Category Archives: DASM

I wrote here a while back of the terrible service in a local coffee shop, Fat Bagels, in the midst of huge competition on Main Street. It’s been pretty much devoid of customers and is now officially closed. Another is apparently opening in its place.

Perhaps they’ll run it as a business, not a hobby, and realize you need employees who understand they’re there for the customers, not vice versa. I can still picture their surly employee working on his cell phone instead of the business.

Consulting practices aren’t very different. Be attentive to clients, don’t mess up the order, and at least pretend you’re enthusiastic about the work!

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

As stated here at the beginning of the season, Ellen DeGeneres acted as uncomfortably as she looked as a judge on American Idol, and she’s just announced she won’t be back (leaving several million on the table contractually). It was dumb to offer the job to her, and dumb of her to accept it.

I received a phone message yesterday from Dan Wolman (I may have that spelling wrong) who said he’s a new assistant general manager for the men’s department at Saks. He had read my blog entry (scroll down a few postings) and wanted to talk about my experiences. After all this time, that’s a good sign.

Well, I called the direct number he gave me, which is not a working number. But perhaps I heard it wrong on the voice mail, so today I called Saks’ main line at their flagship New York store. The first time, after waiting for two minutes through boring advisories (this call may be recorded—yes, but why doesn’t the service improve?) I finally got an operator. She asked how I was doing, I told her it took two minutes to get to her, and she became quite snippy. When I asked for Mr. Wolman, she put me on hold—permanently! Five minutes later, I hung up and redialed.

After a similar wait, which I dared not mention, the operator told me that he couldn’t find Mr. Wolman’s name or that position, so I said that he should forward me to the store’s general manager, who I figured ought to know his own assistant. Guess what? On hold again, no one ever returned.

How is it that Saks harbors such completely uncaring people? Why is the service so slow and inefficient? Does any Saks executive EVER shop his or her own store or department? If they do in men’s wear, I’m hoping they take provisions and extra batteries. And I’m betting their families don’t try to reach them through the switchboard.

So, Mr. Wolman, if you’re out there and still reading my blog, I tried, I really did. Give me another call, I’m happy to talk and relay my being almost completely ignored by a dozen sales people. And now two operators. But, if you’re a new guy, maybe you can cap this well.

My latest dumb-ass, stupid management candidates:

Saks Fifth Avenue, where the store manager and CEO of the parent have refused to even acknowledge a letter pointing out that on a men’s floor filled with high-priced items and barren of customers, the sales help sat around talking to each other and studiously not making eye contact while I tried to actually buy clothing. Only one salesman offered to help, and another advised him NOT to try finding something in my size in another store (which he did, on the computer, and shipped it to me).

Delta Airlines, where the CEO has ignored my note to him that his operation couldn’t manage to change my Chicago/Boston leg to Chicago/Providence, demanded I buy another first class ticket, then charged me for it twice claiming Amex didn’t do it correctly (they had), and then refused to refund the Chicago/Boston leg that was cancelled! (There are full fare, refundable tickets.) Amex voided the overcharge, but Delta has gone mute.

Yeah, I know the CEOs aren’t going to answer their own mail because they’re so busy running these two notoriously efficient operations, but at least they could get some good people around them to do it for them. Of course, good people are only attracted by good people.

Shopping hint: Simply take clothing off the men’s floor in Saks in New York and see if anyone stops their conversation long enough to intercept you. If they don’t want to talk to you, maybe it’s free.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

An eight-year-old, self-assuming kid named David Morales designed a baseball cap to display patriotism as a school project, and included a couple of toy soldiers—maybe three inches long—holding tiny toy guns.

The “educators” of the Tiogue School in Coventry, Rhode Island, sent him home for violating the school district’s zero-tolerance policy for weapons!

I am not making this up. You can’t make up this kind of dumb-ass, stupid management.

Teachers have a propensity today to call themselves “educators,” but they’ll tarnish that word in the same manner they’ve tarnished “teacher” because they are increasingly bereft of judgment. Pulling a girl’s pigtails is not nice, but neither is it sexual harassment, as it’s been cited by several school authorities around the country. A toy soldier’s gun is neither a weapon nor a violation of a policy about weapons, unless you have a lot of time on your hands and a perverse nature.

Teaching is demanding work. It always has been. Lately, there is a trend to blame poverty, the parents, the kids, lack of resources, and global warming for poor performance in classrooms and on tests. Maybe if the teachers and the unions started to reward excellence and judgment, and not just staying on one’s feet for a long time, we’d get somewhere.

Oh, yeah: In another story from yesterday, a teacher at Providence Country Day School—another “educator”—is facing charges for allowing a group of minors from his school to use his back yard at two in the morning to drink beer and vodka. He was asleep inside while his son was hosting the party that became so loud that neighbors called police.

Whether your tax dollars in the public schools, or your tuition in the private schools, don’t you begin to wonder who’s responsible for teaching the educators?

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

I received one of those hateful automated calls today from Discover Cards, advising me of possible fraud in those mechanical tones that are so irritating and depersonalizing, and demanding that we call as soon as possible. I didn’t know we had a Discover Card, so I called my wife who was out shopping, and found that she had just purchased something for $99, and hadn’t used the Discover Card for ages before that. (She pulled it out by accident. Everyone sends us credit cards.)

So Discover is spending I’d guess over a thousand dollars, once we call and put up with the bureaucratic nonsense, to assure themselves that we really spent $99 because some computer program assembled a profile saying this was suspicious.

Meanwhile, my Bentley dealer sent back my wife’s car, which was serviced and needed a couple of tires, costing about $3,000. They picked up mine while they were here and took it back for its servicing. I tossed the driver my keys from the balcony, where I was drinking an ’04 Paolo Scavino Barolo, reading a couple of books, and smoking a Cohiba. Nothing was signed, I have no bill, and Bentley will settle up with me later. I trust them. They trust me.

I remember once storming at Amex from London that, with my history of world travel, if they grew suspicious with UK transactions and caused me to interrupt my trip because of their paranoia, I could easily switch to MasterCard. They said they’d make a note and haven’t called since. That was ten years ago.

Dumb-Ass Stupid Management is rampant. That’s why good consultants are needed. Common sense is endangered in many operations, threatened by fear, avoidance of even minimal risk, surrender to computers, and DASM. But the economy is recovering nicely and competition abounds. I can live without Discover. But they can’t live with this kind of idiotic customer interaction.

By the way, see my Saks experience elsewhere here. No response yet. I’ve written to the CEO, regular mail. Let’s see if he’s on the ball.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

My posting about incredibly lousy service (with a glowing exception) at Saks in New York has been up for several days, and a copy was sent to the store manager’s personal email. No one from the store has responded.

That’s why the sales help is so poor, because management is so poor. We have an account at Saks, we spent several thousand dollars on that one visit, and no one cares about the service at senior level. The consulting lesson: Leadership is everything.

Of course, too many times leadership is nothing. The sales guys are just emulating what they see.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.