The Ethics of Slackers

I suppose I should call this post “the Ethics of Teaching Slackers,” since that’s what’s really going on. But I’ve been associated with what might charitably be called the Slacker Culture for going on forty years now, and I know from personal experience that there’s really more to this question than just Mr. Authority Figure taking on the Kids Who Are Way Cooler Than You Are. So let’s consider both sides of the issue and the ethics involved as a career slacker tries to cope with being a teacher who has to assign grades to slackers…

In the class I taught this summer, one of the assignments was a term paper – of a sort. I didn’t feel comfortable giving my students a full-sized term-project in a seven-week summer session, so I made it a three-page assignment; just enough to get the kids started in doing literature searches and article critiques. It’s the sort of thing that will be a piece of cake to anyone who had to do library research in high school (the way I did), and a useful introduction to this type of assignment for anyone who didn’t. You can’t get a degree in any social science without doing this type of research, let alone an advanced degree, and if you’ve never done this before it can be a bit intimidating. In fact, I had one student who needed my help learning how to use Google Scholar and how to access full-text versions of the documents on line, and several others who wanted to go over their early drafts with me before turning them in…

But on the other side of the room, one of my students has failed to hand in this assignment. It’s possible, of course, that he’s been eaten by giant wombats or called away on urgent and personal business before he could turn it in, but it’s also possible that he just figures (correctly) that he will pass the class with or without the points available. In which case, spending the five to ten hours he’d need to complete the assignment is probably seems less urgent than the 5,000 or so things a young man could be doing two weeks before the start of Fall Semester. The real question is what I’m supposed to do about it…

On the one hand, by syllabus for this class sets out the point totals available and the number you need to hit each grade level. Based on the points this student has received to this point, a passing grade on the final is all he would need to hit the 2.5 level on MSU’s grade scale, which is definitely passing, and in fact he gained enough points to crack into the 3.0 level without the paper. With even two-thirds of the points from the paper he’d easily crack the 3.5 level and pick up the extra grade points – not to mention whatever benefit he might actually gain from doing the paper. But, on the other hand, if he’s satisfied with that passing grade, he could conceivably use the extra time to prepare for harder classes he plans to take this fall, work extra hours at his summer job to have more cash on hand or pay down debts, or spend time with family he won’t be able to see again until December…

The other question, of course, is what message this sends to my other students, present and future. Clearly, blowing off an entire assignment is not the most respectful gesture in the world, and it doesn’t seem fair to all of the students who actually did as I asked them and completed the assignment. Of course, almost all of them got higher grades than our AWOL slacker will, and gained more experience and better reputations within the Department, all of which will help them in their future careers. But the question of whether I can ethically allow this matter to slide remains. Do I have a responsibility to the Department, the University, or my other students to compel everyone to complete the assignments I give them? Or do I have a responsibility to just set out the rules and then keep score and let the chips fall where they will?

It’s worth thinking about…

The Grad School Diaries: Giant Wombat Syndrome

“You know, kid, you need to get out more,” the giant talking wombat remarked, sounding just like a young Harrison Ford. “I think you’re starting to lose it.”

“No, really?” I replied, sarcastically. “You’re just saying that because I haven’t slept more than a couple of hours a night in weeks and I’m so stressed out that my old job is starting to sound like heaven on Earth.”

“Well, there’s also the fact that you’re arguing with your hallucinations,” the giant talking wombat suggested, helpfully.

“I always argue with my hallucinations,” I replied. “Especially the ones that look like giant anthropomorphic marsupials. At least, I assume that’s what you are. I don’t even know what a wombat actually looks like.”

It’s finals week of First Semester, and I’m in sort of a fugue state; stressed and tired enough that I’m not completely sure what is going on. I’d be doing better if the giant talking wombat would stop interrupting me, though. At least, I’m pretty sure I would be…

“Remind me why you’re doing this, again?” the giant talking wombat requested. “What are those things, anyway?”

“Flash cards,” I replied, finishing another one and adding it to the growing pile in front of me. “You use them to drill yourself on things you’re trying to remember. Much more efficient than flipping through the textbook every time you want to review something.”

“Like those things kids use when they’re trying to learn the alphabet?”

“Actually, you see these associated with any memory-based discipline,” I replied, primly. “Age doesn’t enter into it.”

“I thought this was a math-based discipline,” the giant talking wombat replies, puzzled.

I had thought so too, especially when I saw all of the calculations, ratios, and other numeric factors involved. But as the weeks passed it rapidly became clear that much of the analyses done in our profession are computerized these days. While we still have to generate the numbers, the critical factor now is remembering (and understanding) what they mean. I tell the giant talking wombat this. It looks confused.

“So this whole class is just read and regurgitate?” it asks. “Where’s the point in that?”

“It’s a matter of learning the vocabulary,” I reply, rising to the challenge like a good contrarian, no matter what I might think of the class. “You can’t tell someone that their new program is too Theory X if you don’t know what Theory X is in the first place, now can you?”

The giant talking wombat considers. “But in practice, can’t you just look things up as you need them?” it asks.

“Not if you don’t know you need to look,” I reply, decisively. “The fact is, this class is an overview of a subject that people really DO spend decades examining, and it can’t actually hope to do more than just get us started thinking about these issues. It’s going to take a lot more nights like this one before I’m even ready to join the conversation.”

“Not if you don’t start taking better care of yourself,” the giant talking wombat replies, returning to his original topic.

I sigh deeply and grab the little bottle of Wide-Awake from the corner of my desk. Caffeine does not work on me (because of all of the ephedrine-based medicines I was given as a child), but this allegedly all-natural herbal crap will at least keep me from dozing off or hallucinating. So I use it, even if it does taste the way industrial-strength disinfectant (think of the liquid they put in porta-potties) smells…

After a few moments the room stops spinning and the horrible chemical flavor recedes. I take a cautious look around: no sign of my giant talking wombat. I sigh with relief. I might still succeed in getting ready for the final on Friday…

As long as the pack of man-eating bananas in my bathroom doesn’t come up here and start bothering me again…

Line It Up

I’ve spent a lot of time in this space talking about how important it is to stay on the good side of your customers, not annoy them, and so on; I’ve even written at length about the importance of not asking your customers to wait in long lines in order to make a purchase, especially if there are unused cash registers sitting idle and available personnel who are standing around, doing whatever, and not lifting a finger to help people check out. But, I must admit, I’ve never broken the problem down into its component parts; to me, an excessively long wait to make a purchase is just an undifferentiated annoyance, and all I’m interested in is leaving as soon as possible. But now it turns out that the time spent waiting in line may not be the most important part of this issue…

According to a story reported this week in The Wall Street Journal, ongoing research at MIT indicates that what really annoys people isn’t so much how long they’ve been waiting in line – people have poor internal senses of time, anyway – but rather the feeling of injustice when someone who got in line after they did is served first. Like when you’re waiting in line at the supermarket and the line next to yours moves three times faster (three people check out before the idiot in front of you can finish writing out their check). This turns out to be the basis for all of those single-line systems – like the one in most banks, for example – where the next person in line goes to the next available check stand, teller window, or whatever. This eliminates the perception of people getting ahead of you in line, and is apparently more effective even that just opening more check stands…

The implications for any retail or customer service operation are staggering. Granted, there’s not going to be much that a small business can do about this situation; you’ve only got so many feet of sales floor or operations space, and so many people you can put on a register. But large retailers like department stores and supermarkets could certainly adopt such a system, and so could most fast-food operations. The so-called “Big Box” operations would have to modify the system a bit to accommodate customers pushing flatbed carts and forklifts and so on, but something like this would be great for “hypermarket” operations like Meijer and Super Wal-Mart, not to mention K-Mart and Target stores. How much faster such a layout would make these stores is highly debatable, but ultimately it doesn’t matter, because what’s actually important isn’t how long the wait is, but how fairly your customer believe your handling of the process is…

Now, if your company is not in the retail sector, you may not find this research to be especially interesting. If your business model does not involve people standing in line and waiting to have interactions with your personnel, you might think that these suggestions can’t help you. Let me suggest, however, that they key finding here isn’t about lines or routing them, but about the people waiting in them. Is there some way that your company could improve your customers’ perception of how fairly you treat them? Granted, it might take something more complex than a single, serpentine line and a sign that says “please wait here for next available register,” but can you think of anything that might help convince people that they really are getting served ahead of the people who got in line after they did? It might be worth considering…

Business Diversification

One of the common strategies used to increase the volume of sales a company is making is to expand operations into additional business sectors, either by re-positioning the products you already have, finding new markets or new distribution channels, or by introducing new products to the mixture your company carries/makes/promotes. So, for example, if you company sells coffee-based beverages, you could diversify your operations by introducing food items, making other types of beverage, or selling beans and coffee-related merchandise (such as coffee makers) on a retail basis. Alternately, if you make large automobiles and sales of such vehicles are down, you could diversify by using the same manufacturing division to produce small cars, airplanes, boats, or gasoline- and diesel-powered machinery of other types. But when all else fails, you can always jump into a new business sector altogether…

A story being reported this week on Fox News Online details the strategy used by a Hummer dealership in Illinois, which when faced with flagging sales and attempts by General Motors to sell off the entire Hummer division, decided to offer retail products for sale in their dealership. Specifically, they decided to start selling firearms and ammunition right off of the same sales floor from which they normally sell cars – or giant SUVs, at least. Technically, both products are retail sales; both require special documentation and ownership licenses in many states, and both are noted for resulting in a lot of accidental deaths when operated by careless people. But beyond those obvious similarities, the business times don’t appear to have much in common – at first…

The owner of this now unique operation claims that because Hummers are popular with hunters, fishermen and other outdoors types, the two business models produce natural synergy. This may even be true, at least as regards some significant portion of the company’s customer base. Certainly, anyone who actually intends to use their Hummer to reach remote hunting camps (or even remote camp locations where encounters with unfriendly wildlife are possible) might find the combined dealership and gun store to be convenient. For that matter, persons who are buying a Hummer to compensate for certain personal insecurities might also be interested in purchasing firearms, and this will provide them with a convenient means of doing so. A much more immediate question would appear to be whether this combination is really a good idea; to wit, should we be selling people products that boost their self-esteem by making them feel invulnerable at the same time we sell them products that give them the ability to destroy things?

Or, on the other side of the issue, should business owners start looking for non-traditional ways to diversify their businesses using their existing facilities and equipment? I’ve seen examples such as a combination coffee house and neighborhood legal clinic (the coffee is reasonably priced, and the legal assistance is as cheap as they can make it) and a combination Laundromat and singles bar (meet new people while you do the wash) – although that last example combines two of the most depressing human activities possible into a single nightmare. Perhaps in the future we will see new combined business models, such as a weight-loss clinic and clothing store (work towards a smaller clothes size, then reward yourself by buying them) or a combination movie theater and restaurant (dinner and a show) or a combination college book store, debt management counseling center and support group (if you were in college these days, you’d understand)…

Granted, some of these may sound like silly ideas. But if they make the difference between closing your doors, putting all of your employees out of work, and having to go do something less enjoyable for a living and staying in business, it’s hard to imagine what would be wrong about such operations. Perhaps the time has finally come for that store I dreamed up back in my Undergraduate days, which would carry both slingshots and chunks of rump steak (and other things that go “splat” when they hit something). I can see it now…

“Ya-HA! Ya-HA!” (Twang!) SPLAT!

You know what they say: if it's good for the economy, it's good for America...

The Ethics of Money

If your profession comes anywhere near the subject of Business, you’re going to have to get used to the idea of people ragging on you as a mercenary, a robber baron, an evil captain of industry, or just someone whose only connection to ethical behavior was a two-day seminar you took during MBA school – assuming that you weren’t out sick those days. Unlike such noble professions as a Doctor (healing the sick and reducing human suffering!) or a Teacher (fighting ignorance, illiteracy, and bad penmanship!) or a Peace Officer (fighting crime and defending our society!) or even a Lawyer (defending the innocent, punishing the guilty, and driving a really nice car!) most people seem to feel that there’s something wrong, evil, or at least ignoble about a career in business. I mean, we’re just dedicating ourselves to the pursuit of filthy money, aren’t we? What’s good or noble about that?

Well, as previously noted in this space, a successful company isn’t just an engine for putting huge amounts of money into the CEO’s pockets. A good company provides jobs for hundreds or even thousands of ordinary people, as well as all of the people who sell anything to those employees, including houses, cars, food, energy and personal items. A lot of companies also have charity programs that support the local Red Cross or United Way or similar agencies, but even without such support the company’s tax payments will also support the state and local governments, contributing to such non-trivial aspects of the local quality of life as roads, schools, police and fire coverage, and social programs. All across America you can find towns based around a single large factory that employs half of the community directly and most of the rest of it indirectly, as well as paying for all of the local services. And increasingly, tragically, you can find remnants of towns, now little more than ghost towns, where the plant has closed and the former residents have been forced to give up the lives they loved and move away…

Then too, we should consider all of the new technologies and products that have been produced by for-profit companies over the past few centuries. It’s probably true that most of the new science is discovered by pure empirical research, but the application of those new discoveries is usually left to private companies and their R&D sections, and without that basic profit motive most of the comforts we take for granted in modern life, from electric lights and telephones to plasma-screen televisions and laptop computers, would not exist. There would be fewer types of fabric for clothing, fewer types of food (and less of them available), less convenient transportation (and less of that available), less comfortable houses and offices, and even fewer medications (and far higher prices on the ones that exist) if not for those money-grubbing companies that make their living producing these things…

One could argue, I supposed, that capitalism and for-profit companies aren’t necessary to produce all of these things, but history has already provided some hair-raising rebuttals in Soviet-era Russia, contemporary Cuba, and parts of China that are generally kept away from international scrutiny. There are other ways to motivate people to perform and companies to produce, but none of them have ever worked in both large-scale and long-term operations. Until such time as a post-scarcity economy arrives (and the jury is still out as to whether that will be a blessing or a curse), the only practical way to generate the things we want seems to be paying for them – and for that you’re going to need for-profit businesses and the people who run them…

Now, to be sure, no one is claiming that making money is a holy crusade, or that the people who want to do that are a bunch of saints. But I would argue that even if the world won’t be a better place tomorrow because we made a lot of money today, it won’t be a better place if we just sit here and starve, either. In fact, if we accept that business gives millions (or hundreds of millions) of people the chance to live good and comfortable lifestyles, drives the development of new science and technology, supports education and the arts, and contributes to the sort of life that most people actually want to live, it’s hard to say what is actually evil or even wrong about the business sector…

It’s worth thinking about…

The Grad School Diaries: Taylor’s Serenity Theory

Here comes the chill:
It’s not exactly unexpected; one of the things Michigan is famous (or infamous) for is really crappy weather, and particularly for cold winters loaded with snow. When we made the decision to leave California and come here one of the most common questions we got was how would we ever be able to cope with all of the snow. Well, we’re about to find out: it’s December 1, 2008, and the snow has arrived…

There were a couple of flurries earlier this semester, but nothing that actually stuck to the ground once it arrived. Last night saw a drop in the temperature, however, and the familiar cold rain turned into snow, with big, fat flakes swirling and flowing around in the beams of light. This morning I was treated to an experience so alien to a man raised in California that I might as well have been walking on the Moon: I cleared my driveway. With over 4 inches of snow overnight it’s not really passable, at least to conventional vehicles like the Torrent. Fortunately, I had planned ahead for this contingency, and there was a new snow-thrower waiting in the garage, all gassed up and ready to do. Specifically, a Craftsman 2-stage snow-thrower from Sears, with 7 forward gears, 2 reverse gears, an auxiliary electrical starter (for those occasions when the pull-starter just won’t cut it), and enough power to clear the heaviest, wettest snow…

I suppose I should be taking this harder than I am; there are times when I miss the South Bay so much I physically ache, but most of the time I find I’ve been too busy with reading, writing, and sheer blind panic to notice anything else. And then there are all of these new experiences; all of the things I’ve never done or seen before. Not snow on the ground, specifically, or even falling snow; I’ve seen both of those many times before. Things like driving in a snowstorm, for example, or scattering traction-melt (rock salt plus other chemicals) on the cleared driveway and sidewalks to prevent more snow from accumulating…

There’s an odd sense of calm that applies to times like these, and tasks like this one. I’m in deep trouble right now; behind in all three classes and completely bewildered by the hardest one. And even if I can complete the challenge of the next two weeks, pass both finals, get my term paper completed and turned in, lead my cohort to a successful completion of our holiday party performance, and pass all three classes, I’m still just getting started. It’s only one semester of the 10 to 12 (or 15 to 18; it depends on your point of view), or “10 miles behind me, and 10,000 more to go,” as James Taylor once put it…

If I could bring myself to believe in a deity who meddles, I’d probably be praying for mercy 24/7 these days; if I could bring myself to believe in anti-depressants that work I’d probably be grokked out of my gourd just as often. But as I guide the roaring snow-clearance machine through the drifts, with the flakes still swirling around me on the cold wind, I can’t help but feel a strange sense of serenity, as though I were part of it all, and all of this was supposed to be. Or, to quote Mr. Taylor again:

“There’s a song that they sing
When they take to the highway;
A song that they sing
When they take to the sea;
A song that they sing
Of their home in the sky;
Maybe you can believe it
If it helps you to sleep;
But singing works just fine for me…”

It’s probably just resignation, or at most fatalism, not really serenity. But as I shut off the engine and listen to the winter world around me, with the wind as the only sound, there’s a rightness about it all. This may not end in triumph; it may not end well at all. But for now, at least, I know why I am here. And what I must do…

First Mover or Follow-on?

The concept that being the first company (or division, or corporation, or individual, etc.) to adopt a new business model, start using a new technology, or move into a new product category contains inherent risks should be immediately obvious even to readers who have never studied business. For that first company (sometimes called a “First Mover”) there is no experience to fall back on; no way of knowing whether the technology will work, the products will sell, or the business will turn a profit. Strategically, of course, there are some inherent advantages in being the first company into a new market segment, not least of which is that if you are the only ones making that product, you are also the only ones who can sell it or make money doing so. But a lot of companies prefer to take the position of waiting to see if the product is going to be a success, before they move into the market with their own version. And sometimes they will do better than the firm that originated the category…

Several very familiar examples can be found in the American brewing industry, due in large part to the ongoing rivalry between Miller Brewing and Anheuser-Busch. It began in 1982, when Anheuser-Busch introduced Bud Light to compete with Miller’s Miller Lite (Bud Light now sells three (3) times as much), and has been repeated with non-alcoholic beer (Miller’s Sharp’s followed by Anheuser-Busch’s O’Doul’s) and lime-flavored light beers (Miller Chill followed by Bud Light Lime). It’s hard to argue that this strategy has worked out very well for Anheuser-Busch, especially considering that 1 year after its introduction their Bud Lime Light is out-selling the first-mover product eleven to one, according to this article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. But according to the same article, the wars are about to start up again, with the introduction of “Select 55” ultra-light beer to complete with Miller’s “MGD 64”…

By the sort of odd coincidence that only happens in blog posts, bad movies and real life, I happen to know the executive who was in charge of marketing for Anheuser-Busch when they invented the first “ultra-light” or low-carb beer, called Michelob Ultra. At the time the idea was a total flop, since most of the demographic of people who drink beer did not overlap with the demographic of people who wish to reduce their carbohydrate intake. But then came the Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet, and all of the spin-off diet methods, and suddenly even people who didn’t know exactly what a carbohydrate was were trying to consume fewer of them. Michelob Ultra is now selling approximately 3.5 million barrels a year (that’s somewhere around 340 million six-packs), and MGD 64 has taken off in ways that people in the primary beer-drinkers demographic could never have imagined. Thus, it’s only logical to expect Anheuser-Busch to dust off its own ultra-low product research and attempt to take advantage of that growing new product segment…

Eventually, of course, this process must reach bottom. There are only a finite number of calories and carbohydrates in a bottle of beer (only 55 left in Select 55, in fact) and when those are gone, there is no way to venture into negative numbers. But the basic principle will continue; we can comfortably predict that any new product category either of these companies develops will be invaded by the other as soon as it develops that there are any customers out there who are willing to pay for that product. Which brings us to the point of today’s harangue: do not assume that just because you’ve expended all of the time and effort to pioneer a new product category that you will then be able to maintain sole possession of that category for any length of time. Eventually, someone else is going to notice that you are making money selling that product and decide to cut themselves a slice of that pie, which means that your strategy MUST include plans for what to do when follow-on products began to enter your market, at least if you want to remain successful…

Alternately, I suppose, you could just wait for someone else to invent a new product category and follow them into it. But if you adopt that strategy, you’d better be prepared to outperform the first-mover in product quality, product availability, price, or at least marketing. And you should be ready to respond when they innovate the next big thing…

The Company That Wouldn’t Die

Actually, Circuit City is already dead; it’s more like the Company That Wouldn’t Go Away, but that didn’t look as good at the top of the post. By now most of the bankruptcy proceedings are over, customers around the country have figured out where they’re going to get their electric and electronic consumer products, and most of the assets that Circuit City had left have been sold off to pay their creditors. But it turns out that they’re just getting around to the intellectual property this week, and that means that anyone who thought they were all done with Circuit City’s mailing lists are about to get a surprise…

An article posted online in Richmond BizSense.com notes that the Massachusetts-based advisory firm called Streambank, which controls the rights to Circuit City’s customer contract database, including the service contracts for their Firedog technical support service (the inspiration for Best Buy’s Geek Squad Service) is holding an auction for the customer information, which is expected to bring in at least $10 million, and possibly more than the $14 million that the rights to the Circuit City name fetched at auction earlier this year. Of course, that really depends on how much meat is still left on the company’s bones…

Before it finally went under, Circuit City managed to sell approximately 30 million Firedog contracts, each one of which is theoretically a separate name, address, telephone number and email address available for direct mail and direct email advertising. In practice, we should probably assume that at least some of the Firedog contracts are duplicates (e.g. people with Firedog contracts covering more than one purchase), and there’s some question as to how much use the government will allow the new buyer to make of the contacts, since none of those people officially consented to have their information given to whoever buys the database. A more pressing question, at least to me, is how much use those contacts are going to be even if you do buy them…

For the most part, people don’t like getting telemarketing calls; it’s why the “Do Not Call” list is so universally popular. People are even less fond of “spam” emails”, and while direct mail marketing isn’t as universally despised, it’s also much more expensive, both to make and to send. How many of these people are going to appreciate being contacted in this fashion is an open question, especially considering that some of them undoubtedly harbor some hard feelings toward Circuit City (and by extension to whoever bought out their assets). Which means it’s difficult to say exactly how much this database information is really worth in the first place…

Let’s suppose that there really are 30 million potential customers connected to these files. If the buyer manages to get a one-half-percent purchase rate from its direct mail and email advertising (which is about standard), that equates to about 150,000 sales. If each of those purchases exceeds $100 in net profit, then the database information was worth the projected $15 million sale price. But you’d have to sell a lot of consumer electronics to have any realistic chance of netting $100 per sale, given how low the profit margin is on some classes of product, and you’d need still more sales to make back the cost of the advertising itself. Unless each of those successful contacts results in repeat sales over an extended period, it would be difficult to justify paying that much for the information. And, even then, you will still have to deal with the bad feelings generated in the 99.5% of the population that does not choose to purchase anything from the new owners…

If I had to make the decision, and assuming I ran a company with both the need for this information and also the money to buy that information, I’d certainly consider putting in an offer. But if it was my business, I would not count on either the sales rate or profit margin the people selling the databases are suggesting ever coming to fruition – which means I wouldn’t be offering anything like $15 million for those contacts. Of course, we’ll have to wait and see how well the actual buyers do with that information…

Assuming anyone makes a bid, of course…

New Towel Technology

No, the title of this post is not a typographical error; I refer here to a new product which is taking the country, and eventually will take the world, by storm. A product for all of the members of our civilization who are being unfairly punished, embarrassed, or just inconvenienced by the existing towel technology, and yearn for something better. For too long, innocent members of society who are (through no fault of their own!) too dim to figure out how to wrap a towel around themselves have suffered shame and humiliation, but now thanks to the miracle of science (and the efforts of a truly ingenious couple from Florida), you too can reap the benefits of the Wearable Towel …

As reported this week in the Washington Post, the Wearable Towel, or simply the Wearable, is generally similar to a conventional towel, only with the addition of arm holes on each side. It’s manufactured in Turkey (which does not, actually, make it a Turkish towel, however) and available direct to you at the low, low price of just $19.99 plus shipping and handling. The designer suggests that you can wear it anywhere you would wear an actual towel (including in your back yard, at a barbeque, at parties, etc.) and that you can be “totally undressed” (emphasis theirs) under this towel if circumstances require it!

Astute readers will have noted this product’s similarity to the infomercial classic known as the Snuggie (a blanket with sleeves) and its upscale competitor, the Slanket, which costs nearly twice as much as a Snuggie, but is much larger, made of more durable material, and comes in a huge array of colors and prints (where a Snuggie is available in just 3 insipid pastel fleeces). In theory, while a Slanket is more expensive, it is being marketed as having added value for the consumer – that is, being warmer, more functional, and more visually appealing. This does not change the fact, however, that both products are actually just wearable blankets and are being aimed at a target demographic of people who are unable to cope with the technical complexities of an actual blanket (or, say, an over-shirt or sweater). None of this really compares to the horror of the Comfort Wipe, however…

This product, which I swear I am not making up, serves a personal hygiene function so profoundly disgusting that even someone afflicted with OCD would hesitate to describe it any further. But the Washington Post article also goes on to cite the 1980’s era telesales product that would scramble an egg while it was still inside the shell, and its modern counterpart, the Egg Genie which will enable even someone who is not able to boil water effectively to make perfect hard-boiled eggs every time. Which leads the Post’s reporter to what effect these products are having on our society in general…

Now, as any regular readers of this space already know, I’m not a huge booster of the American primary education system; I personally feel that if we’re going to continue to encounter college students (like one I ran into this week) who have managed to obtain high school diplomas without realizing that the word “exercise” does not have an “A” in it (and can’t copy the word off the blackboard in front of them, either) then we really shouldn’t be blaming telesales products for the dumbing-down of America. In the long run, I’m fairly certain that all of these products will join the Veg-O-Matic and the Pocket Fisherman on the junk heap of History (as well as on an actual junk heap somewhere)…

But if they don’t, remember, folks, you heard it heard first…

Below F Level

Since I’m currently teaching an undergraduate class in Management – and preparing for a profession in which teaching should be a regular job duty – I read with great interest a story in the Calgary Herald Online about a Canadian university that has started handing out grades that rank below an F in the scale of things. At MSU (and a number of other colleges and universities) an F is recorded as a “0” in your permanent record, representing zero grade points, so it was difficult for me to fathom how we could adapt such a grading convention here. However, on reading the story it became clear that we could; whether or not we would want to is another matter…

According to the online story, Simon Fraser University in British Columbia has introduced the grade of FD, which stands for “Failed, with Academic Dishonesty,” and will be awarding this new grade to anyone who is given a fail grade specifically because of academic cheating. Naturally, they will have to be caught first, and the cheating confirmed by the proper authorities, which means this isn’t a grade that individual professors will be handing out. The story goes on to say that the FD grade will remain on the offender’s transcript for the rest of their time at SFU and two years after graduation, which could negatively impact both the student’s chances of qualifying for post-graduate study and their job prospects…

I’m not sure such a thing could fly in the United States, although the story does note that the University of Alberta, Canada, already uses a similar system. In this country, I can’t help thinking than anyone who received such a grade – or, in some cases, the parents of any student who received such a grade – would immediately start legal proceedings, charging that this practice is unfair to cheaters (or unfair to their precious snowflakes, in the case of the parents), racist (if the cheater in question is or can be considered any type of minority) discriminatory (if the cheater in question has any trace of disability whatsoever) or defamatory (if the cheater and/or his/her parents think this will somehow reflect badly on any other aspect of their lives). This could easily lead to instances of cheating also being challenged in court, with all of the attendant expenses and wasted time that would entail. Although the measure would still be less harmful than simply pitching the cheater out of whatever institution they have sinned against – or rescinding their degree, if they’ve already left…

In the long run, I’m not sure the adoption of a specific degree to punish academic dishonesty is going to be very effective in preventing academic dishonesty; the research indicates that harsher punishments do not have a deterrent effect, and that only increased enforcement (with the attendant fear of being caught) is likely to have any effect in preventing offenses. Which means that a subscription to an anti-plagiarism service like Turn It In.com should have a greater impact than any new grade award. On the other hand, if an institution decides that it wants some form of punishment beyond simply inflicting a fail grade – but less severe than outright expulsion from the school – then the FD grade may have some utility. We’ll just have to wait and see if the reported levels of cheating at schools that employ such a method actually drop...

Missing the Point

There has been a lot of press lately concerning the launch of the long-delayed Chevy Volt, the first of the so-called “plug-in hybrids” to reach the market. Although generally similar to the hybrid cars already on the market, plug-in types like the Volt offer the option of recharging the vehicle’s main battery from an external source instead of the small gasoline-burning engine carried onboard, and the option of not engaging the recharging engine until after the battery’s own range is exceeded. The upshot is that if you drive a Volt 40 miles (to the edge of its battery range) on battery power, and then use the recharging engine to put another 10 miles into the battery (at 50 mpg) you will effectively have covered 50 miles on 0.2 gallons of gas – effectively 250 miles per gallon. Rather a lot, really…

Needless to say, these reports have generated a huge backlash from people who complain (correctly, as it happens) that the car’s true mileage is much lower than the 230 mpg the company claims, assuming that you want to drive it more than 50 miles between recharges from a conventional electrical system. Stories like this one on CNN Money Online try to provide both sides of the story, but a lot of the readers (check the comments section) seem to be focused entirely on the math of the situation – which does, in fact, fall short of the 230 mpg hype for long-distance and highway travel. However, I can’t help thinking that all of these nay-sayers are missing the point…

Consider, for example, someone living in East Lansing (as I do) and working at MSU (which I also do). My commute is only about 8 miles a day (round-trip); even allowing for extra mileage to go out for lunch or swing by the grocery store on the way home, it’s rarely more than 20 miles per day. With a recharge cost of about 50 cents for 40 miles , it’s possible that my whole week’s driving would cost less than a single gallon of gas – or less than 20% of what it would cost me to power my car using gasoline for the same period. Even when we were living in Redondo Beach (and driving 32 miles round-trip to and from work every day) we could still have commuted without ever buying (or burning) a gallon of gas; in East Lansing it’s entirely possible that we could go for months at a time without ever burning any gasoline…

Of course, if you add in a renewable power source, these calculations get even more absurd. A bank of photo-electric cells capable of generating and storing 8 kilowatt hours per day, for example, or a wind turbine with a similar output, would give the Volt owner an almost unlimited supply of essentially free mileage. Even if the price of gas returns to last year’s levels, or extends into one of those nightmare $9/gallon scenarios, Volt owners will remain relatively unaffected. If General Motors can get enough Volts into service to lower the price, making the vehicle accessible to the general public, it could really be the game-changer they’re hoping for…

Even more to the point, perhaps, even this basic application of the technology has the potential to dramatically lower the amount of fossil fuel consumed in this country, lower the amount of particulate matter in the air, and improve our foreign trade balance, all while providing jobs for the nice people here in Central Michigan who will get to build the Volts. But if GM does not handle the mass-production of the vehicle correctly; if they allow this to become a curiosity (like the EV-1) or a rare commodity with a huge waiting list (like the Prius) or a high-priced luxury item that will never produce enough in fuel savings to make it worth the purchase price, then this whole product will become nothing more than a big, sick joke…

Let us hope that General Motors, at least, gets the point of this exercise. And that they choose wisely…

Win the Battle, Lose the War?

In our discussions of the Starbucks corporation, I have repeatedly called your attention to the fact that the company cannot in reason expect to compete with the various fast-food companies that also sell coffee by taking a low-cost strategy. People go to a McDonald’s or a Burger King when they want a fast cup of brew that they can drink on the way to work or at their desk along with the other fast-food groups (salt, fat, sugar and grease). These people will not pay $4 for a coffee-house product, any more than the people who are looking for a traditional coffee house experience (quality food and drink, quiet atmosphere, clean and comfortable space to work, socialize or relax, and so on) would be likely to go to a hamburger stand and sit on the plastic bench seats. But apparently, no one told the Starbucks people this…

According to a report provided to Yahoo by the Wall Street Journal, Starbucks has become the latest firm to begin applying Motion Study to its operations. Using a stopwatch and a selection of elementary tasks, the company is attempting to get its store personnel to shave seconds off each drink produced and work more efficiently in serving each customer. Despite the rather “gee-whiz!” tone of the article, the science of Motion Study is not exactly new; it finds its roots in the work of Frederick Taylor and Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, roughly a century ago. Motion Study is the forerunner of the modern sciences of ergonomics and work design, and has been making work safer, faster, and more efficient (hence more profitable) in virtually every sector you can imagine for decades. But I have to wonder how this will translate to what is, at its heart, a personal service business…

As I’ve mentioned to my own students for years now, Starbucks isn’t really selling you coffee; you could make the same beverages at home for pennies on the dollar. They are selling you speed and convenience, but you can get those values from the new McDonald’s “McCafe” products just as easily, and at about half the price. To a very large extent, what Starbucks (and most other coffee house operations) are selling you is the experience – it is sometimes described as a lifestyle – of taking your coffee, and possibly your leisure, at a non-exclusive neighborhood social club, or whatever your equivalent happens to be. They can’t give you that if their entire focus is on processing everyone through the line as quickly as possible, with as little wasted effort and motion as they can. But they can easily destroy whatever remaining similarity they might have had to an actual neighborhood coffee house if they proceed in this fashion…

Now, I want to be clear that I’m not opposed to Motion Study or any other type of operational efficiency improvement; it’s a sound concept that has saved a lot of good companies from ruin and actually contributed to an improved standard of production throughout the industrialized world. I’m just questioning whether such measures will, by themselves, be enough to counter the creeping threat of fast-food and convenience-store coffee. Maybe Starbucks should have their store personnel spend some of the time they’re going to be saving on production times getting to know their customers; memorizing people’s names and regular orders and any personal information the customers happen to drop. Because while it can’t be denied that getting your cup of coffee 23 seconds faster in the morning would be nice, being greeted by name, asked if you’d like your usual, and being given the correct product (your "usual") without having to name it would probably go a lot farther towards making that $4 beverage seem worth the price you’re paying for it…

Return on Investment

Many years ago, after completing three years of school and spending quite a lot of other people’s money on the process, I completed my MBA and was appalled by the outplacement services available to me at LMU – or, more accurately, at the lack of such services. Not that my departure from my undergraduate program had been much better, if you want the truth, but UCSB was a state university that made no particular claims of career development or job placement for its graduates, and did in fact offer reciprocal agreements that allowed its graduates to use the Career/Placement center at any of the University of California campuses. Loyola Marymount, on the other hand, was advertising its MBA programs as being a means of enhancing one’s career and getting ahead in the world, and if you were the right sort of candidate (one of the middle managers in an aerospace company, for example) it actually might have that effect, but you’d have to make all of the arrangements yourself, because the school had no one (and nothing) that would help you…

Why exactly this was remains a mystery to me. The school’s key demographic may have been people who needed the MBA to achieve their next promotion in a locked hierarchy – get all of the right punches on your ticket, including your MBA, and promotion will automatically follow – but at least half of the business school students I met were people like me, who had decided to make management a career without outside prompting. Most of us needed help in finding a suitable job after the MBA program, and most of us would have been more likely to donate more money to the school and to help recruit more applicants, to take only two of the more obvious reasons why you should try to stay on the good side of your alumni. Even before I started writing snarky posts like this one, I was mad enough to sue. And, as it turns out, maybe I should have…

A story being reported this week by The Associated Press tells the story of a graduate of Monroe College in New York, who is suing the school, claiming that the College has failed to provide her with the job leads and career advice it promises. The story does not enumerate those services, but they can’t very well be worse than the ones offered to me by LMU in 1994, which consisted of absolutely nothing. In fact, at that time the business program didn’t even have a career advisor (the previous one had just quit), let alone a placement center. In this particular case, the student is suing Monroe for $70,000, which is apparently the amount she spent on an Information Technology degree that isn’t providing her with any more help in finding a job than my Master’s degree did at first…

In fairness, the country is in the middle of its worst economic crisis in a generation, and possibly the worst since the Great Depression 80 years ago. And Monroe College has denied the charges, claiming that they provide help to all of their graduates, and did in this case, as well. Still, it should be interesting to see how this case comes out. If the student can prove that the school did not provide services it had promised, she may actually have a case. But if she’s only bringing a law suit because she can’t get a job in this economy, even with her brand new IT degree, she’s probably in for another disappointment…

The Grad School Diaries: The Road to Mordor

As we came over the rise, the odor from the contaminated marshes jumped from a minor nuisance to a stench that would have killed minor gods unfortunate enough not to have HEPA filters in their ventilation system. I set the cabin air to recirculate and tried not to gag. “Is it always this rank out here?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” our future son-in-law replied from the starboard wing gunner’s station. “Sometimes it gets really unpleasant along through here.”

“It looks like something out of War Hammer 40,000; like Space Orcs would have built it,” my wife commented from the Navigator’s position.

“Or from Lord of the Rings,” I agreed, adjusting the throttles. The surface had been getting steadily worse since we’d entered the Badlands an hour or so earlier, and I was having to use care just to keep on course. “Add the smokestacks and all of the crap in the air to the landscape, and this could be Mordor on a bad day.”

“Mordor has good days?” our daughter asked from the port wing gunner’s station.

“Mordor could, but Gary, Indiana definitely doesn’t,” her future husband retorted.

My wife laughed and started singing the song “Gary, Indiana” from the musical The Music Man. Members of my crew capable of doing so joined in until it stopped being funny. “I think they wrote the song before the Industrial Revolution hit this part of the world,” I remarked, rolling my eyes. Actually, the musical was written in 1957, but it’s set in 1912, allegedly just six years after the city of Gary was founded, and certainly well before it ever came to look like this…

Of course, we’re not actually driving an armored fighting vehicle through a post-apocalyptic wasteland; we’re driving a Pontiac Torrent along Interstate 90 on the way from East Lansing to Chicago. But as we drive past towering metal structures, blackened with smoke and covered with spikes and sharp extrusions, the distinction is not as clear as you’d probably expect. If you told me these things were made by Orcs in the service of an evil Dark Lord bent on World Domination, I’d probably believe you. In fact, there’s a definite chance that even non-gamers might agree that it looks like something out of WH40K…

By contrast, the City of Chicago, rising slowly out of the distance in front of us, looks grand, modern, hustling – even clean – and the suburbs to the north of the city, where our son-in-law’s parents live (near the Wisconsin border) are pure Norman Rockwell. One could almost believe that the people who live there are paying the folks in Gary to continue looking as horrible as possible, just so that they look better in comparison. Although I know that’s an absurd thought, just as I know that parts of my beloved South Bay look almost as bad, with oil refineries belching fire and smoke into the sky, and stinking of heaven only knows what toxic chemicals. But for sheer baroque ugliness, almost Gothic in theme, the run through Gary is likely to remain the winner for some time to come…

It’s my first day off since Year One officially got started, more than two months ago. Literally my first day off; the first day I have not devoted any of my waking hours to my schoolwork. We’re off to Chicago to meet our opposite numbers; the people who will become our daughter’s in-laws in another couple of years. It’s a new experience for both of us; I’ve only been a step-parent officially for four years now, but even my wife, with an additional eighteen years of experience, has never sat across the table from the parents of someone her offspring is planning to marry. We’ve heard a lot about these folks, of course; our daughter has already been here a number of times, and her intended has also told us what to expect, but meeting people in person is always different from what other people have described. And in this particular case, the people we are to meet are somewhat older than we are, and have lived very different lives from ours…

It’s an odd feeling; sort of a parallax view; meeting a friend’s parents while at the same time being somebody’s parent. I'm still not used to the idea of being a grown-up (which I know is absurd for a man of nearly 44, but is nevertheless true), let alone meeting other grown-ups and pretending I know what I'm doing. But this meeting is important, both for run-up to the wedding and for all of the years that come after it. Until such time as our daughter's birth father makes it up here from Alabama, I'm the closest thing to a male parent who is going to be available for this duty. It should be an interesting afternoon. And while I don’t actually expect that anything will go wrong, we can honestly say that we’ve been through Hell to get to this gathering. Or at least some place that rather looks like it…