…and a lesson in how to make money on the Internet. Create a site that does nothing but stream other people's content then load up every blank spot on the page with ads. I'd seen this done with my blog posts before but this is a first.
Comedy Central in the US won't allow Canadians to watch their clips so if you want to be legal, you have to watch The Comedy Network version of this clip that is viewable by Canadians…or, like everything else, you can just watch it on YouTube. Great system there, guys. Way to go!
Tomorrow, I'm coordinating a customer service workshop for a few RPL employees (coordinating but not delivering – that will be handled by a very experienced, very
awesome librarian we have on staff who has a lot more background in
this area than do I.)
I'm sure everyone has those elements of their job that they're ambivalent about and this is one for me. Although I understand why the notion of “customer service” has become such a huge part of the library world, I'm still not sure if I agree with the underlying principles (well, duh – obviously treating customers well is a good idea, smiling at people and being polite is a good idea. But is something like “the customer is always right” equally valid? Is customer even the right way to think of the people who use libraries?)
In fact, I'm not sure if I mentioned this or not, but I've been accepted to deliver a session on the various terms we use for library patrons at the Saskatchewan Library Association conference in Saskatoon next May. I'm going to take an especially detailed look at the reasons for the increasing prevalence of the term “customer” to denote library patrons and then propose an alternate term/approach which I've discussed on this blog before.
My plan is to approach it as an exploration of the idea as I don't honestly think we're all going to start calling the people who come into our buildings “neighbours” instead of patrons/customers/clients/etc. But I do think that, were the idea to catch on, I honestly believe it could be a brand new and potentially ground-breaking approach to the idea of how to deal with and treat people who use our services.
So anyhow, thats a long preamble for a couple things that happened to me while I was in Ottawa and which I thought would make the basis of an interesting comparison on the notion of “customer service”:
– on my last night in Ottawa, I was tired and my feet hurt from a lot of walking but I still wanted to take full advantage of being in the city. So I hobbled out of the hotel to the nearest bus stop to catch a bus down to Byward Market, even though it was probably only a 10-15 minute walk. I got on the bus, asked for a transfer and also how long it would last. When the bus driver told me, I explained that I was going down for a bite to eat and didn't know how long I'd be but didn't want to have to buy two (expensive – $3 ) rides if I didn't have to. “Oh, I see.” He punched a couple buttons on his ticket unit and out popped a different ticket. “This is a day pass – you can stay down there as long as you want and use it to get back later tonight. Have a good time!” I looked down to see what the day pass would normally cost – $7.25 – and it only cost me three bucks! More importantly, it made me less stressed because I knew I could have a leisurely meal, have a wander around and maybe grab a dessert or drink somewhere else, all without worrying about catching a bus within an hour and a half.
– so I get down to the Byward Market and end up eating at a place called Mambo Nuevo which had caught my eye when I was scouting out places on the Net. It's their 2 for 1 appetizers night but the menu says this is only after 10pm. It's about twenty to ten at this point so I ask the waitress if I could get this deal since it'll be after 10pm by the time my bill comes and it's time to pay. “No, you have to order after 10pm to get the special.” Okay, fine – she's just following the rules but coming so quickly after my great experience on the bus, this was extra disappointing. So instead of sampling a couple of their different (vastly overpriced!) appetizers which I would've done if they'd given me the deal, I only ordered one. I only had one beer instead of maybe sticking around for a couple. I gave a smaller tip than I probably otherwise would've (yes, knowing full well that she was just following the rules – but so was I in leaving a tip that reflected my experience at the restaurant, right?) And now I'm blogging about a negative experience at that restaurant to a readership that includes numerous people in the Ottawa area or which may be found by people who are doing web searches and happen to end up here. (What is that old line – “if you have a good experience, you'll tell one other person. But if you have a bad one, you'll tell ten?” Except in the Internet age, those numbers are multiplied exponentially.)
What it comes down to for me is this: we can teach customer service and tell our employees that they need to smile and be nice. We should give them some discretion to make front line decisions that may be against the rules or policies (I can't remember which one it is but there's a famous story of a hotel chain which has empowered ALL employees to make decisions up to $1000 on the spot to rectify problems.)
But the bigger question is how to reach staff in a more fundamental way to change their underlying attitudes so they don't come out of a day of training and then, two weeks later, they're back to frowning at customers or ignoring them or whatever. (I was getting a new battery in my watch recently when a guy came and lined up behind me. It was taking the lady at the counter a long time to change the battery but she didn't even take a second to acknowledge the other guy who was waiting – “be with you in a moment, sir!” or whatever – to the point that I felt awkward and turned around to apologize myself!)
At our staff conference a couple weeks ago, Karen Hyman gave an excellent presentation (like seriously, one of the best I've seen!) based on a previous PLA presentation she did. It had one particular slide showing a close-up of her granddaughter's face. “Would you be mean to this little girl?” it asked then answered on the same slide, “Research shows that you would.”
I've seen this first hand in a library and it's not pretty. So again, the bigger q
uestion is, how do you reach employees on a deeper level than just giving them training? I've got a couple theories and I guess the weeks and months to come will see if there's any truth to them.
Sam Baker tells a true story preceding this live performance that sets the scene for one of the most emotional songs you might ever here (worth reading the link I provided for the full backstory before watching the clip as well):
Shea, Pace and I went to our staff Kids' Christmas party today which included a puppet show, juice & cookies and a visit from a somewhat scary old guy in a red suit. Good times!
1. Gas jockey at the local gas station throughout high school 2. Door-to-door salesman for a rural cable TV company throughout my undergrad years (not nearly as bad as it sounds and in fact, one of my favourite jobs of all-time) 3. Marketing & Technology Officer at the Saskatchewan Publishers Group after finishing my BA 4. Program Officer for the Writers Guild of Alberta when we moved to Calgary 5. Branch Supervisor for Southeast Regional Library after I finished my MLIS 6. Organization Development Specialist with Regina Public Library
I’ve also had myriad (god, I love that word!) other short-term gigs, contracts, temp jobs and so on ranging from “goal judge for the local senior hockey team” to “sanitation plant supervisor” (I was the money collector at our local dump for a summer!)
Now that I’m at an organization where, for the first time in my life, I feel like I could conceivably spend the rest of my career, I thought it might be interesting to reflect on some of the things I’ve learned at each stop along the way.
The high school gas jockey job started when I was 15 and I still think I got it under partly false pretenses. My dad farmed for most of the year but worked for a local car dealership & repair shop during the winter months.
The couple who owned the dealership also owned the gas station and when they were looking for some help on evenings and weekends, my dad put my name forward. I think the owners assumed that because my dad was a farmer, I would have a lot more mechanical knowledge than I did (this was an old-school gas station – full service which could mean not only washing windows and checking oil but doing as many basic repairs as you were capable of – of which, for me, turned out to be “not many”.)
Anyhow, I did get the job and ended up staying there for a couple years, working full-time during the summers and then some evenings and weekends throughout the rest of the year.
Here are five things I learned… 1. Everyone should work in some sort of minimum-wage retail job early in their working life and preferably as their first job – whether as a gas jockey, a waitress/waiter, a checkout clerk at the local grocery store, at the concession stand at the local theatre or whatever. The basic skills you learn will be ones that you carry with you for the rest of your life – whether it’s handling money or handling the full range of people you encounter. More importantly, you will (hopefully) gain an empathy and an understanding of the issues faced by anyone who does this type of work as their livelihood, not just as a high school job before going on to university.
I don’t know if I immediately picked up this lesson – I remember once when somebody had tried to flush a diaper in our public washrooms and plugged the toilet. I called the weekend guy and told him what had happened and said “what should I do?” knowing full well what the answer was. But instead of telling me to get my soft pink hands into a pair of gloves and fish it out, he said “I gotta come by anyway. I’ll take care of it” He stopped by twenty minutes later and did the dirty deed. As I said, I didn’t learn the lesson at the time but when I went back to the Esso recently to find that he’d returned to working there, after being away for a job in Regina for a few years, I tipped him $10. I didn’t tell him the exact reason why I did this – I just said that I appreciated how he’d always been good to me (which was also true – it wasn’t just that one incident where he’d saved my bacon) and I hoped he’d take the money and have a beer on me.
2. Even the smallest organization will have politics – in an organization with maybe half a dozen employees (counting the boss), the guy who worked weekends would grumble about the the guy who had the very desirable M-F morning spot, I’d jockey with my buddies who also worked there to get the Saturday morning and Sunday night shifts so that we could go out Saturday night but not have to be up early on Sunday morning.
3. This probably seems obvious but I learned that pretty much every job will have things that you enjoy and things that you don’t but that a job will be whatever you make of it. For a lot of people, working in a gas station would be boring as hell or beneath them or whatever. But I think I was always able to find positives – whether it was realising how cool it was to have a job that allowed me to chat with people from across Canada and around the world, to work outside on some very nice days (since it was mainly a summer job for me), having a workplace where I usually didn’t have a boss looking over my shoulder and was given a great deal of autonomy or even just the fact that on the slow nights when all the cleaning had been done and there was nothing else to do, you could sit and read the World Weekly News from the magazine rack to find out what was *really* happening in the world! 😮
4. I learned that I could get up at 6am on a regular basis including many minus forty winter mornings when I couldn’t think of anything less appealing than going to a gas station to work. This was a MAJOR revelation to my teenaged self!
5. Loyalty can last a long time. Since I left Indian Head, a Shell station has opened up and it would probably make more sense to go there since they offer Air Mile points and are probably a bit more conveniently located in relation to my parents’ house. But even though most of the staff has changed, the ownership has changed and the entire operation has changed (self-serve island! More drink coolers! Lottery ticket machine!), I still feel a sense of loyalty to the place that gave me my first “real” job and also treated me very well. (I love that I started at $4.25/hr and got a raise to $4.50 after a month!)
It's probably not a surprise to anyone who has read this blog for any length of time that I'm an atheist. But I have recently come across a couple items that take people to task for their Christmas extravagances from a religious perspective which I thought were worth sharing.
The idea for aOne Hundred Dollar Holiday started in a Methodist church. The idea is that you try not to spend more than $100 on Christmas gifts. As a family, we're not quite there yet (I think Shea and I started with a $50 limit for each other and that recently got bumped to $100, we're only giving small gifts to the grandparents (which will be “from Pace”) and they're giving us small gifts as well supposedly. Pace, however, is another story – even though he's not even two and doesn't even “get it”, it's tough to resist the temptations and I know that at least one gift was one hundred dollars by itself. Then there's all kinds of little toys and trinkets. Sigh – maybe next year…)
Advent Conspiracy points out some alarming stats about our total Christmas spending versus how that money could be used very effectively otherwise and recommends four steps we could all take to improve the world
* Worship Fully – remember what Christmas is really about
* Spend Less – buy one less gift this year
* Give More – of your time, to friends, family and community
* Love all
(via Make It Known and man, I need to update my blog roll one of these days!)
…and it's not Music Monday yet but here's a video to help you deal with the lack of originality of any type on this blog lately. One of the most original, innovative songs of all-time in my most humble opinion.
“The Baldwin Project seeks to
make available online a comprehensive collection of resources for
parents and teachers of children. Our focus, initially, is on
literature for children that is in the public domain in the United
States. This includes all works first published before 1923.”
Firefox add-on allows pirates to take over Amazon
