February 2010 Archives

The way I grew up watching movies at the cinema was kind of odd. At what time I arrived and entered the theater didn't matter to me. I would walk in and sit in the back. I started the movie wherever I happened to. Then stayed past the ending until it started over again and reached the part I had already seen. How the story begins and ends is not in the control of the filmmaker. It is left to chance as affected by any of the innumerable forces that led up to my off-schedule arrival. This has been my relationship with movies for as long as I can remember. And as such, it has never made a difference to me whether I knew about the story's twist or ending beforehand.

Are there feature film examples where the narrative does not rely on a beginning and ending -- the viewer may enter at any particular point? Or is it by definition that a narrative must have a start and end to tell a story? Even so, can an end lead into a start of a story seamlessly? Or do none of these questions really make any sense?

As with most great ideas the concept of TEN first revealed itself over a cocktail beverage at a bar while yelling across the table to a couple of friends. But let's not talk about my issues. TEN is a film festival that I personally would like to go and see -- and not just because of my involvement in it which requires me to attend. A team of filmmaker-types assembled around TEN to put it on, not because I know little of film making (again let's not focus on my issues) but because it is amazingly wonderful to see big ideas take their very first steps. To be there, present as it began. And to have its introduction be challenged by the constraints of time and resources, forcing it into even more creativity. How can this event possibly be anything but a spectacle? I hope to see you there.

I paid with a crisp twenty I had just gotten from the ATM.  When I handed over the bill, the woman at the counter glared at it, then held it up to the light to locate the all-important metal strip inside the bill, then swiped it with one of those pens who's ink turns dark only on a fake bill but remains transparent on a genuine note.

"What's with all the security?" I asked her.

"Well," she said, "there have been a lot of fake twenties getting passed in this neighborhood recently.  They said if we take a fake twenty, it will get taken out of our tips!"

So, essentially, lazy and irresponsible management (and probably more accurately, middle management: this is going to be the kind of place which has a "store manager" who makes about 15% more than the counter people or gets a token revenue share if they "hit their targets for the quarter"), but management none the less at these stores has placed anti-counterfeiting responsibility on their counter staff!  Think about this for a second.  

Can you imagine a crazier thing to do?  Should twelve or fifteen dollars per hour cover anti-counterfeiting efforts?  Is there a commensurate bonus associated with rejecting a fake bill?  Of course there isn't.  There is only the fear of penalty and a refusal to take responsibility at the appropriate level in the company for a problem like this.

Now, endowing this woman at the counter with that kind of fear and responsibility passes directly and instantly to me, a sleepy customer who has already gotten over the hump and been impressed enough with them to want to pay six dollars for a coffee and croissant.  A basic bad management decision created a bad experience for me first thing in the morning, and caused me to think about their brand as jerky corporate types rather than people capable of making a three dollar plain croissant.  It was also the first story I told my co-workers and now La Boulange is banned for all of us.

I wonder, what happens when this woman does encounter a fake bill?  She's very motivated to keep her tips and so refuses to take the bill and give the person whatever it is they have ordered.  There may already be a coffee poured for the person, a morning bun in the warmer for them.  What now?  Would this situation potentially mean danger for the stalwart counter person?  A scene in the restaurant?  Food waste at the very least?  Does possession of a fake twenty even imply knowledge of it?  Might the person passing the fake just be a guy from the shoe store up the street who was handed it as change for the fifty dollar bill his Aunt gave him for his 23rd birthday?  Has the person who handed down the "take a fake twenty and I'll take your tips" rule thought any of this though?  You bet they haven't.  My guess is that that person's manager handed down a similar decree of punishment that morning at a special magers meeting.  How come the tip-stealing threat is a good motivator in the first place?  My guess would be that the base wage is such that getting an extra twenty dollars per shift from the tip jar actually matters a lot.  Again, this is indicative to me of bad management at several basic levels.

Okay, got it, enough!  Why am I belaboring this?  I'm not just having a grumpy morning.  I think this is a living example of an attitude which has become the norm in big business in the U.S. and has started to infect small business more and more.  This is a great example of the fundamental Toxicity of Bad Management.  When a real and basic problem comes up for an organization, management hands responsibility for the fix down to the lowest level it can and in a lot of cases sets up an enforcement mechanism based on financial penalty.  This is a kind of "anti-bonus" mentality and thinking about it now probably isn't even legal without a very permissive contract structure with your employees.  Whatever the case, at the very least this is definitive Bad Business and has been a mounting problem in this country's business culture for decades now.  This same attitude, writ much larger, is a core component of our current economic mess.  Bad management is always toxic, and not just in the scope of a single transaction or the company at the mercy of it.

The picture at the top is from a former local of mine down in LA.  It's a similar deal, but in this case they have taken the additionally insane step of making it their customer's responsibility to manage their employee's schedules.  See if you can guess where the $15 will come from?