The Future of the Work Ethic in America

There has been much speculation on the causes of the US economy’s reluctance to return to healthy growth: a commercial life which once seemed to hold the secret of eternal expansion now seems to have lost the ability to recover.

My most recent visit inclines me to make an entirely anecdotal and inexpert contribution to this debate. When I was growing up in America – and working my way through university in jobs that involved serving the public – there was a sacred principle of employed life in the US: the customer may not always be right but he is always to be treated as if his needs and desires were paramount. The efficiency, courtesy and helpfulness provided by retail businesses was one of the great hallmarks of American life (and one that made a huge impression on European customers who were accustomed to being treated like grateful supplicants by those who deigned to provide them with any service at all). Over the years of return visits to the US I have noticed a really alarming decline in standards of behaviour and competence: attitudes which would have meant at least a serious warning if not instant sacking a generation ago now seem to go unmonitored and unreformed as a matter of course.

Shopping in New York a week ago, an American friend and I despaired of the uncooperative, unprofessional behaviour of staff in major stores. “It’s like being under water”, observed my friend, commenting on what seemed to be the deliberate slowness of people whose sullen manner reminded me of what it used to be like shopping in London thirty years ago. (When I first arrived here I thought that the dumb insolence of people in shops was directed personally at me as an American. It was a while before I realised that British customers were treated in exactly the same way.)

I do not know what accounts for this change but there are some fairly obvious candidates: politically correct employment policies which demand the hiring of less capable people, anti-employer attitudes encouraged by a school system heavily influenced by Left-liberal ideology, or just the waning of that work ethic which was once so deeply embedded in the American immigrant consciousness.

But whatever the cause, it is sad – and not just for the consumer. Having worked in such jobs myself, I know that the only satisfaction to be had from them comes from carrying them out well. Being forced to maintain standards of performance is not a form of oppression: it is a way of encouraging people to see the worth of what they are doing for a living.
Tags: customer service, New York, US economy