Saturday 27 January 2007

An Insult to Dolly Parton

Oliver James is not impressed by Sydney. James, a "British psychologist and author" (The West 27 Jan 07 p.11) "found a city slavishly following American values and a puritan work ethic that robbed life of joy and real meaning." Sydney is "packed with career-obsessed workaholics."

Okay, nothing wrong with that.

But why would anyone insult Dolly Parton by calling Sydney the "Dolly Parton of cities in Australia"?!

..o0o..
Thinking Lateral
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On the Other Hand

With no comparison to singers, Dolly or otherwise, I can tell you a story of a Sydney office. A story which reflects a culture, an ethos, which is totally at odds with anything that we think of as "Australian".

I worked for a company with its head office in Sydney, north of the bridge. Head office occupied two floors of a large office building.

Fifth floor was management, sales and customer service. (This is an old story, from the days when "customer service" meant staff who would help the customer, rather than sit in a phone room. Customer service staff were reasonably important people.)

On the fifth floor was a big, wooden wall. The wall extended from floor to ceiling, right across the office. It cut off management from sales and service.

The big, wooden wall protected Management. Management had the side of the office facing the views of Sydney and its harbour. Management had its own space; each Manager had his own office. (Yes, "his" is correct.) To visit Management, you had to go through the one door in the big, wooden wall. That door was always closed.

The rest of the fifth floor was open plan. Sales and service mixed in: sharing office space, sharing second-class views, sharing the tea room.

Customers? Well, they could visit sales or service. If they were very, very important -- customers could be escorted through The Wall, to visit with Management.

Where was the Product Produced?

Sales sold a service. Service staff helped the customer to use that service. (Well, when they were not too busy developing convincing demonstrations for use by Sales staff.) But where was the service created?

... down on the third floor.

I visited there, once. People on the third floor actually did things. They wrote code. They fixed code. They made and maintained network connections.

..o0o..
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I visited the third floor, once. When I returned to the fifth, I washed my hands, checked my second-class-but-two-floors-higher view, and was glad to be working on the fifth floor.

"If only," I thought, "If only I could get an office in with Management. Behind The Wooden Wall. How much nicer that would be... But at least -- thank goodness -- I'm not stuck down there with the workers."

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