"Hello, Dexter James."
"Hello, Phil Xander," Dexter said while fidgeting around on his chair.
"It's a pleasure to have you back on the show," Phil said.
"It is?"
"Sure, why wouldn't it be?"
"I thought I was banned for life from your show," Dexter said.
Dexter reached under his butt to feel the seat of the chair. He frowned and twisted around. He pushed around the seat bottom.
"Would you stay still?"
Dexter got up and moved to the other chair on the set. There was now an empty chair between him and Phil.
"There's busted spring in your chair. It was poking me in butt," Dexter said.
"It's kind of hard talking to you with you seated all of the way over there," Phil said.
Dexter sat back in his chair and smiled. Phil's comfort meant very little to him, in comparison to his comfort.
"It's kind of hard talking to you with a spring poking me in the butt."
"Sorry about that," Phil said.
"So you were saying? Oh wait ... I had just finished saying that I thought I was banned for life from your show."
"Not at all."
"Okay," Dexter said.
He looked around the set. There was a guy standing by one of the cameras holding a sign.
The sign said, "Don't bring down our servers."
Dexter grinned.
"I promise I won't bring down your servers today."
"Thank you," Phil said, irritated by another distraction. "I'm sure our IT folks appreciate that."
"Is that one of them over there?"
"Yes."
Dexter gave a thumbs up to the guy with the sign.
He shouted, "I won't bring down your servers, today."
"Thank you!"
"You're welcome."
Trying to get control over the interview, Phil said, "I asked you to come today to talk about your company, Legacy Coffeemakers, Inc."
"I like talking about that company," Dexter said.
"I've got to say that I'm pretty impressed with your coffeemakers. They really are tough," Phil said.
"Why do you say that?" Dexter asked.
"We had a couple of interns play broom hockey with your one cup coffeemaker behind the set to see how tough it is."
"Did they manage to break it?"
"No. It still worked perfectly," Phil said.
"We've had a lot of people try out our warranty on that coffeemaker. We've gotten a lot of letters about how rugged it is," Dexter said proudly. "They don't try the same things with the five and ten cup coffeemakers."
"What's your secret?" Phil asked.
"What secret?"
"The secret to getting such a tough product out," Phil asked.
"That's not a secret. I give people the authority necessary to do their jobs. Responsibility coupled with authority. If something goes wrong, it is the person with the responsibility who is at fault. It is that simple," Dexter said.
"So where does that leave you?"
Dexter said, "I have a responsibility to ensure that my people meeting are their responsibilities. I have the authority to fire anyone who isn't meeting them."
"How does that work out?"
"Let's take the case of the engineer whose name is on the coffeemaker. He has total responsibility for the design. He has the authority to do what is required. I don't go in and change his design or overrule his design decisions. That's not my job. You see, if I meddle in his design then I become responsible for any problems that I introduce. As soon as you have a dilution of authority, you have problems with assigning responsibility."
"You designer doesn't work alone. He doesn't design everything," Phil said.
Dexter said, "That's right. He does the overall design and contracts out some design tasks to others. He gives them requirements and they design to the requirements. They have total authority over their designs. He can say that their design didn't meet the requirements and that becomes their fault. He can point out flaws in their design. They have to fix the design. Of course, his requirements could have been bad and that is his fault. He has to fix the requirements. It is really very simple.
"That's what happens when you delegate responsibility and authority. It clarifies things tremendously. If you don't have the authority to make something happen, you really can't be held responsible if it doesn't happen. Then things get murky. Who did what? Who didn't do what? Where's the problem? Why didn't someone step in and fix the problem?
"When the answers you get are: 'I can't do this because I'm not allowed, ' but the person who is allowed isn't responsible for getting it done ... then you have real problems. Those kinds of problems can't be solved by blaming people."
Phil said, "I guess that makes sense.
"Our designer wanted a tough rugged machine that would last twenty years under hard use," Dexter said. "In my opinion, he met that goal."
"Has anyone managed to break one?" Phil asked.
Dexter answered, "You know the answer to that question."
"You are referring to the lawsuit your company has filed against one of the other companies that makes coffeemakers."
"Yes. They bought five thousand of our coffeemakers using an intermediary group. The group that accepted delivery of the coffeemakers then destroyed the machines. In some cases, they drilled holes through the sides of coffeemakers. They then tried to return them under warranty expecting us to replace all five thousand coffeemakers with new ones. The idea was that they would then do the same thing with the replacement coffeemakers and keep doing it until we were out of business," Dexter replied.
"They drilled holes though them?" Phil asked.
"Yes. Right into the water reservoir. There is a line in our warranty saying that we would prosecute Warranty Fraud to the fullest extent of criminal and civil law possible. We view that as Warranty Fraud."
"I would say so. Still, five hundred million dollars is a pretty large amount to be suing them," Phil said.
"Why? This was a clear attempt to put us out of business. If they had been successful, we would have lost that much in sales over the next three years," Dexter said. "I think it is quite reasonable to sue for that amount."
"You do have a point, although a lot of people were rather surprised by the amount."
"I'm not surprised that they were surprised."
"How did you discover they were doing this?" Phil asked.
"I'm not at liberty to say," Dexter answered. "All I can say is that there are a lot of honest people left in this world who won't take money to perform criminal acts."
"That's good to know," Phil said.
"A lot of companies should remember that. The days of big companies doing whatever they want are over," Dexter said.
"I will admit that there has been a major change in corporate ethics," Phil said.
Dexter said, "We've got six executives out on bail because of this. There are a lot more in legal trouble than that in other cases that have nothing to do with me or my company. A lot of employees have become whistle-blowers."
"Why would you say that is happening?"
Dexter said, "People are tired of watching the company they work for go down the tubes because of criminal acts by upper management."
"Won't your lawsuit damage the company and put employees at risk?" Phil said.
"Not as much as you would think. You see, in our lawsuit we are requesting that all settlement money come out of executive compensation," Dexter answered.
"I'm not sure the courts can force them to do that."
"I don't know if they can or not. However, we can request it and make that request known to others. It really looks bad to shareholders when the executives get big bonuses after a settlement like that. It causes them to lose confidence in the management of the company," Dexter said.
"You say that as if you know it for a fact," Phil said.
"We're not the first to make that request," Dexter said. "Executive compensation in some of these large companies will often run over a half billion dollars. I mean, you'll hear about some executive getting a bonus of fifty million and you think that's all the company paid out. That's not the case. That's the bonus for one executive. There are hundreds of other executives from the director level on up who are getting sizable bonuses. It adds up very quickly."
"I know that's particularly true in the financial industry where the majority of compensation is in the form of bonuses," Phil said.
"Personally, I feel that level of compensation is criminal. Considering that the median salary of an American worker is fifty thousand a year, five hundred million is the equivalent to the salaries of ten thousand employees. Or you could give a hundred thousand employees a five thousand dollar increase in pay.
"In our past conversation, you said that the American worker is too expensive. I suggest that the American executive is the real threat to profitability."
Phil smiled. "You are now a corporate executive. Are you saying that you are a threat to profitability?"
"Yes, I am. As an executive, I could pull so much money out of the company that I could kill it. As an owner, I'm not going to do that," Dexter answered.
Phil said, "I see that it is time for a commercial. We'll be right back."
"You're off the air!"
The makeup ladies came out to do their job.
Phil shouted, "Would someone replace that chair? I can't stand talking to him while he's seated so far away."
"You can just swap chairs," Dexter said.
Things were a little hectic on the set. There was a small game of musical chairs while the stagehands swapped chairs. While that was happening, the makeup woman was trying to get at Dexter who was standing around making it a little difficult to properly apply the makeup. When the new chair had been put in place, Dexter tried it and gave a nod of approval.
"We'll talk about your website after the break," Phil said.
"Okey-dokey," Dexter said earning a giggle from the makeup woman and a confused stare from Phil.
"Back on air in five, four, three..."
The makeup women managed to get off the set before the count hit zero. Dexter was seated in the other chair, which had been exchanged.
Phil said, "We're back talking with Dexter James."
"There is some good news," Dexter said.
"What?" Phil asked.
"Your servers didn't go down this time," Dexter said.
"Yes," Phil said. "Speaking of which, your website hasn't been in the news in ages. What's going on with it?"
"It's still getting heavy traffic."
"It seems to have changed tone," Phil said.
Dexter said, "Not really. The website has always been about people getting treated fairly. It started with pointing out some of the ways in which corporations were exploiting people. Make no mistake about it. People were being exploited, degraded, and treated worse than animals by the businesses that employed them. We identified ways in which employees could demand humane treatment in the workplace."
"That was quite controversial," Phil said.
"Of course it was controversial. Corporations had gone unchallenged from salaried employees for so long that they figured they were sheep. The idea that the sheep could rebel was just absurd," Dexter said.
"You've stopped posting those kinds of articles," Phil said.
Dexter said, "As problems with worker exploitation eased back, we looked at other areas of life in which people were being treated poorly. That basically focused on the service industries. Service has improved tremendously."
"That is an understatement," Phil said.
Dexter said, "Service has become much more flexible. Places now span the whole breadth from self-service to platinum service. In fact, I'd say that platinum service today means a lot more than what it meant five years ago."
Phil said, "I live in a state that had mandated only full-service at gas stations. All they did was pump gas. It wasn't until I went out of state that I discovered what it meant to have full-service. It was an eye opening experience."
"I'm sure it was. That day when I encountered the independent full-service gas station was a shock to me. That's when I realized just how much service had truly eroded."
"Now your website deals with manners," Phil said. "That's a long way from attacking corporations."
"Not really. You see, corporations were not the only ones abusing people. We were moving into a nation of cultural abuse. Rudeness, impatience, and outright rage at times, was becoming normal behavior."
"I read your article on email etiquette. It was startling, but I disagree with much of what you wrote," Phil said.
"People are treating an exchange of email like it was a conversation. The problem, as we saw it, is that email isn't a chat program. You are exchanging letters and all of the etiquette associated with a letter should apply to an email," Dexter said.
"I use it as a chat," Phil said.
Dexter said, "It isn't a chat programs. We have chat programs."
"It can be used like a chat program," Phil said.
"I'd say it can be misused as though it were a chat program. But that's what it is, a misuse of the program."
Dexter paused while organizing his thoughts. "You send me an email. I reply to it. Now you read my reply and it is blunt because I'm treating it like a real-time discussion. The problem, it isn't real-time. Between you composing your email and then reading my reply, you may have read a dozen other emails. You may not remember all of the details of what you wrote in the original email.
"Including your original email in a reply doesn't really help. It just doubles the length of the email and makes it more effort to deal with. It's even worse if comments are interwoven within the original text like a lot of people do. After a couple of exchanges, the emails can get quite long and horribly confusing."
Dexter said, "Now in the old days when communication was by snail mail, a month could pass between composing a letter and receiving a reply. Think about that. A whole month could pass. At a minimum, two days would pass between writing it, posting, transport from one place to another, delivery, and then reading the letter. The reply would take another two days to get routed to the originator of the initial letter. That's four days. That's a lot of time.
"In those days, we didn't include the original letter in our response. No, our response was a letter that reestablished the context of the discussion. There were no assumptions about the other person remembering what they had written in the original letter. It was a complete communication and there was an understanding that circumstances may have changed. So each letter had to be a complete stand-alone product.
"Email has nearly instantaneous delivery, but that doesn't mean that it is instantly read and acted upon. Hours and even days may pass before a reply is generated. To me, that means that the old letter paradigm should still apply."
"You're forgetting that emails can get distributed to a lot of people while letters were one-to-one communication," Phil said.
Dexter snorted in disgust. "Group email can be used to send out a general announcement. That's a great use of it. You send out an email announcement and people read it for information purposes. It's like printing up a brochure or invitations and mailing them out. If there is a need to respond, people should respond directly to the author and not to the rest of the group.
"Group discussion by email is a horrible use of that technology. It is just not suited for a group discussion. The tone of the emails can quickly degrade into harsh words, and outright insults. One email can generate a bunch of disconnected replies. All of a sudden, you're trying to piece together a hundred different threads. Nothing makes sense. Arguments break out.
"It's absolutely the worst way for a group to interact when trying to solve a problem. There aren't any rules. There isn't a moderator. It's pure chaos. It reminds me of baby birds all squawking at the same time to get fed. Nobody is really listening to what anyone has to say. More time is wasted with group email discussions than any form of communication.
"There are electronic chat rooms, forums, blogs, and video conferencing for those kinds of discussions. Those mechanisms at least provide a structure for the discussion. Is there room for improvement for those programs? Yes. Still, they are much better than email."
Phil said, "You feel strongly about this subject."
"In a way I do. You see ... I think that the tone taken in email often translates into the tone that people take with each other in real face-to-face conversations."
"I've never thought about it that way," Phil said.
Dexter said, "I think a lot of people feel that cultured means that we are cold and impersonal with each other. I don't think so. When I think of someone being cultured, I think of grace and elegance. We've lost a lot of that in pursuit of an electronic culture.
"If you want to invite someone to lunch, call them on the telephone. It takes a minute over the phone to make the invitation and to arrange the time and place. It takes a dozen email exchanges to accomplish the same thing. You end up wasting fifteen minutes in the process. Even worse than that, is that it is impersonal. The fact is, a lot of our communication is not in the words we use, but the way we say them."
Phil asked, "What do you mean?"
"If I ask you in an email if you want to go to lunch, all you really know is that I've extended an invitation to lunch. You don't know if I'm depressed and need a friendly ear, or I'm happy because I've got some good news to share. Sure, I could include in the email that I'm happy or sad, but we don't do that and for very good reasons. Who knows what will happen to the email? No one does."
"Everyone knows that you have to be careful about what you say in an email," Phil said.
"It's very easy to send an email off to the wrong person. We've all done it. That's one of the problems with email," Dexter said.
"In a way, a lot of things that you've written on your website gives the impression that you don't like our technical world," Phil said.
"Some people believe that I'm a Luddite. I'm not. I'm an engineer for crying out loud. I honestly believe that technology can solve a lot of our problems. I just think that we're using the technologies that are available to us in the wrong way at times.
"ATMs work and when you're in a hurry for a little cash, they are great. However, ATMs shouldn't replace people in a bank. That isn't a condemnation of the ATM technology. Rather, it is putting a boundary on the extent of its use in our society."
"I personally like the convenience and speed of using automated tellers and checkouts," Phil said.
"That's your choice," Dexter said. "However, your choices shouldn't affect my ability to choose."
"I'll agree with that," Phil said.
"Thank you."
"We are approaching the end of this segment. Is there anything you want to say before we head off to commercial break?"
"Not really. I'm sure that listening to me prattle on about the state of our society for thirty minutes is more than most people can stomach," Dexter said.
"You are an unusual man, Dexter James."
"Actually, I'm pretty average."
Edited By TeNderLoin