Memo
This week's writing comes to you from Salt Lake City, Utah. First time here. Interesting place.
Weekly Three
HEAR: Like the rest of the world, I’ve been really enjoying Spanish artist Olivia Rodrigo. Here’s “deja vu” from her first album Sour (2021).
READ: Sadly I didn’t read very much this week. I did skim this “How to Be Happy” guide from the NYT, though. I liked the Home section, especially the part dedicated to the bedroom, which recommends you “remove the television.”
VIEW: The PBS series Eons focuses on the history of life on Earth in short informational videos. I love it, and I especially loved this one on “How Chilis Got Spicy (and Why We Love the Burn)”.
No. 43: Memo
I work remotely for a company based in Utah. They invited me and some other remote employees to visit their headquarters this week. I’m writing you from an office building in Salt Lake City, Utah, or what I’ve come to call land of parking lots and drive-throughs. It’s day five, and I’m ready to go home.
It’s been over a year since I worked in an office. I don’t miss it. The abrupt contrast from remote life to office life has given me the opportunity to closely examine the difference. Conclusion? It sucks.
Still the mountains in the distance are beautiful. Park City, Utah (haven’t had a chance to visit on this trip, but I’ve driven through before) is a nice place full of mountain biking trails and ski-runs and rock faces to climb. It’s been great meeting the people I work with in person, and there's a unique beauty here as there's beauty anywhere, even though the long hours spent at the office have prevented me from going out to find and experience it.
I can see why some people like it here. It’s quaint and calm. They're surrounded by like-minded individuals. The homeless and other vagabond-types have been driven out. Every American comfort can be found close by.
I guess that’s the other part of it. American comforts make me uncomfortable.
Trips like these refresh my love for the things I prefer, like when you try something new and confirm you like the old thing better. I’m grateful for my beautiful state. For my remote job. For the city of Oakland. For my girlfriend. For my dog. For my small apartment.
Below is something — I’m not sure what to call it — I wrote this morning for this newsletter. Enjoy (or don’t).
Have a great weekend.
Love,
Matt
* * *
Ferguson’s Memo
Dear Executive Staff,
Turnover is increasing, employee satisfaction has reached record lows, and productivity is plummeting. There’s no good way to put it. The future of our company is bleak. If nothing is done, and soon, we will be shipwrecked upon the unforgiving shores of enterprise bankruptcy by Q3. This is a fate we cannot accept, at least not without taking one final, earnest shot at solving this seemingly unsolvable human resource problem. This memo concerns that shot.
But first I want to call attention to the valiant efforts we’ve made thus far to steer this ship towards calmer waters. Comfy chairs with little levers that give employees the freedom to adjust their sitting height. Coffee beans hand-picked by the wrinkled hands of elder locals in the Yopal region of Columbia. New work hours from nine to five instead of eight to four. The commencement of an Employee of the Week system with an accompanying corkboard in the break room featuring a headshot of the honored employee and a one-sentence fun fact. All of these measures we’ve implemented with the expectation of an upturn in employee retention and productivity. As of today, no upturn has been observed.
Actually, matters have gotten worse. One ex-employee, Alina Strauss from Packaging Design, said in her exit interview that the comfy height-adjustable chairs actually made focusing harder due to the piercing hissing sound they make when moved up or down. I think I speak for all of us when I say: We miss you, Alina, you were the most beautiful we had. (Which reminds me, Michael, what’s the deal with the new Packaging Designer? He looks about eighteen and reeks of beer and pot. Let’s chat about this over dinner tonight.)
We also found that the Employee of the Week system incited fearsome jealousy and rage amongst employees who weren’t selected. Sly forms of retaliation follow soon after each week’s pick, such as when Gerald Patterson drew a penis and balls on the photo of Employee of Week #3 Monique Bull. Patterson spared no details (veins, pubic hair, muscle shading). In fact, the drawing was intrinsically quite good. Perhaps we should consider him for the Packaging Design role.
But all of this is behind us now. We must look forward while drawing from the lessons of the past. As they say, experience is the best teacher. With this in mind, and after many long nights of in-depth analyses in my home office, I’m fairly confident I’ve devised a winning tactic to save the company we’ve worked so long and hard to build.
No, it isn’t paying our employees more, as Stevenson comically suggested during our last standup. Good guy, Stevenson, but disturbingly spacey sometimes. We pay our employees competitive rates according to market standards. If any employee comes to you with a complaint regarding compensation, tell them that last sentence. Word for word.
But anyway, the winning tactic I mentioned? The silver bullet? Our long sought-after anodyne? It’s much simpler than any of us might have thought.
Snacks.
You’re probably thinking, “Snacks? How in the world can snacks be the answer to our corporate woes?”
Hear me out, gentlemen.
With an eclectic arrangement of snacks such as bananas, trail mix, cookies, yogurt, frozen pizzas, granola bars, cereal, cheese sticks, candy, fruit chews, etc., our employees will finally see that we care about them. This, in turn, will motivate them to spend longer hours in the office and work harder at their tasks. Complimentary snacks are a good-faith gesture and a gentle signal of encouragement from us, the "higher-ups."
Plus, they’re fun.
Have a meeting to get to? Grab a snack beforehand. Hell, bring one to the conference room. Feeling down? Have a snack. Forgot to eat breakfast? We have snacks. Need a quick pick-me-up? Take a jaunt to the snack bar and peruse the snacks.
Snacks will boost satisfaction, retention, sense of job security, and most importantly, productivity. A full snack bar will seem a luxury and a major investment to our employees, but the reality is it’s no investment at all. We can buy a huge variety of snacks wholesale at Costco for the negligible cost of $100/week — virtually nothing measured against the value of making our people feel loved and appreciated.
Not only is the implementation of snacks cost effective, they will keep our employees from getting hungry on the job and leaving the office for nourishment, which has historically been a huge draw on daily productivity.
No more of these group “Mickey Dees runs” that the Sales team is so fond of. No more employees heading home early due to needing to get home for dinner. And, I pray, no more faintings. In general the faintings are just a bad look, but our health insurance company is threatening to raise our rates. Remember when Torres smacked his head on the corner of the coffee table? God, that was ugly.
Snacks give our employees the ability to eat and work, rather than eat then work, increasing productivity, I predict, sevenfold per year. Not to mention, I think we can all agree that when we’re bored, we eat. Snacks solve this peculiarity of human nature. I’m the first to admit that our mission to unify healthcare payments across the revenue cycle, while important, isn’t the most exhilarating, especially when you’re making far less than six figures with a subpar health insurance plan. Now instead of bored employees venturing out of the office in an aimless search for something to eat, they can graze the in-office snack bar before eventually making their way back to their desks and getting back to their tasks.
This just occurred to me. Let’s stop calling them “employees” in favor of the much more inclusive “team members.” Effective immediately.
Our team members are the lifeblood of this company. The least we can do is give them access to unlimited snacks. I look forward to discussing this proposal further with all of you in our Wednesday meeting. If the snack initiative is a success, we might consider similar office-enhancing initiatives such as bringing in some pingpong tables. Maybe a dart board or two.
What all of us need to do is come to realize that instead of making the process of working more comfortable, we must disguise the fact that our team members are working in the first place. We can do this by making the experience of sitting in an office for eight hours a day seem a natural and desirable way for team members to spend their time. (On this thread, does anyone know who we can we talk to about introducing some accent walls to the office? I’m thinking some bright greens or oranges?)
Thanks all of you for the hard work you do day in and day out. Remember: One final, earnest shot. Let’s save this sinking ship, and let’s do it with snacks.
Sincerely,
Jim Ferguson
CEO
SolutionSea, Inc. ♦
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