By Isaac
isaac3rd@attbi.com
 
 

Have you seen a video or read a book called Fish? It's about a fish market in Seattle where the employees are into their jobs-I mean, really into it, to almost an insane degree. They whip large fish through the air, goof around with customers, and put on such a show while they're living it up at work that they attract large crowds of people just standing around to watch.

That sounds like your average corporate kind of office job, right? Whipping stuff around the cubicles, and having as much fun as people can have with their pants on.  Right? Is it like that where you work?

Every once in a while, some cock and bull management theory comes along that many corporations jump on that is THE quick fix. Remember total quality management from a few years back? Management jumped all over this turkey. One of the goals of TQM was to empower employees, the ones who actually know how to do the jobs, give them more flexibility to handle problems, and therefore to increase the level of service to customers. The '90s was supposed to be the "customer service decade". Do you feel better served while you try to navigate through impenetrable voice mail menus? Have all the "mission statements", "value statements", or "vision statements" corporations adopted in the '90s done a single thing to make you feel more valued? Or do you usually feel "Enroned" when you actually have to deal with the corporation whose television ads show you smiling, eager-to-please-you employees? Where are these people in real life?

The Fish program, or "Fish philosophy" was supposed to change the way employees view their jobs, and therefore their performance and happiness in the workplace.

My experience with it was exactly the opposite.

From 1997 to 2000, I worked for a corporation I was actually very happy with, if not exactly proud to work for. I had been a temporary worker for most of the 1990's to that point, and had seen the insides of dozens of corporations, large and small. I was hired on after three months as a temp at this place, and was actually content, if not exactly challenged by my job. There were enough perks to make it worth it, and we as employees were treated very well.

I should have known better than to get comfortable. We went through a merger that took effect in 2000, with a company that ended up being the dominant partner, and they are merciless sharks. I won't mention their name, but many of you reading this probably do business with them on a regular basis.

They took their cues right from the Reagan years, when the signal was given to corporate America that anything goes. One of the first things that happened was that employees stopped being considered valued assets and started being considered a cost of doing business. Personnel departments morphed from that vaguely military sounding name to "human resources". To me, that change meant a whole lot. What do we do with resources? We USE them, and when they're used up, we get more.

During the 80's and especially the 90's, corporate earnings reached record levels. At the same time, in real dollars, people making their income from being on payrolls saw their incomes freeze, then decrease in real dollars. Free market apologists like to point out that more millionaires were created at that time than ever before. They forget the part where more households had to have both parents working, the numbers of the homeless increased, and most people worked harder for less. This was the first time that workers didn't share in the prosperity that was so much due to their efforts. Wall Street decided to reward companies for selling off parts of companies and putting workers out of work. "Downsizing" and "outsourcing" became everyday words, and had four meanings for employees: unemployment, loss of security, and fear and anxiety. This was even before NAFTA, GATT, FTAA, and the WTO.

It's the reason why we have these hellish voice mail menus: companies don't have to pay salary or benefits to a voice mail system. That's how much we as customers mean now.

In the company where I was employed, the profit motive was the Prime Directive. We had a member of management come to a staff meeting and urge us to knock ourselves out so the shareholders would be happy. We were given little trinkets and certificates that were supposed to make us feel cared about and appreciated. At the same time, we were going through subtle game playing that resulted in us getting screwed out of raises and promotions.

Between last July and April, three women in my department had heart attacks at work. Others had gone on stress-related disability. Overtime was abolished and no hiring was done to replace people who were leaving by the truckload. Morale was non-existent; people were in a position where they hated their jobs, and frustrated over needing the jobs they hated so much. And through all of this, the pressure to produce more and more profits for shareholders was steadily being ratcheted upward. That's where the whole Fish thing came in.
 

                                                                              "The beatings will continue until morale improves"
 
We were shown the video and pretty much ordered to start having fun. We were dragged into meetings where ideas were demanded from us on how to make our workplace fun. No one had a clue, and the evidence came from the kinds of suggestions that my co-workers were coming up with. Some examples: crazy pants day, crazy hat day, wear your clothes inside out day, and snack/potluck days.

My favorite useless idea was this one:everyone in my department was given a small safety pin. The first one to hear another employee make a negative comment was entitled to take that employee's pin. At the end of two weeks, the employee with the most pins won a prize: one hour of paid time off. In a testament to how well these ideas were working, the third of the heart attacks at work I mentioned happened while this was all going on.

After it was clear that none of these ideas was working, I was asked by my manager to come up with something, since I had a reputation for being apart from the crowd and looking at everything in a different way than everyone else did. I was told that I would be giving a presentation at the next staff meeting.

My talk had to do with how little chance I thought we had of making the Fish philosophy work. I pointed out that we couldn't be forced to have fun, we had to be allowed to. Any idea that had the word "day" in it was pointless-the next day things would be back to normal. Changing how we viewed our jobs had to come from the inside, and couldn't be imposed from outside. Management would have to revise unrealistic standards and allow us to find our own meanings in our work. That profit motive kills everything it touches if people aren't seeing any benefit. We had to see tangible (especially spendable) benefits from our work. Making a living, providing for families, and having funds to finance retirements and educations for children were the reasons we were there. We would love to have fun with our work, and would, if we were just allowed to.

I was put on probation shortly afterward and terminated several weeks later. I looked forward to being terminated the same way a long-term terminally ill patient welcomes death. (I love that word. Being 'terminated' is like being 'disappeared' when a government does away with you).

My  management theory was simple. The tone of the corporation is set at the top. Communication can't be limited to only that which comes from the top down. People want to be proud of their work and who they do it for. People have to be allowed to feel there is a point to how they spend their lives, and allowed to share in the fruits of their labors. Our management should have set up a situation in partnership with us instead of an adversarial one.

And, as the saying goes, a fish rots from the head down.
 

isaac

I report. I decide.