Your Customer Is Not Your Problem

Two very different experiences this past week have taught me a lot about the value of positive customer service -- and the need to create a workplace environment that encourages and sustains it.

When Good Road Signs Go Bad

A week ago, I noticed that the five-way stoplight at the Forward and Murray Avenues intersection of Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood was broken. One of the light's cycles -- the side that faces traffic coming off the I-376 exit -- was lasting at least 2-3 times longer than it normally does. This is odd because that's usually NOT a high-traffic approach; it also extends the wait time for those on Murray Avenue, which results in 8-block traffic jams during rush hour.

So I contacted PennDOT, informed them of the problem (via email form), and someone wrote me back within a day to explain that traffic lights are the concern of the municipality, rather than the state. They also said they'd forward my email to the Pittsburgh traffic office -- which, I'll admit, is where I thought this story would end.

Today, I received the following email from Amanda Broadwater, P.E., Municipal Traffic Engineer for the City of Pittsburgh's Department of Public Works - Bureau of Transportation and Engineering:

Dear Mr. Kownacki,

Within the State of Pennsylvania, traffic signals are the jurisdiction of the City. Therefore, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation forwarded your comment to us regarding the intersection of Forward and Murray in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood.

The City of Pittsburgh has identified [that] loop detectors are malfunctioning at the intersection. This type of problem happens often during wet weather. When this occurs, the maximum time allotted to the approach with the bad loop is displayed during each cycle, rather than the green time being traffic responsive. Obviously this creates greater delays on the other approaches of the intersection.

The electricians will be back on site today to try and remedy the problem. However, it may be necessary to completely replace the loop detectors. If this is the case, a timing change will be needed to ease congestion during preparation of the work. If a timing change is needed, it should be in place by mid week.

I wanted to highlight Amanda's response for two reasons:

* What speedy turnaround time from a pair of agencies that probably receives dozens (if not hundreds) of similar reports every day.

* What a thorough and understandable explanation! I would have expected a form letter saying "thanks, we'll get to it." Instead, Amanda went to the trouble of explaining the issue to me in layman's terms and then suggested a date by which the work should be completed.

On the Other Hand...

Last week, I stopped at a Wendy's just off the Hazleton, PA, exit on I-80. I've been to this Wendy's half a dozen times over the past year, because that exit is a regular pit stop on my business trips between Pittsburgh and Connecticut.

This time, I was one of the only customers in the place, and the staff of 5 or 6 seemed frustrated. Maybe it was because I was disrupting their side work, or because of something their manager may have said moments earlier. Maybe they were just having a bad day.

But when the kid gave me my order and I said "Thanks," and he just grunted at me with the body language that let me know I was his problem, not his customer, it clarified two things for me:

* There's a reason front-end workers in fast food and retail only get paid a minimum wage, and

* I need to stop eating at the Wendy's in Hazleton.

Conversely, although I disagree with their politics, I enjoy the experience of ordering food at Chick-fil-a. Why? Because their employees (at least in Pittsburgh's Waterfront location) are perpetually in good moods. Not the kind of fake smile most employee handbooks insist their cashiers sport, but the kind of jovial attitude that lets me know they enjoy working there -- and that they're happy I'm spending my money with them.

Like PennDOT and Pittsburgh's Department of Public Works, I'm not Chick-fil-a's problem. I'm their customer - and they'd like me to stay that way.

Photo by lawgeek.

Responsibility Is for Suckers

I have a dog, but I don't have a backyard. Thus, I walk my dog several times a day. So do dozens of my neighbors -- but evidently not all of them carry poop bags, because the neighborhood is becoming increasingly poop-filled.

This makes me wonder about the mentality of people who think it's okay to let their dogs poop on someone else's lawn, or in the middle of the sidewalk, and just leave it there. Clearly, these are not people who buy into the concept of cleaning up after themselves, or being "good citizens," or respecting anyone else's property.

These are the people who've figured out one of life's little secrets: personal responsibility is for suckers.

Why We Reward Mediocrity, Miscreants and Motherf*ckers

Despite what all 78 variations of Law & Order would have us believe, it's actually quite hard to get caught doing something wrong, and it's even harder to get punished for it. The reasons for this include:

* Evildoers tend to be smart, highly-motivated or both
* There's not enough time to right every wrong
* Justice suffers from scalability, and
* Most people just don't care

At the end of the day, after we're done bickering about which heinous offenses are worth our time and effort to punish and remedy, the fact remains that most wrongs will never be righted because, quite simply, there are too many of them to act upon. How can we care about child soldiers in Uganda, corruption in our government AND poop on our sidewalks?

So the mediocre, the miscreants and the motherfuckers tend to get away with murder. Not because we condone it, but because we simply lack the Batman-like vigilance it would require to take each and every one of them down AND STILL HAVE TIME to enjoy the positives in life (if we could even appreciate them after a marathon of righteous ass-kicking).

Plus, practically speaking, what's anyone going to *do* about it? Nothing. If someone else's dog (or child) shits in your yard, you have to deal with it. Unless you know who it was, but even then, what are you going to do? Demand that they clean it up? How? With what? And where's your leverage in that argument?

Evildoers know that justice may be on your side, but our universal avoidance of conflict is on theirs.

If You Can't Beat 'Em...

Last week, someone broke glass all along the sidewalk. The glass is green -- maybe a car window? -- and, initially, was confined to an area between two houses. The problem: one of those houses is for sale, and the other is occupied by people who don't care. So that glass has been sitting there for about 10 days, unattended, scattering itself across the full width of the sidewalk over time. It's reached the point where I have to pick Rufus up when I walk him down that block, because the odds of him stepping in glass are too great for me to risk it.

I know what you're thinking: if the glass bothers me so much, why don't I clean it up?

Because if I stopped to clean up someone else's mess on the street, where do I draw the line? Do I start cleaning up messes in other people's yards, too? Do I carry a broom, shovel, dustpan and gun with me everywhere I go, "just in case"? (Okay, maybe that's overkill; I don't really *need* the shovel...)

All of which means I'm just part of the problem. The person who broke the glass didn't clean it up, the people who live beside the broken glass won't clean it up, and now neither will I.

And why should I? Responsibility is for suckers.

Photo by What What.

Grow Up. This Means You.

Is it just me, or do you instantly lose respect for someone the moment you hear them complain -- in a book, in a conversation, in a blog, on Twitter, wherever?

I'm not saying "don't identify problems." I'm saying "be proactive about it." I have better things to do than to hear a grown man bitch at his wife in public or read about someone feeling "wronged" by someone else... just as examples.

Whatever happened to proactive personal responsibility?

My Two Cents on Kathy Sierra (Or, Why We Can't Let the Bastards Win)

This is old news, but Kathy Sierra has ceased blogging (or appearing publicly) due to a number of death threats and generally misogynistic behavior from a number of anonymous blog followers.

Needless to say, the blogosphere has been electric with the news. Nearly everyone agrees that this is a horrid situation. As Seth Godin points out, quite accurately, "Isn't it sad that misogyny is so common that there's even a word for it?"

Robert Scoble's response to the situation is to let his blog go dark for a week, in a form of peaceful protest.

But, as many of his commenters point out, this is probably the least effective way to go about ENDING the problem.

Drawing attention to it? Absolutely -- CNN noticed. But silence won't do anything to stop the overwhelming problem of internet trolling and, more broadly, ignorance-based hate from the scum of the web world towards people who are different -- women, minorities, homosexuals, etc.

So What Do We DO About It?

How you respond to news like this depends upon how strongly you feel about personal responsibility.

Judging from the bulk of asinine behavior powered by the anonymity of the web, I'd say very few people believe in personal responsibility these days -- which means it's all too easy to sweep this kind of behavior under the rug as "an aberration."

Personally, I'm fully on the side of John C. Welch, who writes:

"When someone threatens you, out them. Publish the comment, with IP address, and whatever other kind of information you can find. If you can dig up real names, publish them too. No, I don't have qualms about it...

Oh yeah, call the FBI, the Cops, and Dear Abby's daughter too...

The point is, don't YOU be the one doing the hiding. Expose and report the little fuckers every time it happens. Don't give them the power to attack you from the safety of darkness. Make them operate in the light. Someone threatens you or your family, don't ignore it. Handle it in whatever way you feel safest doing, but don't ignore it, don't silently take it. That's what they want. Don't give them what they want. Make it so fucking painful to threaten you that they'd rather eat glass than do it a second time. Better yet, make them not want to do it the first time."

Internet Bullies Don't Want Your Lunch Money

They want to intimidate you because they want power.

They NEED power.

They need to know they have the upper hand in a situation because they lack the upper hand in their own lives.

Internet bullies hide behind the spectre of anonymity because they believe it offers them the ultimate power: to control the people who DO make themselves public, and bend them to their will.

John Carman is right when he says (via Twitter):

"The internet is a power tool, and I think parents should caution their children about it in the same way."

It's one thing to have to handle the problem of internet bullies who ARE picking on someone their own size. But when you draw children into the mix, things get even uglier.

Those of you with kids and computers: how do you plan to prepare them for the wild ride ahead?

How do you plan to educate your kids on the proper way to handle someone who's not just bullying them in the schoolyard, insulting them to their faces and demanding money or toys?

How do you train them to deal with someone who hides behind an avatar or a handle -- or, even better, an "anonymous" posting -- and can spend hours a day spreading rumors, lies and reputation-damaging information on the internet?

Fight or Flight?

Someone in school calls you a name, you have three choices: take the high road and ignore it, take the middle road and deny it, or take the fight directly to them and make them very sorry they started a problem in the first place.

Those rules still apply online, except the processes are very different.

Taking the high road means the bullies believe they won. Anytime they start a problem, they know your response will be to ignore them and hope your friends come to your rescue. That could become very inconvenient in a world where a week of silence is akin to becoming a technological Rip van Winkle.

Denying the allegations is insanely time-consuming online. As fast as information (or misinformation) spreads, there's no way you can track down every hotly-Googled, troll-laden Digg article that could hit the circuit. You'd have to hope, once again, that your friends have higher Google rankings and Technorati authority than the trolls do.

But, as we've learned with insurgents in a ground war, having more firepower doesn't mean you'll stamp them all out.

Your only recourse? Take the fight to them, but not in a way that glorifies the attack.

Think of what evening news programs are doing now with "to catch a child predator" shows. Think any of those idiots will try that activity again? (Sadly, some probably will, but if they get caught again...)

Now apply the same logic to the embittered 17 year-old... or 24 year-old... or 52 year-old... who takes pot shots at you in the dark, from the safety of his (yes, almost definitely his) online hidey hole.

You really think THAT guy wants to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the light by the feds? (Or, worse, a group of vigilante hackers who know how to make his every move public knowledge?)

An End to Anonymity

The end result in all of this is simple, of course: we need an end to anonymity.

If we can't use it properly -- and history has proven that mankind is almost universally incapable of making the best choices for itself when saddled with crowd mentality -- then we shouldn't be able to hide behind it at all.

What if your every move online were trackable, and everything you did meant you'd be held accountable? How much asinine shit would YOU do on a daily basis?

Maybe you'd still be a member of AdultFriendFinder, and then we could finally have a conversation about why America is so afraid of sex.

Maybe you'd still complain about bad service, false promises and lousy bosses. But now the world would know how to make it up to you -- and, if you were fired for complaining about your job, everyone would be able to see which companies value freedom of speech and which ones are working to learn from their mistakes.

And maybe you'd still insult everyone you already insult, but now the world would know you meant it because you weren't doing it from behind a closed door. You were standing in the light, like a man (or a woman), and saying, "Hi, I'm ___, and I think you're full of shit because ___."

And then maybe we could all move forward in this great big experiment we call "life."