Money for nothing - I

In my previous posts, I complained that people did not receive value for the money, time and energy they spent. Maybe I wasn’t painting the whole picture. People can only be expected to do what they have to do, and no more. So, I began thinking about what motivated companies and people to provide more value. This is the first in a series of articles that examines different scenarios:

1. Thanks for your business

Realistically, at least in the US, where I live, doctors are usually paid by the insurance company, and you or your employer has already paid the insurance company. So, now every cent spent on you at a doctor's visit is extravagant if it can be avoided. So, the hospital staff, the doctors, may all smile at you, greet you, joke with you, but all they really have to worry about is a) that you are happy enough that you don’t give them a bad rap (or worse, sue them), will keep coming to them, so they can bill your insurance b) that you are billed for as much as possible, but not too much, since the insurance company will question charges beyond a point, and c) see if they can get you to spend some more out of your pocket.

This is the case with any purchase, though. Once you have paid the money for a good, the seller has the opportunity to lower expenses spent on you. So, it is in the interest of every business to charge you as early as they can. Another example of this is that once you buy software and the support contract, the quality of support is as inexpensive and crappy as the company can get away with.

An extreme example of this that I have observed in some movie theaters back in India that in the last show of the day, they shut off the air conditioning about a half hour before the movie ends, to save costs. Usually, the whole audience is sweating profusely by the time the movie ends. I have protested this often, but to no effect. After all, I had already paid them, right? So I didnt exist .

2. Free Brainwash

But wait! There are free services of excellent quality, right? For instance, there are so many great web based portals/applications/search engines, where I don’t pay a dime, but I get all the fantastic experience for free. Not really. I have a friend who used to be very close and dear to me once. We would drop into each other’s house, hang out, have a good time. Then one day, I went to his house, and he had taken up a new job as an insurance agent. He would incessantly bug me by trying to get me to take his policy. I got so annoyed, I stopped meeting with him. I wanted to have a good time with him, not buy his policy. Coming back to the free web portal, I get bombarded with ads (some of them are supposed to be targeted and relevant to what I am doing, but that still makes no difference. My friend insisted that the insurance policy was really for me, and that it was very relevant to the things going on in my financial life, etc. Thanks, but no thanks. Targeted or not, I come to a place to do what I want to do there, and if someone doesn’t understand no – like my friend, or even have a way for me to say no – like the portal, then I don’t want to deal with them.)

3. Paid Brainwash

I have been out of touch with development technology for a while, and recently looked at getting certified on some of my rustier areas. I tried a sample test on a design related topic, and was surprised to see that several questions were, though multiple choice, geared to get me to parrot the value of the technology. For instance, there were questions like: which of the following is an advantage of ___________? A, b, c, d and e :all of the above, which was the correct answer. I did not realize how that would make me a better designer to parrot the advantages of a technology. I would much prefer to be tested on actual design problems rather than being asked to memorize the marketing spiel of the company. And the irony is that I had to pay to get ‘certified’.

4. Just milk

A traditional grocery store in India consists of a counter behind which the grocers. Customers line up in front of the counter, and ask what they need and the grocer gets and packages the item for them, often chatting about the weather or local gossip. The motivation behind this model is probably some combination of a) cheap labor in India, b) more risk of shoplifting if people are allowed to shop for themselves as in a supermarket and c) people are less in a hurry, and are willing to wait, or come back later if it is crowded. These are being replaced by malls, much like the ones in the US, but I have seen the transition over the years in India. At first there were such traditional stores, where all you saw and interacted with were the employees. Then, as corporate branding and advertisement became more prevalent, ads and glow signs drowned the grocer with their flashy colors and lights. People would stand agape at the ads, and talk to the grocer, barely looking at him. And now, these traditional grocers are being slowly but steadily replaced at least in the Indian cities by the ultimate advertising machine – the supermarket. If I need milk, I have to walk through aisles of products displaying their messages to get the one thing I came for. And now, I have the opportunity to self checkout – eliminating the need to interact with (or for the store to pay for) any employee for the entire transaction. The traditional grocer model is effectively absent in the US, except perhaps in gun stores.

Continued in part 2.