My wife and I have a YMCA membership that allows visits to locations around Houston. This works well for us because she works downtown where she uses the Downtown Branch for their pool, and I go to the Northwest Cypress Creek Branch where there are large weight and cardio rooms for my workouts. This location is rated by word of mouth as being Houston’s best. When we travel, we look for Y’s that will allow a workout and swim before work hours. As longtime members, we appreciate the YMCA organization, its goals and mission, performed in the U.S. for over 100 years.
When we visited our daughter in Tampa, I looked online ahead of our trip to see what attendance would cost at a Y near her home. Many Y’s have reciprocal agreements that allow a discount for out-of-town members to use their facilities. The Tampa Y’s suburban location grants 10 visits free, then charges $5 per visit. I arrived a early to see what I would need to do to obtain a guest pass for 5 day’s use.
I was advised by phone that I would need my proof of local membership and a photo ID, which I presented to the staffer at the Tampa location. She made copies of my identification, and asked me to fill out a single sheet form with my identification, local address, local phone, cell phone, name and location of my hometown Y. She then took that form from me and entered all the information into their system. She then gave me a printed business card- sized orange paper ticket with “Three Day Pass’ printed on both sides, saying this would suffice for my 5-day stay. I had told her I would like to attend for 5 days that week, and she assured me that after 3 days I could get another orange card.
The front of the card displayed my hand printed name, the registering staffer’s initials, the hand lettered branch two-character ID code, and the handwritten issue date. The back stated that the pass was good at any Tampa Metropolitan Area YMCA…for 3 days only. The ticket had 3 check boxes for initials to be entered each day when I arrived. Then she directed my attention to the reception desk just feet away and told me how to check in each morning, and that if I wished I could exchange a picture ID for a clothing locker key at that time.
Thanking her, I proceeded 6 feet to reception where a staffer accepted my orange ticket and asked if I was in their system. I expected that my registration would allow me to proceed once the orange ticket was initialed. In spite of the proximity, because of a steady stream of people entering and checking in at this desk, this worker had no idea I had just stood 6 feet away and registered.
The first woman at back at the Registration Desk was assisting another registration, but was aware of my attempt to clear the next hurdle. She called out to her co-worker that she had just put me into the system. Noticing my attendant did not hear her, I repeated the message, but her attention was now riveted to her monitor as she began to insist that my record was not available in the system. Tag, you’re it, you have a problem, very sorry for your problem.
The first lady and I smiled at each other as we tried again to snatch her attention away from her electronic gatekeeper over the hubbub of members arriving that morning. This miniature transactional event was indeed resolved and of itself was not much an annoyance as compared to what 3 people thought of the process behind it. The first worker was annoyed at the second, the second annoyed at being made look foolish, and I was annoyed at a process and training that made us all feel like embarrassed children.
I have seen this effect before, and it strikes me that it’s mainly the result of training that emphasizes an authority of a system over the authority granted to staff. But process woes abound if you are not in the system, you (the customer, our main source of revenue, paycheck and future earnings) are out of luck, and we are hopelessly out of control.
Training that empowers staff with authority and knowledge to control a digital system, using it as a tool of their work, the procedures are not prohibitive, but part of a support process that can be repaired and corrected to better serve both customers and staff to their benefit. Process woes kick in with debilitating subliminal barriers: ” the system’ is an ongoing problem, and we don’t have much success with these kinds of problems because it’s complicated software that only some off-site tech can solve, and God knows how long that would take. It’s therefore out of our control, your problem and not ours”. This thinking must be counteracted regardless of any staffer’s familiarity with technology.
The YMCA is not a large, profit-driven organization, but it is remarkably customer-driven. If it lacks funds for technology with a better user interface, correction and modification capabilities, this is understandable. But no organization, well funded or not, can long hope to function by placing its staff in a pitiable position of ignorance, lack of control, and devising necessary, but time consuming work-arounds that annoy the customer and system users.
Human nature, through frustration, will be to quickly jump from handy work-around to ad hoc, off-stream manual processes that relegate expensive system tools to the work of filing cabinets and typewriting tasks. If this Y location were tech heavy or not, the staff would reduce all registration and log in processes to paper-based tasks, knowing that each entry is someone else’s problem, and the initial concern is to create entry logs.
If the first woman had asked for the photo id and proof of local Y membership I had been instructed to produce, used it as her input source ( or scanned it into the system- which in effect she did – but manually- when she copied it for a file) all the information, except for a local address and phone number, and the number of days of my intended stay would be a verbal request to be entered via keyboard. She could have then printed the orange ticket (at the paper-saving size) that had a bar code on the back that I would scan daily until the system recognized the limit of my stay. This imaginary system would have a photo to flash on screen if my identity were visually necessary for entry.
I’m biased by the system my home ‘Y” uses, which actually does all I mentioned above. I realize it is better-funded that the Tampa Y. But what if Tampa wanted to keep costs down and do it all manually, retaining the gate keeper function it desired?
I enter with the required documents, hand them to a worker who completes a paper form using my information and questions to complete it. She is located about 15 feet away from the ‘gatekeeper’ who is busy checking in members. She places her completed form and my ID elements together on the copier. She makes two copies and passes one to the ‘gatekeeper’ who checks entering members, and files her copy under ‘GUESTS’ in a vertical file for that day.
The gatekeeper, checking my photo ID against the name on the form, initials a box on the back of her copy in a printed calendar matrix representing the day of my arrival and waves me on. She puts that copy in a vertical file that she has easy access to, but into tomorrow’s date slot. At the end of the day she alphabetizes by last name for tomorrow’s stream o members. When I arrive tomorrow I go directly to her and give her my picture ID. After a few seconds (what 10, 15 ?) he retrieves my copy, initials the proper date and files it in the next day’s slot and returns my photo ID.
The process papers are collected weekly and compiled in ink in a bound log and put on a shelf for future reference. This is how pre-digital systems actually worked in an earlier, less sophisticated era. Should mistakes be made or realized, they could be erased and re-entered, because all the staff used pencils and only the compilation log was done in pen.
Simple? Realistically so. Fast? Not according to how we would expect to be treated today at a gatekeeper area. But it could be ‘fast enough’ with trained staff manipulating paper, and perhaps faster that retrieving a misplaced data file in a query system of multiple qualifying steps. Storable? Yes, but soon the paper heap would be formidable. Cheap? There are always ways to make cheaper information tools from existing, proven elements like pencils and paper. Desirable? Probably not anymore desirable than forced public transportation at this point, but it can be done without a false productivity facade of effectiveness that a confusingly designed digital system, combined with faulty training provides many organizations today.
