Crosswalks to Nowhere

You know it's going to be a good day when you walk into your office building and a pretty blonde lady hands you a rose.

The reason for the rose was more commercial than romantic, though. The building where I work has new owners and a new management company as of today. A whole bunch of people in formal attire are walking the lobby this morning acting as the welcoming committee.

In the photo of the rose, you see today's WSJ underneath-- there's an article in the paper today about Joseph Chetrit, the guy who led the investment team who bought the building. This little blurb, however, was particularly intriguing:

The Chetrit-led buying group would "very likely" change the name of the 30-year-old landmark, according to one person. But it won't be Chetrit Tower; selling naming rights is one way to haul in revenue.

Start thinking of your suggestions now.

I've never been a fan of outsourcing.

Let me clarify: I've never been a fan of outsourcing anything that comes in direct (or at least very close) contact with the client. It seems you want the people closest to your customers to have a vested interest in the overall well-being of the organization.

I'm on this rant because I am having a problem with my Palm Tungsten E. One of the buttons stopped working, and I figured I would follow the rules and go about getting it fixed under the 90-day warranty.

(I should add here that, if I were lighter in the "integrity" category, I could deal with this problem by going to the store, buying a new one, then returning the old one on the new receipt, saying it was defective. Not that I know anyone would have actually tried to pull that off... Besides, I have a concern about what my karma account looks like. :-)

When I first ran into this problem, I emailed Palm Tech Support with my problem and I heard back a few days later with instructions to completely reset the unit (backing everything up first, of course) and see if that solved the problem. It didn't.

So, the other day I called Palm Support. Three voice-mail-Hell menus later, I was connected with "David" who has a pronounced middle-eastern accent and we are talking on a line with a lot of noise on it. Welcome to India.

"David" proceeded to walk me through his script, making sure that the unit is turned on, etc. Through this entire process, he grew increasingly impatient because he couldn't understand me, and the answers I gave him don't match what's written in his script. He asked me four or five times when I bought the unit, and that he was going to need a credit card to charge me for the call. I explained that I bought the unit in the beginning of March, and he said he has to charge because we're more than 90 days out. I explained that 90 days out would be the beginning of June. He conceded that he didn't need my Visa number.

In order to make things go a little smoother, I offered the trouble ticket number I received from email support. He explained that phone support doesn't have access to email support's records. High-tech-- way to go, Palm! Rather than making things better, now "David" is even more cheesed off.

We got to the point where his script says for me to back everything up and do a hard reset. Now we're getting somewhere. He's trying to rush me off the phone, telling me to call back after I've completed the task. When I explained that I already did that, and it didn't solve the problem, "David" hit yet another new level of frustration. "Hold on, please." *click* I still heard the line noise, so I knew my call was still connected to something overseas.

He came back and read from his script that Palm is happytoreplaceyourdefectiveunitandpleaselistencarefullytothenumberIamabout-
togiveyoubecausethisisyourRMAanditneedstobeclearlywrittenontheboxThe-
numberisS1dash77723876andwewillsendanemailconfirmationtoyouatyour-
emailaddressisthereanythingelseIcanhelpyouwithtoday?

"Yeah, there is. Can you read me the RMA number again? And can you verify the email address you have for me?"

Silence.

"Hello?"

Big Sigh on the other end. "Yes, Mr. Lynn, your confirmation number is..." and he slowly reads the number and my e-mail address. The e-mail address is, of course, wrong. I corrected it for him. Twice.

My confidence level of this actually being fixed is lower than ever, but I figured I'd be a sport.

Four days later, no e-mail confirmation.

I called Palm Support this morning. Three voice-mail-Hell menus later, I am connected with "John" who has a pronounced middle-eastern accent and we are talking on a line with a lot of noise on it. Welcome to India.

To his credit, "John" has a much better attitude. I gave him the number "David" gave me, and I am told that that service order number was cancelled. [Insert interrobang here.]

I guess "David" got the last laugh on me.

"John's" guess is that they had the wrong email address for me, and since the email bounced, they cancelled the order. Big surprise there. We walked through the whole thing again, and I was assured that this would be addressed appropriately.

Now, back to what I was trying to get at in the beginning:

I am certain that some goofball exec at Palm is driving a nice car because he came up with the idea of outsourcing Technical Support to some company (or a Palm division) in India. "Think of all the money we can save by contracting with another company to do this for us!" "Good work, Phil-- here's that bonus and 10,000 shares of 3Com stock (oops)!"

Yeah, at what price? If your Customer Service people upset your clients and your clients go away, is that a good thing? If your Customer Service people treat your customers badly, wouldn't you rather try and build the CSR's allegiance to your company so they feel a part of the organization rather than just another body working for a mercenary?

I worked at a place where they outsourced everyone in IT to another company. And what we in IT expected to happen happened: people who were very good at their jobs were suddenly told to stick to the letter of the contract and not go the extra mile anymore, at least not without charging for it. A lot of people got frustrated and left, and they were replaced with people who may have been technically sharp but knew nothing about the business, and went no further than what their job descriptions said. All that did was frustrate the business users, because they were used to people who understood the business and were willing to slip in an extra hour or two to get the job done right. I don't believe for a moment that you can instill that mindset in contractors.

That company ended its outsourcing agreement a few years into the contract, declaring it mostly a failure. But it hasn't stopped other companies from doing it.

I'm interested to see where all this will be five years from now.

Oh, and on the topic of outsourcing: here's an infograph from The Onion.

Note to all management-types who are considering outsourcing their IT department: Make sure your own nose is clean.

And from Denmark, we have a new employee incentive program.

A video for anyone who's been annoyed by the Paperclip in MS Office. I figure this would include about 99.9998% of all Office users.

I know, that headline is really mean.

But I can think of nothing better to point you guys at Steve Jobs' Blog.

To follow up on my previous adventure with Palm Support:

I haven't sent the old unit back yet because, frankly, it's a pain in the butt and I don't want to be without a PDA for the weeks it will take for the swap to take place.

I received a note yesterday from Palm Support reminding me that my RMA is only good for about another week. I wrote back telling them that I was so extremely disappointed with this experience that I will probably just live with the problem until I get a new PDA, almost certainly another brand (but I guess not Sony).

Of course, the email went nowhere, and I got an automated response telling me to submit my request to their web site. So just for grins I entered a trouble ticket explaining why I'm not sending the unit back.

Here is part of their response, pasted here in unedited form (the spurious characters were in the email I received):

Dear Joseph,

Thank you for writing to palmOne™ technical support.

This is {name deleted} and I am responding to your recent email.

Joseph, we understand that this situation is really frustrating. We apologize for the inconvenience happened due to this issue. We appreciate you feedback. However you suggestion will be forwarded to the concerned Department to built the good palmOne customer Relationship.

The issue described may require repair of your Palm(TM) handheld. This type of transaction is not available through E-mail Technical Support. Please contact Palm Technical Support for further assistance at: 1-813-313-4913. A Palm Technical Support Specialist should be available to assist you.

...

Thank you for choosing palmOne™ services.

Sincerely,

{name deleted}
palmOne™ Technical support

Thank you.

Inspiring, isn't it? Sorta makes you want to run out and buy a palmOne™ product.

Still think Microsoft isn't bent on world domination?

How about their recent patent for double-clicking?

Or maybe the fact that they just patented "To Do" lists?

Of course there are contexts for these patents, but it sure seems to me that they're setting the stage for making a whole lotta money through the courts.

Oh, and one more thing. Check out this quote from Steve at the All Things Digital conference, which sums up the guy's attitude perfectly (from WSJ):

Apple recently renewed deals with major record labels to continue selling songs for 99 cents each, Mr. Jobs said. Some labels have recently discussed raising the price of legal downloads. But he resisted suggestions that Apple allow iPod users to play songs recorded in other digital-music formats, such as those from Microsoft. "We feel we can innovate much more if we control the technology," he said.

Have we been here before? "...we control the technology?" I have a half-dozen NeXTStation2s in a closet here if anyone is interested.

Not to be outdone, Bill shot back with this:

Mr. Gates, meanwhile, said Microsoft's forthcoming music-download service would challenge Apple by permitting the music to be played on a variety of players. Mr. Gates said Microsoft's partners will create devices better than the iPod. "Imagine it's possible to do better" than Apple, he said.

Oh, snipe-snipe-snipe. Can't you kids just get along?

This week's Newsweek has a cover story on the iPod.

Call me cynical, but it's pretty much a fluff piece.

Don't get me wrong: I like my iPod a lot. I've used it more in the few months I've owned it than I used the various Walkmen I've had over the years. It's a lot more convenient than carrying CDs or cassettes around, and the fact that it holds 15 GB vs. 288 MB on my old Rio One means I don't have to keep reloading the thing. I would go so far as to say it changed the way I listen to music, and I agree that it's had a similar impact on those who use them.

The article in question, though, is 'way too gushy and proof that the guy who wrote it was sucked deeply into the Reality Distortion Zone. You can draw your own opinion.

Oh, this looks like it could be interesting: outsourcing order-taking at McDonald's drive-up window.

A few things concern me here, not the least of which is this business with the photos. Imagine you've gone for your third Big 'n' Nasty this week, which would fill the average McD's diner with enough guilt and self-loathing, and now you know they can put a series of photos together as you dine day after day. That would be enough to make me stop going to McD's altogether (not a bad thing, actually).

(Sure.. they "destroy the photos"-- just like the guys in photo labs don't keep copies of the pictures they develop that they want to, uh, view again.)

Taking this to the next level, I wonder if McDonald's will have people thousands of miles away taking orders, in their effort "To Built The Good Customer Relationship."

I'm all for doing things cheaper and faster, but this seems somewhat flawed.

Our governor is talking about allowing soft drink companies to bid for the title "Official Beverage of Illinois." Here's an article about it.

This seems an astonishingly stupid idea on a number of levels.

Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi have huge bottling operations headquartered here, and this seems like a good way to give one of these guys an incentive to leave. (And considering 99% of the public-area vending machines in Illinois seem to be red, white, and blue, I'll bet eighty cents in exact change that I know who's gonna get the title.)

I am sure someone is going to protest this because it implies that the state is promoting people destroying their teeth, bones, and bathroom scales by ingesting fizzy, sugared, brown water. Unless somehow the state beverage is skim milk, perhaps-- but then there's a whole anti-lactose crowd waiting for their moment to strike.

I'd consider starting a grass-roots movement to make water the state drink of Illinois. The problem is there ain't no money in that, and we are rapidly learning that Mr. Blagojevich is all about the money.

I was a little surprised to learn that Illinois is not the first to consider this. New York's official drink is Snapple, San Diego's is Pepsi, and Houston's is Dr. Pepper. Other states have official snacks, too.

So why stop at Official Soft Drink? What about the Official Frozen Pizza (Home Run Inn gets my vote), Official Hot Dog (Double Char Cheddar Dog with Everything and extra Sport Peppers at Gold Coast Dogs), and Official Thing To Order at Starbucks (Grande Soy No-Whip Mocha)?

Oh well, at least I know which soda my mom will vote for.

This "everything's for sale" mindset made me think of the Cake song on the next page.

I can't wait for the day when I have one of these things driving next to me on my way to the Jewel.

I've already been flipped off by a soccer mom in a Hummer. Now I have something new for the list.

J.P. Morgan Chase decided they'd rather do it themselves. Good for them.

Someone just had to come up with an answer to the monster truck thing that was all over the internet the other day.

From a BBC report:

It has even been estimated that one in 10 Europeans are conceived in an Ikea bed.

Another spot in my brain has been filled with useless information. I used to work with a guy who said the spot in his brain where the cure for cancer belongs is now occupied by the knowledge that John Madden is afraid to fly. Who knows what boon to humanity has been shoved aside because of this Ikea factoid.

People are resistant to change. And people in Chicago seem to be especially resistant to change.

With all the hand-wringing surrounding Marshall Field's name change to Macy's, you would think someone was suggesting painting the Water Tower blue, moving the U505 Submarine to Schaumburg, or opening a McDonald's at the Field Museum.

Oh.

Well, you get my point.

Petitions have been started, web sites overflow with sentimentality about how Field's = Chicago and Macy's = New York, and what's next? Steinbrenner's buying the Cubs? Oh, why oh why does this have to happen to us?

I'll tell you why: it's business. The reality is that Marshall Field's stopped being a Chicago institution when it was sold to a British firm in the early 1980s. In fact, at that time the name changed when they dropped the "and Company," and nobody said a word. It was then bought by the company that owned Target (who eventually spun Field's and its other department stores off because they weren't doing as well as Target). Changing hands again, it wound up in the lap of the people who want to make Macy's a national brand name.

And that's...... bad?

Everyone who has memories of Field's always points to the same things: the State Street store, the Christmas windows, lunch in the Walnut Room under the big tree. It's not about the merchandise or the service at the store, it's the fact that State and Washington is a destination. I've yet to hear a single complaint about the Marshall Field's at Old Orchard changing its name. ("Oh, Sylvia, remember those pumps I bought for the New Year's party in 1975? What am I going to do now that it's Macy's for cryin' out loud?")

Hence, my proposal to all the lamenters out there: go out and assemble the brightest among you, come up with a business plan, find some venture capitalists, and buy the State Street store and the Marshall Field's name. Then you run the store and tell us how easy it is to survive in a retail environment where people will come and browse but then drive out to the suburbs to go to Kohl's and Old Navy to buy things.

(Interestingly enough, this is what some people did in the mid-1980s with the Frederick & Nelson store in Seattle. They failed after six years.)

(Also, to continue parenthetically, Frederick & Nelson were the inventors of Frango Mints-- Field's got them because they bought Frederick & Nelson, so Frangos are a Seattle tradition, not Chicago.)

Field's new owners have committed to keeping the Clock, the windows, the tree in the Walnut Room, and all the other things the weepy hundreds say they'll miss. I even heard they're going to leave the "Marshall Field & Co." nameplate on the building.

So what's the real complaint? Have any of these people actually stepped into a Marshall Field's recently and purchased something they couldn't get at Carson's, Nordstrom's, J.C. Penney, or Lord & Taylor?

Now, there are weblogs and newspaper columns with lists naming all the Chicago businesses that went under in the last 50 years. These lists are fascinating and real memory-joggers, but what gets me is the fact that some people are using these lists as illustrations of why the Field's name shouldn't be changed. The truth is that stores like Montgomery Ward and Lytton's are gone because of a changing marketplace, bad management, a tough economy, customer demand, and/or technology. And let's not leave out the desire of one company's management deciding to cash in on their investment by selling out to a larger company.

I am as nostalgic as the next guy-- in fact I would say moreso than the next guy-- but nostalgia has its place: in your memory. Let's allow the businesses of today succeed today, and on today's terms.

Good luck, Macy's.

Note to the bonehead who complained to the EPA about the smell of the Blommer Chocolate Factory:

Thanks. You're an idiot.

I had some time to spare at lunchtime today, so I decided to check out the State Street Marshall Field's Macy's store.

(You may remember my thoughts on the name change, which I covered in this blog entry last year.)

My verdict after spending about an hour in the store: it's the same store it's always been.

Look above: the clock is still there-- so are the "Marshall Field and Company" nameplates. And hey-- the green awnings are still there, only now they say "Macy's." (Sorry about the poor photo quality-- a Motorola phone isn't the best camera.)

Look below: OMG, it's the Walnut Room, filled with people eating lunch! I thought they were supposed to close it and use it for storing New York Yankees jerseys or something.

I spoke to a couple of people who work there, and they both told me that the traffic they've seen has been about the same as before the switch, if not a little busier. And the funny thing about my conversations was that the people actually sounded like they came from Chicago-- weren't they all supposed to be displaced by people with Brooklyn accents?

And why was the store crowded and the cash registers ringing? Wasn't this place supposed to be quieter than a museum?

I bought a box of Frango Mints (curiously, with the Marshall Field's name on it) and nowhere did I see a guy who looked like Ralph Kramden with a pushcart selling hawt dawgs.

I did see this neato Motorola cellphone vending machine:

And this awesome iPod vending machine:

(Side note: You can get an iPod Shuffle-- the now-old-style 1 GB version-- in this machine for something like $50. That's a deal.)

The quality of the merchandise seemed pretty much the same. The furniture and higher-end home stuff all seemed the same to me. I didn't go through the clothing closely because there wasn't enough time.

So, to sum it all up, the store on State Street is pretty much the same as the one that was there two weeks ago. Only the name has changed.

I mentioned in an earlier posting that I was at an event in Tokyo. The invitation I received from the sponsor said it was a "Business Casual Event." I asked one of my traveling companions (who works for the company sponsoring the event) to verify this for me. "Business casual, for certain," is what he was told.

I decided to follow the advice a clothing salesman gave me years ago: "You could dress business casual-- but why?" I packed two suits, a sport jacket with a couple turtleneck sweaters and coordinated pants, and-- just in case-- a pair of tan Dockers and a blue button-up shirt.

The first day of the meetings, held at the Park Hyatt Tokyo (where Lost in Translation was filmed, by the way) nearly every single one of the over 300 attendees was wearing a suit.

So much for "business casual, for certain." At least I bet right.

The truth is that "business casual" is a meaningless term that thousands of fashion writers and HR departments have tried to define but have had little success. At best, I can come up with the common threads of "collared shirts, clothing with finished seams, no logo wear, and no Spandex." (I remember seeing an Arthur Andersen memo in the mid-1980s which specified that female employees "must wear appropriate undergarments" but that's another topic.)

For several years in the late 1980s and early 1990s I worked for an investment firm known for its casual approach to the employee environment: free breakfast and lunch, free ice cream in the afternoon, free soda, water, and beer in all the refrigerators-- and a nonexistent dress code. The idea was that you were supposed to do your job and do it extremely well, and in return the company didn't bother you with checking your death-metal-band T-shirt underneath your flannel. I'd call the environment "proto-dot-com." (The funny part is that by the time the dot-com boom was in full force, the company had been swallowed up by a gigantic Swiss bank and the beer and nonexistent dress code were gone.)

While working at the firm, I rode the train regularly with one of its partners. Both of us were usually in jeans, and we'd get disdainful looks from everyone else on the train, each one spiffed up in suits and ties. I used to laugh, thinking that this guy could have bought and sold most of the people in the car, and they looked at him like he was a low-life.

I would never call that company's environment "business casual"-- it was clearly all the way on the other side of it-- but I believe that firms like mine had a huge influence on more traditional companies and encouraged the casual-dress policies of the 90s.

By the time "jeans Friday" started to take hold in the business world in the 1990s, I was already tired of it. Yes, it's zero-brain-power easy to put on jeans in the morning and match them up with a polo shirt and sneakers, but at some point-- say, after doing this for 10 years-- you don't feel like you're really going to work. And while that's not necessarily a bad thing, there is something to be said for more clearly defining the line between life at home and life at the office.

That's when I began my transformation into a beDockered middle manager, for better or worse.

So, while everyone else was getting ready to go ahead and uh, wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans on Friday, I was already on the way back. And that was around the time I met the salesman mentioned at the top of this piece.

The dress code at most of the places I've worked has been some sort of business casual. This included everything from khakis to polo shirts, down to jeans and even shorts in the summer (at one particular company). The common stipulation among all of them, though, was that when you met with the company's clients, you should dress in formal business attire.

Over the years, I defined "business casual" to mean "no jacket, no tie." There's room to move in that definition, but I usually try to err on the side of overdressing. I remember getting off a plane in Amsterdam and heading straight to a meeting in my company's offices, figuring my travel attire (khaki pants and a polo shirt) would be fine, as it was acceptable in most of the company's offices worldwide. When I entered the conference room, I felt like the guy who cleans the conference rooms after everyone leaves-- wait, even he was dressed better than I was.

Never again.

My current employer just opened up the dress code on summer Fridays to allow jeans. Many of my coworkers are excited about this.

As for me, it will be business as usual.

This blurb appeared in our local paper on August 28, 2008:

• Someone took a change machine from Randhurst Mall, 999 N. Elmhurst Road, between 10 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. July 30. The machine, which changes dollar bills for quarters, contained $340 in cash. It was worth $850.

While this wasn't exactly a Danny Ocean-level heist, it says more about the current state of Randhurst than you might intially think. What this article says is that sometime in the middle of the day someone stole what I assume to be a heavy piece of equipment from the shopping mall, presumably without being noticed.

This is quite a change from the Randhurst I grew up with. The inside of the mall consists mostly of empty storefronts now, and is scheduled to be demolished very soon to make way for redevelopment, a mixed-use property called Randhurst Village. (The stores outside the mall, most notably Costco and Home Depot, are doing extremely well-- quite a contrast.)

The Randhurst I knew was a busy place where you could find pretty much anything you were looking for. I grew up near the shopping center (they never called it a "mall"), and many days of my youth were spent there since it was only a bike ride away.

When I was a kid, the anchors stores were Montgomery Ward, Carson Pirie Scott, and Wieboldt's. Wards had a great record department and cafeteria ("The Buffeteria") and I used to get my WLS surveys and stickers there. I never went to Carson's or Wieboldt's as a kid, although Wieboldt's had an S&H Green Stamps redemption center in the basement, and I used to get blank cassette tapes there when I got a little older.

The main destination for us kids was SS Kresge's, in the corridor between Carson's and Wieboldt's. It was a "dime store" in the sense that K-Mart never was. We used to get Frozen Cokes and Air-Popt® Popcorn, and maybe a little toy from the aisles in the back. They also had a little cafeteria where we'd get Cokes if we didn't want the frozen variety. At one end of the store they had aquariums where you could buy various tropical fish and those little turtles the FDA doesn't allow you to buy any more. The fish were right next to the massive display of Contact-Paper rolls. And every Christmas, as my mom will tell you, they had the demonstration table set up with "Balsam Pine, Smells So Fine" incense which came with its own little log cabin.

Speaking of Christmas, Randhurst was quite the destination because every year on the day after Thanksgiving Ringmaster Ned from WGN-TV's Bozo's Circus would welcome Santa Claus to the mall. My cousins and sister and I went every year for a stretch of about 4 or 5 years to witness the event.

When my kids were little, we used to spend hours walking around and browsing the stores. One of the high points for them was getting a table in the food court-- which was next to impossible at lunchtime on the weekends-- and eating their Happy Meals. And right up until earlier this year, Rebecca still liked going to the "sample lady" at the teryaki stand on the second level.

My last visit to Randhurst's interior took place on an early Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago. The place is almost unrecognizable, with nearly every storefront shuttered and only a few customers and security guards walking the once-busy main aisles. The merry-go-round in the center of the mall was still lit and turning, with one or two kids and their parents on the ride. Except for the echoes of the carousel's music, the whole place was eerily silent.

If you Google "Randhurst" you'll find all sorts of remembrances of this once-great mall. (As I wrote this, I thought of hundreds of things that could fill this blog.) For a good overview of the center's history, check out this link to a document at the Mt Prospect Historical Society's site.

Will the "new" Randhurst draw the crowds? We'll have to wait and see.