Banks and Service - an Oxymoron??

In perusing the CBC and the Globe and Mail online sites I noted that two Canadian banks (Toronto-Dominion and CIBC) are laying of hundreds of Canadian employees. Why? Because the banks need to reduce costs. Not because they are losing money but rather because they are not making enough. Apparently their record profit this year (and in at least the five years previously) is not large enough. As I am sure I have mentioned before, the concept of a record year implies that it has been an exceptional year; that profits have been well beyond expectation. It should not ever be assumed that a company can have a record year every year. Or at least we never use to assume that. Now stockholders demand that profits rise every year and if they don't, then senior management is at fault. Those managers are then are fired/resign with a huge termination bonus, or hundreds of employees are fired with usually very limited termination payouts. It would seem that the large stockholders want to invest money in a risk free environment or rather that if there are risks that they are born by other people.

I suspect that if some people within the banking system had their way, one would never see a real body. It is their clear preference that people should do all of their banking on-line or at an ATM machine. I am sure that they would prefer to not have to pay tellers to assist people in managing their money. If everyone did their banking without talking to a bank employee, the bank would make the same amount of money on the transaction but would not have to pay anyone's salary. Good deal for the bank.

Of course banks are not the only "service" corporations who want us to serve ourselves without reducing our cost. There was a time when someone - usually a young kid, filled our gas tanks. It was a service that gas stations provided to their customers. As the gas was being pumped, oil could be checked and the windows washed. There might even be a conversation. Then gas stations started to offer a choice. One could pump your own gas and save money or have someone do it for  you at the regular price. Now not only does one have to fill your own gas tank (except I think in Saskatchewan) but you can save time and use your bank card to pay at the pump. Any bets on how long before there are gas stations with no attendants? Again - the company makes the same profit without having to pay employees.

Home Depot and Loblaw are two other companies that regularly encourage people to use their self checkout lines. Of course governments love the concept of self-serve. They would much rather have people on hold on the telephone than standing in line where they can see them.

I understand the convenience of not having to talk to anyone, of not having to wait in line while other people waste the clerk's time by having meaningless two sentence conversations about the weather. I know that people have busy lives and if one does not have to get to the bank during business hours, or to walk to the gas station clerk's little hut to pay the bill, life is so much easier. But every time we decide to use a "person-free" kiosk, every time we decide to interact with a machine rather than a person, there is a cost. That cost is very real to those entry level clerks who need those jobs but who are deemed to be a threat to the profit line of large, multi-national companies. Every time we use a self checkout line not only do we take away a little bit of an employee's job, but we provide justification for those large companies to continue decreasing service while maximizing profits. Every time we chose not to interact with a person - we provide confirmation to that company that we value convenience over service.

I regularly refuse to use self service. I like interacting with people - I think the act of providing a good service is an art that should be encouraged and not reduced to an irrelevant line on an accountant's spreadsheet.

Election...... Finally!

I know that I am not the only Canadian who is slightly bleary eyed this morning. I, like many others, stayed up until 1:00 AM so that I could watch both the winning and the losing leaders make their speeches to either congratulate themselves and their workers or to commiserate with them. I was glad I did.

I was surprised at both Mulcair's and Harper's speeches. While they did congratulate Trudeau and the Liberal party, I found both of the losing leaders' comments to be a touch arrogant and at time a bit disingenuous.  They lost. They lost badly. Although I think it could be argued that the NDP lost more than the Conservatives, neither party lived up to their own dreams or definition of success. They should have said so. Both Harper and Mulcair needed to admit, in public, that they had misread the will of the people, that they had made significant mistakes. While I appreciate that looking depressed, sad or even angry because you lost may not be politically correct, it would at least show the voters that you are human and that you are capable of accepting responsibility. The parties would be stronger for such acknowledgements, no matter how unpalatable it would be for the leader to say. Even Harper's comment about being responsible for the loss came across as some arrogant claim to fame, or some pro forma comment a losing leader is suppose to say. As well, Harper, who by the time he made his speech to the Canadian public, had already resigned as the leader of the Conservative Party, lacked the - whatever the right word is - perhaps courage or dignity or honesty - to say so to the people in that hotel room in Calgary and to the Canadians who were watching across the country.

Trudeau's speech was long. I don't find him a particularly exciting speaker in terms of delivery (although the fact that his voice was clearly worn out may have detracted from his natural style) but there is no doubt that the content was crafted to excite, to stimulate and to create a sense of hope that politics can be and will be different from now on. Most unusually when he thanked the people who helped him get to where he was, he mentioned the names of his two top advisors. He also gave the credit for his rather stunning victory ( and come back from being a party many had written off) to the people who voted for him. A nice touch.  While it is perhaps easier to be humble when one is victorious, it was a pleasant change from the arrogant responses of the two losing politicians who could only brag about what they had accomplished, or what they would do in the distant future. I think he believes what he says, I think he believes that he can do what he says- perhaps not so much in  terms of the hundreds of policy decisions and bills that should be reversed but at least in the tone he wants to set. Time will tell if he can deliver on those promises.

After an election of this magnitude the amateur political junkies and pundits will spend energy asking the "what if" questions. My favourites in that fantasy category are: what would have happened if Harper had not raised the niqab issue; if he had not tried to turn Quebecers away from the NDP; if he had not weakened that party so that the polls started to suggest a shift. If Harper had let the Liberals and NDP fight it out, the vote might have remained more split between the NDP and the Liberals and Harper would have won once again by going up the middle.

And secondly, what would have happened if Mulcair had not assumed that he had a better shot of winning than normal, if he had not played it safe, if he had shown off that fiery debated style, the passion he is capable of. What would have happened if he had if stayed true to the Socialist roots of the party as opposed to veering somewhere off to the right of the political spectrum?

We will never know.

Election #2

Tomorrow, October 19,  is the Canadian federal election. I, like so many Canadians, am more than a little bit tired of all of the commercials either bragging about the various parties' platforms or far too often tearing down someone else's capacity to lead. I am looking forward with great anticipation to being able watch the three national channels analysis of who is winning where. Because I no longer work - I can stay up as late as I want to so that I can absorb every nuance of the coverage. A political junkie's dream!

Unless all of the polls are wrong, it appears to be fairly obvious that Harper and the Conservatives will not do as well as they did last time. While there seems to still be a possibility that that they will get the most seats, it is equally as clear that the two other mainstream parties will refuse to support the Conservatives when Parliament first sits. Knowing Mr. Harper, I think it is more than likely that if the Conservatives win the most seats - he will not re-call parliament for some time in the hopes that the other two parties lose energy and focus in their determination unseat him. In other words, like other times he will run and hide rather than face the consequences of his action.

When the election was first called, it appeared as if the NDP had a reasonable chance of at least becoming the minority government. Mulcair had performed well in the House as the leader of the opposition. He spoke well, with passion and a sense that he knew what was needed to get Canada back on track. However in his desire to become more mainstream and therefore potentially more attractive to more Canadians, the NDP may have lost connection to their roots and their core group of supporters. Mulcair frequently makes the connection between Tommy Douglas (a former leader of the NDP and the acknowledged "father of Medicare"). He should quite frankly be ashamed to do so. The values and policies that shape the current NDP platform have far more in common with Conservative leader Diefenbaker than with Tommy Douglas. In fact one could suggest with some justification that the policies of Conservative leaders Joe Clark or Stanfield (both from the 70's) were far more left of center than those of Mulcair.

The NDP need to "win" in Quebec. In a particularly dastardly (there is no better word for it) political move, Harper raised the issues of the niqab and whether or not we should be concerned that two women, two out of the thousands and thousands of women who have wanted to become Canadian citizens, wanted, because of their religious faith, to have their faces covered during the actual ceremony. Harper raised this concern in Quebec which already had been struggling with this issue. Harper probably did enough damage to the NDP's aspirations in Quebec that the election was lost for the NDP. What should have happened was that other Canadians who are less afraid of their culture being destroyed by another culture needed to stand up and cheer that our politicians were defending our right to be different. That did not happen. The polls reported a slide in popularity for the NDP - particularly in Quebec.

The reality appears to be that if the pundits seem to think that there is a possibility that a party is sliding in the polls, that enough people start to believe that the pundits are right and the slide becomes the truth. We all want to be on the side of the winner.

On the other hand Trudeau and his fellow liberals were almost completely written off four years ago. They became the third party in Parliament and were seen at best, as being ineffective. They, within a ten year period, went through a couple of leaders fairly quickly, each easily succumbing to the Conservatives smear tactics. There was little reason to believe that the young son of a former prime minister, while he might be charming, would suffer any better fate. The fact is that Trudeau didn't get overwhelmed by the negative commercials; he did create a platform that seems to have been developed with some logic and consistency and he has made the promise of change seem like something that can be delivered.

Of course there is the ever present danger that Trudeau might be as politically naive as was Obama. Promising change while still immersed and dependent upon the political system that raised you up ( and the Liberals while they may have changed leaders - are still connected and supported by the same corporate interests as before) is not only fraught with dangers - it is a path almost guaranteed to lead to disappointment and frustration. We all want change - we just want someone else to pay for it. I am not sure if Trudeau knows that or not.

With many Canadians feeling as if something needs to be changed, and the Liberals being a familiar brand (no matter how poor the record may or may not be), it appears as if voting for change - even if it means voting for the devil you know, is more comfortable than voting for the un-tried. I therefore predict that the Liberals will win the most seats in tomorrow's election. It is entirely likely that they may even win a small majority.