The fallacy of paying by "productivity"

Many claim that more productive workers will get paid more.  That may be true of sales representatives who work on commission, but what about other workers who have several constraints on their "productivity".

I thought of this as I was driving on a weekday on the dirt road in Brimson on the way to our cabin.  In front of me was a trash hauler.  He stopped to pick up one neighbor's trash, and while he did so I passed him.  He continued behind me and I knew his next stop was not for another mile.

When I drove back to Duluth a couple of hours later, the same driver, or at least the same firm, was in front of me on the main highway.  I thought he has over an hour's drive to get to the landfill. 

It would take him a lot longer to fill his truck than it would for a driver with a city route.  Should this first driver be paid for his "productivity"?  Or for his time?

Possibly his lower "productivity" is partly compensated by a higher pickup rate for rural customers.

The same holds for UPS and FedEx drivers, and as far as I know the rate for the senders of packages are the same for a given large area.  The sender pays for the terminal-to-terminal distance, but not the local distance.  Should these drivers be paid for packages per hour or be paid for hours worked?

I had the same situation when I drove for a school and transit bus company.  I was paid by the hour no matter what I did.  And I got a premium for seniority.  Many was the charter on which I read, slept, played chess, ate, or went to the same event as the customer.  I had one charter for a theater company where not only did I not drive for the two-to-three hours of the production, the production manager gave me and wife very good tickets for the last performance.

So, what was my "productivity" on this charter.  Showing up on time, getting the passengers to their destination on time, driving safely, and being friendly.

I can't end this without mentioning another "productive" kind of employee who is often overlooked - the schmoozer.  This is the employee (or even owner) who takes time to know customers and make them feel welcome.  During this time they provide no goods or services.  But they certainly increase return business.  Think of places where the sales staff is on commission and you can hardly stand doing business with them.  They are know-it-all fast talkers who want to close a sale as fast as possible.  You may wind up buying from them, but only because of the salaried or hourly support staff who act like you are the only customer they have.

I had a vehicle for 13 years and for the last six I kept going to a certain dealer because the service department was good and the front guy was a schmoozer who always acted glad to see me.  They had a really good salesman who kept kidding me about buying a new vehicle from him, another schmoozer.  Well, by the time I decided to trade-in that vehicle he had retired.  A friend told me she bought a truck from him because all the other salesmen were jerks.  I found out she was right.  And so, I went to the guy who sold me the truck in the first place, also a schmoozer.  He was now selling another make of vehicle.  He schmoozed, listened to us, and had a selection of vehicles ready for us to test-drive.  We bought one of those vehicles.

For those not completely familiar with colloquial English, a schmoozer is someone who makes other people feel at ease with friendly, non-intrusive, conversation.

Good and mediocre corporate bureaucracies

We have had a dripping faucet for a while and I finally got around to trying to fix it this week.  The story about disassembling is long, but I did disassemble the faucet to the point of pulling out the cartridge.  No matter how much or how hard I pulled, it wouldn't budge.

I called Moen's customer support and arranged for next day delivery of the cartridge.  The support service person said the package would include a tool to dislodge the cartridge.  All I needed to pay was for the shipping!!!

It had not arrived by two this afternoon, and so I called Moen back.  The customer support person told me that it was shipped by FedEx and gave me the tracking number.  She told me that it had arrived at the FedEx location and would be delivered by three.  No package at three.

I went to the FedEx web site and checked the tracking number.  The latest item is that it arrived at 12:25 a.m. at the FexEx location in Memphis TN from Las Vegas NV.  Memphis TN?  Is it on its way to Duluth GA?

I crawled the FedEx web site and found an 800 number.  I got a voice activated computer.  It said that the package would be delivered by three.  I could not break out of the cycle of getting the same response.  Maybe I should have said that I would like to speak with a person or punched zero.

This latter is another example of corporate efficiency at the cost of effectiveness for the customer.

But the story doesn't stop there.

I did find a feedback email form for FedEx and sent a message about the runaround and stalled status.

I also checked a Memphis paper and found that there was a big storm on Monday in Memphis, with thousands of homes and businesses still without power this morning.  Does that mean that some aspects of FedEx were not functioning fully?

I called Moen back to check if they could tell me more.  Not much, but the person told me she would send another, then I might have a spare.

Later yet, a FedEx representative called me to tell me that I would receive my package tomorrow.  I brought up about the storm and he said it was Monday but that lots of places had no power.  He did seem a bit harried, and so I didn't say much more.

Other than having to punch a few numbers to get to a live Moen representative, I would give them high marks for customer service.

In general, I would give FedEx low marks.  Probably in normal times, their tracking system would be a great help, but the computer voice recognition system needs lots of work.  FedEx does gain a few points for the phone call follow-up.  But they lose them for not having a backup for their tracking system, including a notation of problems out of their control.