By ROBERT JUMPER
Tutiyi (Snowbird) and Clyde, N.C.
I have been in the workforce since 1976, so for about half a century. My first job was working as a cook/cleaner at a Hardee’s restaurant. Back in the day, if you were too young to cook on the grill, you got all the less glamorous jobs like mopping floors and cleaning bathrooms. I was also charged with backline prep, which meant slicing tomatoes, onions, lettuce, and pickles. And yes, I washed my hands after cleaning the bathroom before handling the tomatoes. The serving line had to be stocked with those items, along with filling the ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and napkin dispensers. Oh, and I must not forget the “special” sauce (basically thickened Thousand Island dressing). It was a proud day when I was considered responsible enough to do bun warming and prep. Hardee’s had a toaster with a conveyor belt in it. I would butter the buns and lay them on the conveyor belt. Buttering consisted of basting the bread with melted butter before running it through the toaster. After that, it was a squirt of sauces, adding the veggies, and passing it to the older, more privileged meat cook for that last layer of charcoal-broiled goodness. It was a banner day when I leveled up to meat cooker. Nothing makes you feel like a man like cooking burgers. I guess that is why I find so many men at Lowe’s every spring upgrading their grills to the latest and greatest.
During my stint with Hardee’s, I believe my pay was between three and four bucks an hour. If I still worked at that rate of pay, I would have to work two hours for my favorite drink at Starbucks. It is the caramel crunch Frappuccino, by the way. My birthday is just around the corner, and you never know who might be reading this, wondering what to get me. But I digress.
If you are like me, you will never forget that first work experience. Not working for Mom and Dad on the farm because you are part of the family, type of work. The kind where you work for someone, you have standards to meet and get that paycheck, and all your taxes are drawn out of it. A place where there is code and policy. A place where your character and ethics are put to the test. It is a part of the transition to adulthood.
A decade later, after more growing and more schooling, I started getting jobs that required me to manage others. Until I graduated from college, I had taken what are typically called “front-line jobs”. A front-line employee is one who makes first contact with customers and clients. They are typically the minimum wage or least financially compensated in an organization, even by today’s standards. When you think about it, it really doesn’t make sense that the most impactful interaction between a company and its clients is usually that first interaction with the front-line workers of a company, who seemingly have the least to gain from the interaction.
A few years ago, I wrote a piece on the decline of customer service over the decades. I explained how customer service standards had deteriorated over the past couple of generations. I attributed much of the decline to the lack of focus by organizations on customer service training and the entitlement that is increasingly being taught by our society. We have gone from a society of people who want to work to a society of people who think any employer should be grateful that they would consider working. And I mentioned in the commentary that the “customer is always right” mentality was either dead or buried deep in modern work culture. Some readers had a visceral reaction to that piece and let me know about it.
“You don’t see how customers treat us.”
“They don’t pay me enough to take crap from a customer,” and “if they want me to be nice, they need to pay me more.”
Long gone is the understanding that we have jobs because of those clients, even the difficult ones. The only need for a workforce is that there are people out there to work for. Yes, they should appreciate the service or products that we provide. Yes, they should not treat us like underlings or subordinates because we are on the front line of a company. But ultimately, we need them more than we need us. Just as an example, there are not as many people hurrying on down to my former employer, Hardee’s (You know, “where the burgers are charcoal broiled”), because the fast-food industry is saturated with restaurants like my old bosses at Hardee’s. Both franchise and locally owned and operated, it isn’t difficult to find a burger like or better than a Famous Star burger.
For many customers, the make-or-break thing for them is how they are treated by the front-line worker. When I walk into my favorite local coffee shop for my morning coffee, I get flashbacks to watching episodes of Cheers. As soon as I hit the door, I am greeted with “What’s shakin’, Rob?” or “Good morning, Rob!” with a wink and a smile, and a genuine tone of welcome in their voices. I have been going there for years. Yes, the coffee is made with care, and it is good (to the last drop). But even if the coffee quality took a nosedive, I would have a difficult time moving to a different shop, because of the way I am treated there. The front line knows the importance of that interaction; the owner of the shop makes sure of it. His staff is treated with respect and value, and so his clients benefit from the same respect and value from the front-line workers.
Just a side note: No front-line employee should ever be subjected to derogatory or demeaning behavior from a client. That is one of the reasons it is so important to do customer service training. A worker needs to know how to respond to irate and abusive clients, and when to engage management in the situation. The front line should never be tasked with dealing with abusive behavior, and management should always provide the support needed when it occurs.
For a brief stretch, the government and business community on the Qualla Boundary understood and tried to help educate their workforces, having customer service training be a basic training with every hire. I know some still goes on. I can’t imagine our adult gaming facilities neglecting such a vital element in their success or failure. But we need more. And it needs to be a priority for every entrepreneur and entrepreneurial training sponsored on the Boundary. Whether you are talking about governmental entities or independently owned companies, we are a tourism economy. And we are limited in what we have (or want) to sell. In many cases, tourism organizations and businesses outside the Qualla Boundary are better at leveraging our tourism assets than we are.
Societal change is like changing the course of a big ship. Turning takes a lot of time and a lot of room. I just took a quick look at the most recent edition of the One Feather. The tribe is advertising 24 governmental vacancies, 40 vacancies at Cherokee Indian Hospital, 17 vacancies at Cherokee Boys Club, 32 vacancies at Cherokee Central Schools, 92 vacancies at Harrah’s Cherokee, and 47 vacancies at Harrah’s Murphy. Mandara Spa has 4 vacancies, and Qualla LLC is advertising 4 jobs with multiple positions in some. And not all the companies that are hiring on the Boundary promote in the One Feather, so there are more in the hotel, restaurant, and other product sales companies that we just don’t have numbers for.
With each vacancy, we may assume that some service and product availability suffers. If there is enough demand to warrant a position, a vacant position means demand is not being met, or it is being met at the expense of overworking established employees or reducing the quality of customer service. Either way, it is not good business practice and definitely not going to attract and sustain customers.
There are no easy answers. Honest pay for a worker goes beyond the paycheck and benefits. It is being valued, respected, and motivated in a team that cares about the employee and the success of the work effort. And it takes leaders who balance the desire to fill positions with qualified enrolled members with the need to provide services to qualified enrolled members. The longer positions are held open and vacant, the longer tribal members are not getting the levels of service they deserve. It isn’t all about hiring. It is largely about providing services.
When you get right down to it, it is pretty simple and seemingly hard to get to. Provide an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work. Now I am craving a Famous Star burger and vanilla shake. And, yes, I want fries and a smile with that.
