Getting uptight downtown, as a high-tech economy proves worryingly inflexible
Moving home is one of life’s most traumatic experiences, but it can also be educational – for the survivors, at least.
As philosopher Bertrand Russell noted, we put a lower value on those who merely move physical mass from one place to another than we do on those who order others to do so. In the ‘knowledge economy’, we’re told, physical labor and even most forms of clerical work are obsolescent – or at least outsourced offshore. Invest in technology!
But faxing or e-mailing household effects is not yet feasible, so when hit with the urge to migrate a dozen or so blocks north, I really couldn’t offshore the moving of books, computers and a lifetime collection of gewgaws.
In its own distinctively onshore way, New York’s moving industry closely mirrors the global economy. A decade ago, illegal Israelis and Irish squeezed New Yorkers’ sofas in and out of tiny elevators, but they’re paid better at home now, so Russians have filled this niche.
My post-Soviet movers worked like Stakhanovite heroes of labor despite persistent obstruction from functionaries. They arrived early to pick up 100 boxes of my (paper) books from storage, only to be told ‘an emergency’ had called away the warehouseman – for two hours. I worked my way up the storage company phone chain until after 30 minutes I redialed and told the first responder: ‘Tell your boss I’ll recoup what I’m paying my Russians by writing a column for the New York tabs about him.’ A speedy response and remittance of three months’ storage fees followed.
Four weeks later, however, I still awaited my telephone line, and had only recently got my internet connection up and running. And just in time, too, since my unwittingly nice neighbor, whose password-free wireless network I had cybersquatted on, seemed to have gone on vacation.
After waiting all day for a technician, I called to find out where said technician was. The company assured me there were two hours left to the working day. Two and a half hours later, I called back: ‘Ah, but you weren’t in when he came, so we’ve canceled the order. The next appointment will be in three weeks.’ I pointed out that I was on the phone to them at the very time they said I wasn’t in, so I deserved immediate service. They agreed. But no one in telephone range had the authority to right the wrong they all tacitly admitted had occurred.
I suggested to the helpline person, a persistent Jamaican who deserves rapid promotion, maybe to CEO: ‘Call a manager, tell them I’m a writer, and ask if management wants me to write about the poor valuation prospects of a high-tech/lowservice lemon of a company with all the flexibility of a Soviet commissar for pig iron production.’ My appointment followed in days, but I am still waiting for the phone connection. They canceled my order when the cable appointment ‘failed’, and no one reinstated it for a week – perhaps because the office dealing with it was in Bangalore.
The lesson of all this? Invest in a low-tech moving company that provides exemplary service rather than a technological behemoth that is so rigid that it can’t see its own underside. No matter how high-tech a company is, its people matter – and it should let them do their job.