Synergy & Fatigue

Some years ago I went to work for a little family-run business. One of the two brothers who started the company had come up with a brilliant idea: he saw how the home office market was building, how people were buying laser printers and getting into desktop publishing. He realized no one had paper to run through these new machines. The only paper available was white “Xerox” paper, lightweight stuff.
He got everyone he knew, including his Dad, to lend him money and he started an offshoot business from his brother's office-paper business. He printed up a catalog, rented some mailing lists and was off and running. The company turned a profit its first year.

The entepreneur's dream so far, right?

I came along as employee number 53. I started as a phone operator, someone who took orders from people calling the 800 number. I had been out of work for seven months at the time and would've taken anything.

The company grew incredibly, adding ten employees a month soon after I started. Hiring was based solely on competence: color or age or sexual preference were no barrier to being given a chance to prove yourself. And the brothers were there every day, even their dad, who was in his mid-fifties.

The dad and I would step outside for our cigarette breaks and converse a bit. We talked about Roosevelt, how he pulled the country out of a depression, how the current job market stank, about the fucking Republicans and so on. The father was a very smart man, had always been self-employed, taught his sons how to make their own way in the world. He’d never been rich but he had never been hurting either. He helped his sons when they needed help. He staked them to their seed money.

The sons were good businessmen. They hired one of their best friends to build the company up. All of them liked their employees - or gave that impression. They talked to us like we were friends, called us by our first names, lent us money when we were between paychecks. They gave nice raises and generous bonuses. They threw parties often. The Christmas parties alone were legendary, lavish affairs in huge catering halls. They grew more elaborate every year, with nice gifts and dancing troupes and a full sit-down meal. One Christmas the father stood out in the front room, entreating us to fill up bags from the huge appetizer and dessert spreads on our way out the door.

This policy of generosity extended to the customers. Early on we borrowed the Nordstrom's philosophy: “If the customer is unsatisfied - for whatever reason - do what it takes to make him or her happy”. It was the first lesson taught to new employees. We went out of our way to communicate to customers that we wanted their business, that they could trust us to take care of them. Some customers abused the policy, weaseling free stuff out of the company, but the owners understood it as the price of doing business. The majority of our customers came back time and time again because they knew we they’d end up satisfied with the goods and the service.

Over four booming years I took on greater responsibility and was given more autonomy as I demonstrated I was competent and could be trusted. The company did so well we moved to nice new digs fifteen minutes from my apartment in New Jersey. We had a cafeteria - a good one - in the building and shops and a movie theatre (discount tickets available through the personnel office) right next door. We had a great health plan - ten dollar co-pay, five dollar prescriptions - and a generous 401K plan. We even had life insurance. My salary went up seven thousand dollars in four years. I became an assistant to a Vice-President, had a large desk and was left alone most of the day to work on “projects”. The projects mostly had to do with keeping the employees happy, making them feel appreciated and important to the success of the company. And we did. Customers routinely talked in tones of awe about how happy everyone on the other end of the phone seemed. We had trust and respect, we were well cared for and well-paid: why not be happy?

Then one fine day in July I joined the now 400 employees in the parking lot to hear how we were to become a division of a Fortune 250 company from the Midwest. The owners had decided to accept an offer of $90 million cash. They gave us fat bonus checks based on our length of service I remember remarking to any co-workers within earshot “It's over”. The Midwesterners moved in, slowly but surely. The owners stayed on for another year and then were gone. The new owners installed new front-office management, people willing to do whatever necessary to make the place “meaner and leaner”. Our healthy company was to become healthier still by “cutting the fat” and “boosting the bottom line”.

We were no longer accountable to our customers: the shareholders were to be our new focus. Like bloodhounds after an escaped convict, efficiency experts sniffed out every area of perceived “corporate waste”. They started by gutting the customer service policy: no more of that “100%-guarantee-of-satisfaction” crap. Now customers were made to fill out forms and explain (and the reason better be good) why they were returning items or looking to make an exchange. We weren't about to foot the bill for their mistakes. The efficiency experts also sought out cheaper suppliers for all the finished goods, often ruining the product in the process by changing its specifications. One department after another saw their budget cut: no more would money be spent on creating new product lines or finding better ways to service the customers.

The little things which made the job bearable, which kept moral high, also disappeared. No more parties, no more buying lunch for people who worked through their lunch hour, no more free coffee. Next attacked was the benefits package. The health plan was decimated, the burden of expense passed on to the employees. The 401K plan followed. The commission structure for sales-people was downgraded severely. Overtime was eliminated. A policy of replacing departing full-time employees with part-timers was instituted. Our new CEO, while never actually stopping by, sent videotapes for us to watch in darkened rooms. On the tapes he stood at a podium and spoke in euphemisms about “Looking across the divisions to find synergy…” and “Delivering more value to the shareholders…”. At no time were we mentioned, the people who had built the company up, made it healthy enough to be attractive to the Midwesterners in the first place. We were seen as those who had it too good for too long.

Eventually, the word “downsizing” was whispered in the elevator and behind closed doors. People stopped feeling so sure about the future and began to look around, worried. The friends I'd made on the job complained to me about how “the place isn't the same anymore - they're ruining it” but felt impotent to do anything. I earned a reputation as soothsayer simply by predicting every move management would make based on the most basic concepts about capitalism: to raise profits either a) raise prices or b) drive down wages. The Midwesterners were advancing on both fronts.

My co-workers couldn't believe we were being sacrificed to make the shareholders happy, especially considering few of us could afford significant stock in our own company. A few of them asked me about unions, how we could join one, what it would take. I called a nearby local of a national communication workers union and was told: • Any organizing would have to be done from within • Someone would have to be elected as a representative. • It was against the law for the company to fire anyone involved in organizing. • That I needed to inform the owners of the company in writing about what I was doing (so they couldn’t fire me and claim ignorance about my activities). • I should have a meeting of interested parties and see if there was enough support among my co-workers to sustain a long battle, etc., etc., etc.

The representative with whom I spoke - a kind, empathetic and supportive woman - told me her union couldn’t get involved until “the ball is rolling from within”. I thought about what it would take to get my co-workers on board (after the “Norma Rae” fantasies had subsided) and kept coming up against two basic problems: 1) My co-workers were scared to death of losing their jobs. They’d do anything to remain employed: allow their wages to be lowered, their workload to be tripled, their benefits removed, their positions to be downgraded to part-time. They grumbled and complained and damned the new bosses to hell but knew ultimately how severely local unemployment had risen and that losing this job mean having to take one even worse. 2) Virtually none of my co-workers could imagine anything positive coming out of unionizing. The majority of them had been sold the message that unionizing was somehow “Un-American”, that it was akin to “stealing”. Unions, to them, were worse than the bosses. I heard second-hand stories of relatives shut out of jobs because they wouldn’t join the local. Of unions that exacted dues and then sold their members down the river at negotiation time. Of all those guys on the road crew, leaning on shovels sipping coffee while you crawled past on your morning commute. Or those guys at the convention center who wouldn't allow you to plug in your boombox because they had “jurisdiction”. Or those guys with middle names like “The Lunatic” or “Boom-Boom”, being arraigned in federal court in expensive suits. The anecdotal evidence combined with the overwhelmingly-negative (or, worse still, completely non-existent) mainstream-media portrayal of unions and their activities convinced me that trying to install a union at our workplace would be like trying to staple jello to a tree. I stopped making the calls and stopped trying to sell them on the idea.

Things on the job went into rapid decline. Resentment continued to build. So many people were caught stealing that security guards were hired and photo ID cards were instituted. The layoffs came in a torrent, whole departments were let go, the gutting continued apace. My immediate boss was let go and I came under the auspices of an odious little frog of a man imported from the Minneapolis office to whip our department into shape. My autonomy disappeared as he took me into his confidence and relayed to me his plan to keep everyone in a constant state of fear for their jobs. He explained how fear was the one true motivator. He attempted to enlist my aid, placing me in the training department with two other men. We were to write a new manual. I faked it for four months while looking for another job. When I left virtually none of my work had been completed.

I’ve never been a businessman so I can’t say I understand a management style that antagonizes a workforce by making it clear to them that they are expendable. Isn’t it shortsighted and self-destructive not to invest in your employees? What most CEOs would love - and what they consistently try to move us toward - is free labor. They resent every dollar they pay us and would do anything to move us back to a state of indentured servitude. I found out later that the company was closing down all local operations, consolidating all jobs in Colorado and Minnesota, where folks earned an average of $6.00 an hour. I heard nothing from former co-workers for quite a while until one called me and told me that the Midwesterners were looking for a buyer for the division. It was losing money.

Comments

[Sweet16]

Other than establishing the corporate headquarters, why the emphasis on "Midwesteners"? It reminds me of the same cultural biases that result in similar catch-alls, "Southeners" and "Easteners".

[Listener James from Westwood]

I read it as being their identifier only, serving to distinguish them from his fellow employees and the departed management, as well as taking the place of the corporation's name that Chris chose not to employ.

I also mistook "Easteners" for "Eastenders," and now I want to watch British TV.

[tk]

That'd be pretty crappy if that were the idea. I get the feeling that "Midwesterners" could just as easily be "Southerners," "Easterners," whatever. The point is that they're outsiders & they proved themselves to be encroachers/interlopers. Whatever preconceptions about Midwesterners that the reader brings to the table & whatever we think Chris might be implying about them kinda just gives us more to think about.

[Chris T.]

TK's right: It was Midwesterners because it's the easiest way to identify them without giving the company name. If the were from the South it would've been "Southerners". To paraphrase Lenny Bruce, some of my best friends are Midwesterners.

[Sweet16]

I just thought the story could be more universally told, if the region didn't really have a strong bearing other than being "another region from the one of the original company" (we assume that was the case - I don't think he ever established the location of the founding company). On the other hand, he talks about jobs going to Colorado and Minnesota where folks earn less. I guess that's relevant if true.

Yeah I over-reacted. (Maybe I stressed from the long last paragraph. Try a hard return once in awhile.)

[Sweet16]

(Ouch "-eners" instead of "-erners" three times...where was my brain! Probably in the Midwest. But while I'm being PC, correcting spelling in forum posts is a no-no, as is chastising others for lack of netiquette. That's it, I'm cutting bait and giving up trolling for posts.)

[Chris T.]

Dear Sweet 16:

The company originally was in NJ, where I live. I guess I assumed everyone knew what I meant when I wrote "15 minutes from my apt."

The problem with the last paragraph is a glitch. I hadn't noticed but lots of my paragraph breaks disappeared. Thanks for pointing it out to me in your angry, mean-spirited way.

[staying competitive]

i don't think chris intended to regionalize this whole middle management strategy as MIDWESTERN, but come to think of it, my personal experience DOES attach SIGNIFICANT RESONANT connotations to the word.

the management of the MIDWESTERN company that took over my current workplace to set themselves up with a manhattan office (franchise) could safely be characterized as garden variety tools. applebee-assed viagrate GOPeons.

was chris subtly suggesting corporations that choose to keep their headquarters in the midwest do so out of confidence that the region is well-stocked with thoroughly mortgaged, detached jerk-offs who excel at enforcing the sort of corporate philosophy represented in his rather touching story of what a devalued labor market looks like from the inside?

no no no, i strayed too far.

try substituting the word ALL-AMERICAN for midwestern. i'm afraid THAT's how universal t's story really is.

great story chris. adieu ariel view.

as for me, my co-workers and i were treated to a plain cheese pizza to commemorate the record busiest day at my job the other day. it was pretty super.

[Sweet16]

Chris,

Excuse me for not re-reading your article, hence the slip on the near-NJ setting. I did "enjoy" it, and I'm not going to take anything away from it. It dealt with real people who invested and continue to invest huge portions of their lives in it. You and they have my respect.

I invested just a small amount of time in something you obviously poured more than just time into. Apologize for rubbing you the wrong way. Appeciate the last comment by Staying Competitive (that's closer to my point).

When I first looked at the paragraph layout, I actually thought it worked as a design: Synergy (short pithy paragraphs) and Lethargy (a long drawn-out paragraph). Again, sorry, from this work-a-day heart.

Mon Nom-de-plum, Sweet16 (like the awful MTV-inspired show)

[OMFG]

As I read the first few paragraphs about the happy workplace, I had a sense of where this was going. It wasn't even shocking and that's really fucking sad. I hope the paper company merges with a matchbook manufacturer.

[Noumenon]

"The anecdotal evidence combined with the overwhelmingly-negative (or, worse still, completely non-existent) mainstream-media portrayal of unions and their activities convinced me that trying to install a union at our workplace would be like trying to staple jello to a tree. I stopped making the calls and stopped trying to sell them on the idea."

It's so sad that this is the number-two result at Google for "unionizing blog." If you've ever read Working by Studs Terkel, the contrast with the 1960s and 1970s, when workers actually had hope, is crushing.