warranted. Most of them seemed to be young, not necessarily educated, but knowledgeable about operating systems, Internet clients, and connectivity issues. Unless it was a system issue on the ISP’s end, most problems could be resolved in under five to ten minutes or in one or two e-mails. I would get a different person each time, and something of his or her personality would come through in the conversation whether it took place on the phone or by e-mail.

Now when I contact support, which I try to avoid doing, I receive scripted responses that do not take into account anything that I have actually said about the problem. For example, in OS 9 and lower for Macintosh, a standard problem-solving step is to rebuild the desktop file. I would contact support, now located halfway or more across the world, and find myself talking to “Kilroy.” (Outsourced employees are told to use American names so as to make the less cosmopolitan among us feel comfortable; I wondered if this particular young man had been reading comic books and if he knew that “Kilroy” isn’t really a typical American name.) I would tell “Kilroy” the problem and carefully go over the steps I had already taken to to resolve it — reboot, reboot with extensions off, rebuild the desktop file, etc. There would be a pause as he consulted his script. Invariably, “Kilroy” would say, “We are going to try to rebuild the desktop.” I could protest all that I liked that I had done so already without result, but “Kilroy” was not allowed to deviate from the script, which meant that I couldn’t, either. So I would go through the motions of rebuilding the desktop again.

Now when I need help I will go to a Usenet group or a mailing list first, which is most likely what many companies hope you will do. It means less effort and more money for them. Besides, communicators claim that the Internet, through vehicles such as blogs, has put power into the hands of the public, so that the public pulls the message from companies rather than companies pushing it, as in traditional top-down communications. The public can, therefore, apparently, provide itself with support.

So what happened to all those support people at headquarters, who were written up in company newsletters and whose accomplishments were touted online and in print communications to customers? I suppose that many, if not most, were fired or laid off. Maybe some went or returned to college, earned degrees, and moved on to “better” things, as the commentator wanted viewers to believe. Perhaps some discovered that any job for which they might be qualified was a candidate for outsourcing. Many would have, in time, moved on to better things on their own, as people do throughout their careers. But the next generation would not have the same opportunity for a good entry-level job that paid well and taught workplace and interpersonal skills. This move was not better for the individuals or for the vast, diverse group we call Americans; it was more efficient and cheaper for the companies, which no longer have to pay living wages or, worse, benefits like health care. It certainly was not better for customers.

In reality, it is not undesirable jobs that Americans don’t want to do that have been outsourced. there is a perception, real or not, that Americans see themselves as above cleaning toilets, but Americans have been and are willing to fill technical support and customer service positions — for a living wage.

Outsourcing goes beyond support and service. I realized this in the past month or so when I received three or four calls, clearly from offshore, from salespersons representing my bank and credit card provider, trying to convince me that I need identity theft protection. Did the television pundit mean to tell us that Americans can do better than to go into sales and telemarketing? Some people have sales in their blood. Even I was a telemarketer for the summer after college, before I found a permanent position. As an introvert, I didn’t like it, but I was very grateful for the opportunity — and, of course, the money. Now even telemarketing has been sent offshore. As an aside, telemarketing is as scripted as support. No matter what I said, the reader plunged ahead with his or her script until I hung up. I cannot imagine that this is an effective way to sell anything (unless the fear of identity theft is that prevalent and strong). It makes me want to re-evaluate my bank. After all, why should I wish to conduct business with an organization that treats neither employees nor customers with respect?*

That is why I find the idea that outsourcing “frees” Americans for “better, more important things” disingenuous and dishonest. The truth is that many jobs except direct-service ones do not have to be done on site and could be outsourced, e.g, technology, accounting, records and data processing, sales, marketing, programming, design, etc. Even copywriting and editing could be outsourced — and often is, to freelancers. Do Americans have “better, more important things” to do than to work at meaningful jobs and to receive pay for it?

Of course, the jobs of direct care providers such as physicians, nurses, dentists, optometrists, aides, assistants, and so forth cannot at this time be outsourced.

Nor can the jobs of the people who ask you if you want fries with that as they hand you your burger.

Until someone figures out how to completely automate the drive-through.

I feel “free” to do “better, more important things” already.

*To be fair, telemarketing has always been like this. Fifteen or twenty years ago, a call woke me up when I was suffering from a stomach virus. I answered; then, when I realized it was a sales call and also that getting up had produced another bout of nausea, I told the caller a half dozen times that I was sick and nauseated and that I needed to go. He continued on each time as though he had not heard me, never acknowledging what I had said or that I had even spoken. Finally I overcame my natural reluctance to be rude and hung up on him, mid-sentence. I have not hesitated to be rude since to persistent telemarketers who do not treat me like a person.

Posted in Rumination, Society | 5 Replies

"Clothes make the man"

words and images Posted on May 1, 2006 by dlschirfAugust 3, 2013

I often think and write about changing times. Today, change is rapid and seems to be accelerating. My dad grew up on a family farm with mules for horsepower; in the year of his birth (1913), there were probably still more horses than cars. By the year in which he died (2001), the American family farm was nearly extinct, having been carved up into lots for suburban housing or absorbed into factory farms, where animals are treated like products, not living beings. Even certain breeds of draft horse are endangered or threatened (see the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy). Within my dad’s 88 years, the U.S. was paved over with interstates, malls, shopping centers, and parking lots; men landed on the moon; and radio filled the home entertainment void, then TV, then the Internet, online gaming, and video games. And that’s only the barest glimpse of how much has changed.

It makes me wonder what I will see happen in the next 20–40 years of my life — what new technologies, devices, conveniences, treatments, and cures will arise, as well as the ensuing problems that such changes invariably create.

One change that has occurred in my lifetime is a small social one, but it’s worth mentioning as it is so prevalent. It’s our switch to casual dress in almost any setting.

I thought of this a few days ago when I saw a couple of families entering one of the churches downtown. Adults and children alike wore jeans and tee shirts. They could have been entering McDonald’s, a tavern, or a sports stadium, judging by their dress.

This is quite different from when I was a child, when men and even boys wore suits and ties, and women and girls wore dress or skirts — no slacks or even pantsuits. Jesus may have dressed casually, but you were expected to approach and enter the house of God with respect, and respect meant dressing up. Even when girls stopped wearing dresses to school, they still wore them to church.

The American attitude toward dress has, of course, changed. In the late 1980s, my then Big 8 consulting firm implemented casual Fridays. At first, if I remember correctly, it was in the summers only, then it was extended to every Friday year-round, then to every day. The only exception was if you had meetings with clients or vendors, or similar activities. All but a few sticks in the mud were ecstatic, and even the partners began wearing business casual clothing on the rare days on which they didn’t have meetings.

As for me, I loved it. I had always hated wearing dresses (to school, church, or work), and trying to pull pantyhose up over sweaty, sticky, fat legs in 90ºF, high-humidity weather became an epic challenge and a heroic effort (with many pairs damaged as a result).

My new company also switched to business casual every day, with similar exceptions, at some point after I started. At this point, I don’t even have a dress wardrobe left, even when I need it.

Now, when you walk around downtown Chicago during a weekday, it is the man or woman wearing a conservative business suit who stands out as the exception, the oddity. Except for occasional ethnic attire or trendy costume, the rest of us march in a uniform of casual, virtually indistinguishable, shirts, tops, and bottoms.

Casual attire has evolved in conjunction with the team-oriented workplace, in which work is done, in theory, in collaboration and by consensus, in which “leaders” guide and mentor rather than simply order and decide. Yet, for some reason, a person wearing a suit seems to command unspoken respect, at least more so than someone sporting a golf shirt and slacks. If a vendor comes in and sees three men in business suits and three in casual dress, the odds are good that they will address the bulk of their proposal to the “suits,” whom they will assume are the decision makers.

I suspect that those who wear suits are also treated differently outside the workplace. I can picture security guards, cab drivers, maître d’s, servers, even traffic control officers, showing greater deference to the elite in suits than to the masses in business casual.

I’ve read that business dress is coming back, but I haven’t seen it. I don’t often see anyone voluntarily dressing up for work; the joke has always been that someone who shows up at work in a suit or dress must have a job interview.

As much as I prefer casual dress and the symbolic (not actual) egalitarianism that it implies, I admit that I miss the professionalism and a certain distance that seemed to go along with a more formal attire. Perhaps it is even the sense that clothing separates the different aspects of our lives — that casual wear is for one’s personal life and that dress is for work, that the two are separate spheres. Now, with people working 80-hour weeks, working at home, working on the road, working while on vacation, using cell phones, laptops, BlackBerrys and PDAs, and ubiquitous wireless connections, these separate spheres of home and office, personal and work, are merging — or have merged — into an amorphous blob.

Off to work we go, or to church, to dine, to visit family or friends, to a date, to a baseball game, to home — it’s all the same to us, judging from the way we dress. If “clothes make the man,” what kind of men (and women) are we? What is left that is special enough to dress for, to care about?

Posted in Life, Rumination, Society | 1 Reply

Can you hear me now?

words and images Posted on April 6, 2006 by dlschirfApril 6, 2006

Lately, I’ve been reading even more complaints about cell phones. Cell phones at restaurants. Cell phones in public restrooms. Cell phones on buses. At concerts. At museums. At sporting events. At poolside. Cell phones everywhere.

Once a status symbol, cell phones have become almost as much a necessity as T-shirts, jeans, and clean underwear. I wonder why.

When I got my cell phone, I used it mainly to keep track of people I was meeting, or to let them know if I was going to be late. When I still had dial-up Internet, I used it at home when my phone was otherwise engaged. I don’t know of any reason why I would get into line at Subway and suddenly want to “reach out and touch someone.” Most of the time, I don’t have that much to say or a pressing need to say it right now. In front of dozens of strangers.

In the not-so-distant past, when we were restricted to land lines and the phone rang during dinner, the person who answered was instructed to “tell him we’re eating dinner. I’ll call him back later.” That was in the privacy of our own home, when we felt that finishing a meal sitting down was an important part of the ritual of eating. Now, whether we’re in a busy family restaurant or a fine dining venue, if the phone rings we feel compelled to answer it. Then we carry on a personal conversation within earshot of 20 people as though we are oblivious to them — as though we were in the privacy of our own home.

Before cordless phones became popular, it never seemed to occur to anyone to use their bathroom at home as a phone booth. Now, if you go into any public restroom, you’re likely to hear half a conversation — held over the sound of running water and various bodily functions. Once I walked into a restaurant bathroom and heard a woman speaking loudly. I waited for a response from the other stall, which I assumed was occupied, but none came. After a moment, I realized that the woman in the first stall had retreated to the bathroom to have what appeared to be a long, deep conversation on the phone about relationship issues. When she came out, she didn’t even notice me at the sink. I wondered if the person at the other end had enjoyed hearing my bodily functions.

On public transportation, there are people who call their friends to tell them, “I’m on the bus. It’s passing 35th Street. Nah. I saw her last night. I’m on my way home.” Or to describe every detail of their work day, often with much profanity, as though there weren’t 15 people nearby who can’t help but hear it all. Sometimes the conversations are so painfully mundane that I can’t help wondering about the quantities of energy expended upon so little. “She got her car fixed Tuesday . . . No, it was the computer . . . Well, she’s had it three years . . . I don’t know.” At this point, I don’t know and I don’t care. It’s amazing that the human brain, capable of inventing the technology behind wireless communications, often has so little to communicate and yet so great a need.

Do you remember when teenage girls would take calls on the living room phone, and, glaring at the rest of the family, who were pretending not to listen but who were paying close attention to every word, would say, “Do you mind?” Such girls would plead for their own phones in their own rooms so they could have some privacy to discuss their lives and loves. Now you’ll find them in coffee shops, at juice bars and malls, and on the street, gossiping with their girlfriends and billing and cooing with their would-be lovers, with no regard for privacy. As long as the listeners aren’t prying relatives, it must not matter.

Of course, cell phones give the “Bickersons” even more opportunities to fight in front of an even greater audience. These are those couples we all know who can’t carry on a conversation without getting in a few dozen digs at one another and making everyone around them uncomfortable. Now everyone can listen to, “That’s not what I said . . . You said you weren’t busy Friday night . . . How was I supposed to know? . . . Well, you should have thought of that . . . You always do this . . .”

Are we so extroverted as a species that we have to have an audience for every thought? Are we so insecure that we need to have every feeling validated immediately or that we must act out every personal drama publicly?

Or is our dependence on cell phones, the Internet, gaming, iPods, and other marvels of everyday life one symptom of a mass variation of AD/HD? “Typically children with AD/HD have developmentally inappropriate behavior, including poor attention skills, impulsivity, and hyperactivity.”

We are a generation, or two, afflicted with the “fidgets.” People can’t focus on on doing one thing at a time. We can’t sit still on a bus or in a restaurant without finding something else to do. We can’t drive a car — a function that should require all of our attention — without eating, drinking, singing to the radio, playing air guitar, putting on makeup, shaving, or talking on a cell phone. We can’t eat a meal, even in the company of others, without talking on a cell phone. We can’t walk down a sidewalk without talking on a cell phone. We can’t read a magazine on the bus without talking on a cell phone. We can’t even perform the basic bodily functions without reading and/or talking on a cell phone. The moment the body or mind is engaged with one task, simple or complex, it seems to seek out additional ones. Despite the popularity of tai chi, yoga, meditation, and similar disciplines, we fear introspection. We do not want to be alone and vulnerable to the power of thought, an interesting concern on an overcrowded planet of 6.5 billion people. We seem to be afraid of quiet and stillness, of not doing anything.

I do wonder if this is our newest way of being alive and connected. Our sedentary, indoor lifestyles have severed our connection with the life of the earth. To know what it is to sweat, we go to a gym, where we watch television and listen to music on our iPods. The senses that were once stimulated by the activities of survival and life are now stifled by our climate-controlled environments or overwhelmed by the noise of crowds and traffic. To sit still with nothing to do is too much like death, too much like being alone in a crowded world.

Or perhaps we talk all the time, everywhere, on our cell phones simply because we can.

Posted in Rumination, Society | 1 Reply

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