Dexter was in a bad mood. The previous evening, his anniversary dinner with his wife had been interrupted three times by Mark, and once by Janet's boss. Mark kept calling during the commercials of some television program he was watching. He wanted to get some project numbers that he believed Dexter could look up on his computer at home. He didn't seem to understand the flat declaration that Dexter was not available to go to his computer to look up things since he was in a restaurant having dinner. His wife didn't appreciate the interruptions and any chance for a romantic conclusion to the evening had disappeared by the third call.
Dexter was sitting on the toilet engaged in what he liked to call 'his morning constitutional' when his cell phone rang. He didn't have to glance at the caller id to know his boss was calling. He didn't want to answer it since the last thing he wanted to do was to talk to his boss while sitting on the toilet. Of course the alternative was to listen to a ten-minute voice mail, and then talk to his boss while shaving.
Grumbling, he answered and put it on speakerphone. He said, "Hello, Mark."
"Oh ... Dexter ... I expected it to go to voice mail," Mark said sounding surprised to actually get him that morning.
"Not this morning. I'm sitting on the crapper and have nothing better to do than to shit and talk to you," Dexter said. He pressed his lips together and blew so that it made a sound like he was passing gas. When he quit, he moaned, "Ah! I feel like I'm gonna pass a big one."
"I don't need to know that kind of shit," Mark said, without realizing he had made a rather unfortunate play on words.
"It is six-fifteen in the morning. I'm taking a dump. Office hours officially start at nine," Dexter said.
"You're a salaried worker. You work when there is work to be done," Mark said.
"What do you want?" Dexter asked.
Mark said, "The Director wants me to attend some kind of talk this afternoon. I want you to go in my place."
"When did he tell you about that?" Dexter asked.
"Monday morning," Mark answered.
"Why didn't you tell me Monday morn..."
Interrupting him, Mark shouted, "You assholes drive this fucking route every fucking morning. By now you should know where the hell you're going."
Dexter said, "Why didn't you tell me about this Monday morning?"
"I decided last night that I could spend my time a little better by getting ready for the trip to India," Mark said.
"Why are you going to India?" Dexter asked dreading the answer.
The teams in India were his responsibility. He didn't need Mark going over there and screwing things up. He was going to end up having to patch relations with the folks over there. That might even require that he make an extra trip. It had taken him a year to establish a reasonable working relationship with them.
"It was the Director's idea. He told me to go there after I told him that I'd never seen their facilities," Mark answered.
Dexter said, "I've been there. They've got cheap PCs that connect to our machines here."
"Well, I need to see that for myself," Mark said. "Besides, I've never been to India. Why not have the company pay for it?"
"You could have given me a little more not..."
"Use your turn signal asshole!"
"I've got three project status meetings scheduled for this afternoon. What will I do about them?" Dexter asked.
"Attend your meetings by phone," Mark said.
"I'm going to be very popular when I start talking over the speaker," Dexter said.
"You don't have to say anything in your meetings. All you have to do is listen to your underlings talk. If you have to communicate with them, use instant messaging," Mark said.
Dexter could see himself trying to listen to a conversation on the phone and a lecture by some self-proclaimed expert. He said, "I doubt I would be able to give my meetings or the speaker the kind of attention required."
"You've got to learn to multi-task," Mark said with a snort of derision.
Dexter put a hand under his armpit and made a farting noise while saying, "I'll figure out how to listen to two conversations at once, instant message, and answer e-mails at the same time."
"Jesus! What have you been eating to make those kinds of noises?" Mark asked.
The sound of a horn blowing could be heard over the phone. Mark shouted, "I have to change lanes asshole. Fucker keeps riding in my blind spot."
"Beans," Dexter answered finding it difficult to keep from laughing.
Mark said, "I didn't call you to listen to you fart. Call me when you get off the pot."
"Is there anything else that you need to tell me?" Dexter asked.
"Not really," Mark said.
"I'll talk to you when I get to the office," Dexter said.
"I guess that would be okay. Next time, get of the pot when I call you," Mark said.
Dexter disconnected and laughed. He said, "I'm gonna be on the pot every time you call, asshole."
The phone rang again. Dexter answered it. "What did you forget to tell me?"
"Are you off the toilet yet?" Mark asked.
"No," Dexter answered.
"I forgot to tell you that the talk is in the cafeteria at one thirty," Mark said. "I'll send you an e-mail with more details."
"You could have sent me an e-mail with the details without talking to me," Dexter said.
Mark said, "I just wanted to make sure you knew to expect an e-mail."
"Anything else?" Dexter asked.
"I can't think of anything," Mark said.
"Great. Now I can wipe my ass," Dexter said.
Terrance (don't call me Terry or Ter or T) Jones stood at the front of the room as if he was the most important person in the world. Dexter wasn't impressed. The guy looked like a snake oil salesman of the worst kind.
Terrance announced, "We are on the verge of transforming from an information age to a Service Economy. Does anyone want to guess what I mean by that?"
Dexter, who was still in a bad mood, answered, "It means that we are going to get checkout people at stores again, people at the counters of fast food places, full service gas station attendants, and real tellers at the bank."
"No," Terrance said. "That isn't service. That is having people do things for you."
"I like people doing things for me. I consider that they are performing a service," Dexter said.
"Those are menial positions. People don't want to do that kind of work," Terrance said.
Dexter looked around the cafeteria for a second. He asked, "How many people worked in a fast food place when you were in high school or going to college?"
About a third of the people raised their hands. Dexter asked, "How many of you were excited when you got that job?"
All of the same people were holding up their hands.
Dexter said, "It looks like people do want to do that kind of work."
"That's a bogus survey. They really didn't want that job or they would still be working there," Terrance said. "Besides, we aren't talking about those kinds of services."
"What kind are we talking about?" Dexter asked.
"Having our cell phones and handheld computers performing services for us," Terrance answered.
"So my cell phone is going to fill my gas tank?" Dexter asked.
"No," Terrance answered. "It will tell you things."
Dexter asked, "Like what?"
"It will help you manage your time better. It will tell you if your plane is going to be late. It will make reservations for you at restaurants. It will tell you where you can buy things cheaper," Terrance answered.
"I've got that plane thing already. Of course, it takes me forty-five minutes to an hour and a half to get to the airport. I've got to get there two hours early because of security. That means that I have to leave here at least three hours before my flight," Dexter said. "Now it seems like every time my flight has been delayed, I'm already at the airport when that program tells me that my flight is delayed. It is not of much use to me."
"What about when it is snowing?" Terrance asked.
"You know what ... they announce major weather delays at national airports on the radio. I've never been surprised," Dexter said.
"You're just not using it right," Terrance said.
"So exactly what kind of services are going to be performed for me in this burgeoning Service Economy that is going to save me lots of time?" Dexter asked.
"Well, you use search engines to find information, don't you?" Terrance asked.
"Yes, I do," Dexter answered.
"That's a service," Terrance said. "What do you use it for?"
"Porn," Dexter answered getting a laugh from everyone.
"How about at work?" Terrance said.
"I don't look at porn at work," Dexter said.
"How about online stores?" Terrance asked.
"I go to them. Of course, I miss the old days of looking at products before I buy them. I miss leafing through catalogs to see what's changed from year to year. I used to read magazines that compared different products," Dexter said.
Pictures on websites didn't give him the same kind of confidence about the quality of a product that picking it up and holding it gave him. Cheap plastic looked the same as good plastic in a photograph. Photographs of products didn't wobble, rattle, or come apart when you jiggled them.
"There are blogs for that," Terrance said.
"That's a good place to get factual information," Dexter said sarcastically.
"Blogs can be very useful," Terrance said.
Deciding that Terrance was a total idiot, Dexter said, "I'm sure they can be very useful. I'm thinking of starting one on how not to waste time in meetings. Rule number one: Don't go."
The Director who had introduced Terrance as the speaker stood up and said, "Terrance has some very interesting information to present to us. Let him present it."
"Sorry," Dexter said.
Dexter listened to the man talk for an hour. It was a lot of stuff about how he could do more work with less time when being supported by service programs. The gains in productivity would be tremendous. It was now just a trick of identifying what services would lead them to the greatest benefit.
There was also the fact that the services could be used to direct people to behave the way the company wanted them to behave. You could have the services provide the choices you want people to make by presenting them first and by making the alternatives extremely difficult to find. It was all going to be nice and good for the bottom line.
Terrance said, "Are there any comments?"
"Neat. As far as I can tell, I'll get to work for my phone," Dexter said. "I've always wanted to have an inanimate boss."
"You're taking this all wrong," Terrance said.
Dexter said, "You see, my position in this company used to come with a secretary. She handled thousands of little details for the man who held my position before me. He didn't have to oversee every decision that she made.
"As result of the introduction of office productivity software, it was decided that I didn't have a need for a secretary when I got promoted into my current position. So I get to do the work of a secretary. Unfortunately, I'm supposed to be a product manager who is overseeing ten projects. The time I spend using these wonderful Services that allow me to make my own reservations is taking away from my time being spent as project manager. So I figure that I'm losing one day a week doing stuff that a secretary should be doing."
"Now all of my project leads used to have a secretary and their little engineers used to share a secretary. Now they get to do their own secretarial work. I figure they are losing about twenty percent of their time doing secretarial work. With sixty engineers working for me, I have effectively twelve very high paid individuals who could be replaced by twelve very cheap secretaries and all of my projects would be running much better."
Terrance said, "That's because you're too old and don't really understand how to use information services to their best advantage."
"So your Service Economy is going to cut out everyone my age or older," Dexter said in a challenging tone of voice.
"Effectively," Terrance said.
"How about younger people with learning problems? They'll be cut out also, won't they?" Dexter asked.
"Possibly," Terrance admitted.
"So in this great Service Economy you've spoken about, what in the hell are you going to do with us who can't fit in?" Dexter asked.
"You won't be excluded, you'll just not reap the full benefits of this change," Terrance said.
"Well, I could always take some minimum wage job. No ... That won't work. Your services are trying to get rid of minimum wage jobs. I'll be homeless," Dexter said.
"You don't want that kind of job."
Dexter said, "I'd rather have that type of job than no job."
"You're being defeatist about this whole approach," Terrance said.
Dexter said, "Let me give you some interesting statistics. While you were talking, I sent out over a dozen e-mails addressing some significant issues on my development teams. I listened in on two project status meetings and assigned work items to various individuals using an instant messenger program. I had a text conversation with my wife. As a matter of curiosity, I searched the web to find out how to have sex with my handheld computer. I got two hundred thousand responses, but none of them seems to answer my question.
"My point is that I see all of the wonderful services complicating my life rather than making it better. Without them, I would have been able to give your talk one hundred percent of my attention. Instead, I missed stuff by checking my email, writing replies, and sending them out. I spent the time trying to keep track of two conversations and doing my project management work at the same time. Nothing got done well and there will be problems tomorrow that will suck up my time."
The Director rose and said, "I disagree with you, Dexter. Once you adopt the proper services, you'll be able to finish your work responsibilities much earlier."
Dexter wasn't very happy to discover that the Director remembered his name. He was hoping to be mistaken for someone else.
"I don't find that to be the case. Every time I get done with one thing, I get something else assigned to me," Dexter said.
"Well, you are being paid to work," the Director said. He frowned and added, "Don't forget the job market is pretty tough at the moment."
Dexter said, "I think you would get a lot more work from us if you hired a secretary for every five of my engineers, each of my project leads, and one for me. We'd blow the doors off this place."
"It is too expensive to hire people," the Director said. "That's the value of this whole service concept."
"You're paying people who make six figures to do the work that could be done by someone making twenty-five thousand a year. How is that a good deal?" Dexter asked.
Getting tired of arguing the point, the Director said, "Because it doesn't cost us anything to have them do more work. They are salaried employees."
"You'll burn out your engineering staff and get nothing out of them," Dexter said.
"Terrance has convinced me that going to information services is the only way to improve our productivity and save costs."
Considering that his people wrote programs, Dexter didn't think that little cell phone applications were going to make them write faster or work cheaper. All it was going to do was take them away from their jobs. He said, "I hope this company is still around when the Service Economy goes bust."
Terrance said, "It isn't going to go bust. The Luddites believed the world was going to come to an end as a result of the industrial revolution. They were wrong. You're wrong."
"That's what you think," Dexter said. "I see the seeds of its destruction looming on the horizon."
His cell phone beeped letting him know that he had a text message. He glanced down at it to discover a reminder that his wife had a client meeting and he was to take care of dinner for the kids. He hoped they liked pizza because that was all he could get to them by dinnertime.
The Director said, "Dexter, I think you should give this subject a lot of thought. It is the future and you will help it succeed or you will be gone."
"I think a Service Economy is the greatest thing since someone figured out how to slice bread," Dexter said with a completely false grin on his face.
"That's the right attitude."
As if adding insult to injury, Dexter was asked to have dinner at a restaurant, along with Terrance and Mark. Terrance and Mark were lost in a discussion of what kinds of services would help engineers produce better products, faster, and at lower cost. Dexter was convinced that this was just another hunt for the miracle to save the world.
Having taken a couple of pills for headaches, Dexter picked at his salad thinking that he was missing another night from his family. It seemed to him that it had been at least a year since he had any quality time with his wife. Interactions with the kids tended to be brief exchanges of status information about school.
He didn't even know if his kids were dating anyone.