Not Going To Pay Overtime

My faithful readers know that I was in San Francisco this past week. I attended a software conference and as usual, I learned more about human nature and people than software development. I am a people watcher. As a manager you need to be a people watcher. There seemed to be an underlying issue for me at the conference - customer service.

Roughly 15,000 software geeks descended upon the conference center, including moi. There is a phenomenon in the software industry that has been seemingly immutable over time. The ratio between men and women software developers is not balanced. I would venture to say that 90% of the attendees at this conference were men. There was a bash the last full evening of the conference and an “all-girl” band was brought in as part of the entertainment. This group was billed as an “ACDC tribute band.” Hmmm… Needless to say, it is not easy controlling a large crowd of testosteronic software developers. The conference center really did a great job of crowd control. Moving thousands of people throughout the complex was no trivial task. They had an army of people stationed at every turn to keep us moving in the right direction. They were all very friendly and courteous - well most of the time.

The men and women who had the formidable task of ensuring the 15,000 attendees could get to lunch everyday were well trained. They had it down to a science. However, science and customer service do not always mix very well. Lunch was served from 11:00 until 1:00. There were technical sessions going on during this time as well. That kept them from being hit with the full force of hungry men (and a few women).

Around 12:55 on Tuesday, I got a call on my cell phone from one of the developers in our group. He told me that I better head towards the lunch hall. “They are giving ‘last call’ for lunch” he said. “I got into the hall, but they are starting to yell at people and telling them that lunch is over.”

I was hungry. I immediately ran towards the lunch hall and saw my colleague standing there. “They are not letting anyone in.” he said. I looked at the time and saw that it was indeed 1:01. As we started to move towards the door that led to the huge lunch hall, we were accosted by one of the members of the crowd police. “Lunch is over” she said abruptly. There was no expression on her face. The guy beside me pleaded with her “It is only one minute after 1:00.” I smiled.

“Sorry lunch is over, we are closed” she snapped.

Lunch was over and so was their shift. Ahhh. I figured out why things became so militant. There was not going to be one cent of overtime paid and they knew it. When the clock struck one, they shed their cordial hospitality and replaced it with cold and even somewhat nasty behavior. They started to yell at those they were serving so pleasantly and professionally just seconds before.

I certainly understood that they had to stop lunch at the designated time. There were too many of us to bend the rules. Management was well trained at getting the lunch staff off of the clock before overtime would kick in. The problem I had with the experience was that there was no transitional time figured into the equation. Within seconds there was not even the appearance of genuine customer service. The end result - the final perception of their service was not favorable. Actually I was quite annoyed.

I have a great appreciation for controlling costs. I also think managing perception is critical to your ability to be successful at anything in life. It almost appeared as if these people were trained to turn on the crowd like a nasty dog when their “time” was up.

I shook my head as I watched and then turned towards the exit of the conference center. The two of us headed down the road to Mel’s Diner and had an excellent lunch. We were both glad that we missed “last call.”