Tracy Baker has spent nearly 25 years helping people converse with one another; whether a salesperson of any ilk to a potential client, a customer service representative to a customer, or a manager to an employee. A student of human nature and a curmudgeon-in-training, he has been writing essays under the moniker "The Milkman's Son" for the last 5 years. About them he says:
"Okay, okay. I can finally admit it. I am the milkman’s son. This does not, however, mean I am an unfortunate bastard (contrary to popular belief). My father, you see, was a proud member of this long gone profession. A friend of my parents used to tease my mother, implying all her children where the result of liaisons with the milkman.
"It always brought laughs from the “adults”. I never understood what was so funny. My father was a milkman and I was his child. So? I call this little something-or-other “The Milkman’s Son” because despite my path in life, despite how successful (or not), I am who I am because I am my Father’s child. He died nigh on ten years ago now, yet he still influences most things I do. A plainspoken man from Michigan, he liked to act the curmudgeon. Yet when you paid close attention, you’d find a man who truly cared for people and for life."
These essays are my way of sharing what I see, read, or hear all around me, everyday. And as John Adams, expounding on a quote from Samuel Johnson once said:
Samuel Johnson said ‘When I sat upon my throne in the tavern, I dogmatized and was contradicted, and in this I found delight.’
“My throne is not in a tavern but by my fireplace. There I dogmatize, laugh, and there newspapers sometimes make me scold…and in dogmatizing, laughing and scolding, I find delight. Why should I not enjoy it, since no one is worse for it, and I am the better!”
John Adams, 1805
The Milkman's Son
By Tracy Baker
A Candle In The Wind #77
The Candle Syndrome
My dear friend and fellow consultant Pat Cady and I had recently been exchanging horror stories about how one is laid off from a company nowadays.
She began by passing on a story of a friend who was recently downsized and watched like a hawk by security guards as she packed up her desk. I countered with my own humiliating experience when I was given a couple hours notice at the last bank I worked for.
The exchange led to her telling me of the following story. (A little background; Pat lives in North Beach in San Francisco and has been a Catholic parishioner and lay activist for many years. In the late 1980s and early 90's the Catholic Church went on a "close 'em down" spree with the same zeal and bureaucratic thought process that the US Government applied to the military bases.)
Here's my story: When the local archdiocese was preparing to kick out Catholics from their parish churches, their consultants told them that departing parishioners would be ratified by the gesture of receiving a (one-cent) votive candle. Boy, did that backfire.
Think about it - people, including an archbishop, knowing so little about parishioners who had contributed carpeting, carpentering, and money-money-money walking humbly away with their little candle!!! When word got around that this was the "plan", the meekest old ladies joined the most rabid activists and, as you know, almost all of the churches have been saved.
Isn't it amazing how a little candle could activate the normally docile and
compliant to actually do something about their situation? I have decided to
tag this bureaucratic idiocy "The Candle Syndrome" in their honor.
It's Happens All The Time
As I absorbed the above story it dawned on me that I have been a victim of The Candle Syndrome personally, in fact more than once, but one stood out in my mind.
The year was 1985 and I was working for a diverse financial company called Equitec in Oakland. As was typical of most financial firms in the 1980s, the company ran into some money troubles and asked the employees to take an unpaid day off once a month. No problem for me, but of course they couldn't stop there.
They then asked the employees to volunteer their day off and work for free...in return they offered all employees who did this a button that read "I'm Equitec!" Needless to say no one, other than the idiots who came up with this idea and their sycophants, took them up on their offer, and the idea and eventually the company went away.
Side note: This day off showed up as a "Z" day on our pay stubs, and as I am inclined to do, I wrote a little ditty to the tune of We Wish You A Merry Christmas (this occurred around the Holidays). I called it They Docked Me Another "Z" Day. The lyrics included a stanza that went "They say that I'll get a button, they say that I'll get a button, they say that I'll get a button. Well I say (expletive deleted) you!" A group of us had a wonderful time singing it at our holiday party.
Yet Another
While this did not affect me directly, I found this more recent incarnation of The Candle Syndrome remarkable in its acceptance as "okay" by a large number of Bank of America employees.
A few years ago, some bright (sarcastic) executive had the bright (extremely sarcastic) idea that they should ask the lowest-paid employees to "adopt an ATM."
The following is from the SF Chronicle story.
BofA's 160,000 employees, buffeted by layoffs and
under pressure to reduce expenses, have been given a new opportunity to
demonstrate corporate teamwork.
Workers are being urged to ``Adopt an ATM'' near their home or office and
make weekly visits to pick up trash, wash the equipment, prune shabby
shrubbery and make sure the machines are in good working order.
On their own time and for no extra pay.
Company officials say the program is proving wildly popular, and more than 50 employees per day are signing up to take an ailing ATM under their wing.
Now in California, the State Department of Labor decided this was not only a bad idea, but illegal to boot. While BofA executives were pulling down millions of dollars in stock options and golden parachutes, they were asking their lowest paid employees to save them money by cleaning the ATMs free, and then they threw in prune shabby shrubbery.
Just think if the success of this program had continued, they might have started to ask them to stock the ATMs, too!
Dear Employees:
Given the success of the Adopt an ATM program, we are now embarking on an upgrade. All your paychecks will be issued in new $20 bills and you will now be responsible for keeping all ATMs stocked and in working order. We are issuing you each a beeper and you will also be expected to keep the ATMs up and running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Now you may be saying 'What do I know about repairing ATMs?' Not to worry. Enclosed with your beeper will be a video and booklet 'ATM Repair for Dummies.' Once you've gotten your hands deep inside the guts of an ATM a few times, we know you will have the feeling of joy at a job well done.
PLEASE RETURN THE VIDEO AND BOOKLET WITHIN 3 WEEKS. YOU WILL BE DOCKED FOR UNRETURNED MATERIALS.
For those of you who may be receiving layoff notices, we are sure these skills will help you land another job. If you wish to keep your skills up to date while looking, we welcome you to continue to maintain your adopted ATM… on a volunteer basis.
Sincerely, Hugh McColl
What is the thought process of the corporate upper echelon that they would even think of offering schemes such as these? Have they so lost touch with what motivates people, or even why they work for them that they are taking a shotgun approach and hoping something works?
Are they so desperate to ensure their own or the company's success that they have abandoned all common sense? Are they so far removed (or perhaps never had) management and leadership skills that they have forgotten the lessons of Maslow and Herzberg - not to mention Kohn? Or perhaps they've been smoking the wacky tabacky.
Anyway you cut it the results are the same; grumbling employees, rebellious parishioners, and dismal results.
Will we ever see an end to The Candle Syndrome? Not as long as these so-called leaders continue to put the numbers and the results ahead of their people and the process.
People do care. Witness the initial success of the ATM program. I would be, and have been, the first person to jump on the "company way" bandwagon, but only when what I am doing makes sense to me and I can see that the ends justify the means. Getting a candle, a button, or a pat on the head for a clean ATM does neither.
Fini
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07/24/05