"I was catching a 7am flight out of Newark to Tampa, Florida, for a lunch meeting in Clearwater, then heading back to Newark on a 5pm flight, getting me in around 8:10pm, and with any luck, to my apartment by 9 or so. We all have days like that, they happen from time to time."
I don't have days like that, and neither should anyone else. With modern communication systems, flying in airplanes to lunch meetings and flying back that night is such an absurd waste of resources it qualifies as obscene. The fact that an expensive steakhouse decided to pull a cheap PR stunt by delivering a free steak to the airport to some well-known Big Shot is less obviously wasteful, but still a repellent manifestation of gratuitous luxury.
People within the cocoon of the upper percentiles of wealth often have a sense of how they are perceived by others, and usually take some care to disguise their self-satisfaction. It is always educational to get a glimpse into the mental world of extreme privilege.
It's sad that this sour grapes is the highest voted comment on the story. Just to reduce the sentiment to its most absurd, should Obama stay inside the White House for his whole term? Would it ever be appropriate for him to fly to another city and only spend a day or afternoon there? If so, can we now imagine other people less exalted than the current POTUS who may also do the same? For example, I bet Al Gore makes one-day trips to cities all year long, and he's quite a champion of not wasting resources. Without knowing the social and economic implications of this man's trip, you're simply in no position to weigh its merits. What I find repellent is your narrow-mindedness.
I don't have much of a problem with the occasional day trip across the country. I know folks who have to do that on occasion, and it can be appropriate. The whole blog entry, though, represents a wastefulness that I couldn't myself condone.
"Sour grapes" implies winners and losers. Maybe you feel like running that race, but I don't want any part of it.
That's true, in the original fable the grapes were inaccessible to the sole character (the fox) and the moral was just that "IT IS EASY TO DESPISE WHAT YOU CANNOT GET." Colloquially, however, "sour grapes" is often repurposed to describe the rationalizations of a sore loser, that is, when someone else CAN get the grapes but you cannot. That is clearly ellyagg's usage, and as in the cognitive dissonance of the original fable, there is an implication that the loser would change his tune if he were to gain access to the "grapes". ANH disagrees, asserting that the grapes are genuinely sour in this case.
ONE hot summer’s day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch. "Just the things to quench my thirst," quoth he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: "I am sure they are sour."
"IT IS EASY TO DESPISE WHAT YOU CANNOT GET."
Upvoted you both. I did do a little research before interpreting the original "sour grapes" that way. I, too, think there's room for debate about that interpretation, but I stand by it. Thanks for the exposition.
Yeh, I kind of got the jist of that from reading recent posts, it seems that alot of upvoted are cynical kinds of comments. Assuming it was all true (which i am taking it as) I thought it was a great customer service story and empathising with what the OP must have felt when he saw the server in the tux standing there makes you feel kinda good.
Whether he is privileged or not the story was about the steakhouse and im sure many other businesses wouldn't do that regardless of who the customer was. I guess it shows, they know who their customers are, what their customers are saying, and improve on an already good service. I think lots to learn from that :) Excellant JOB by Mortons i say ....
>With modern communication systems, flying in airplanes to lunch meetings and flying back that night is such an absurd waste of resources it qualifies as obscene.
Sounds good, but doesn't always work in reality. (and I say this just coming back from a meeting with an architect who flew in for a day to check on a million dollar school renovation we're working on).
I've done meetings via teleconference, conference calls and face-to-face, and the face-to-face meetings have always been the most productive, especially when needing to review engineering documents. Things move faster because we're not all trying to talk over one another and we can observe body language to see who is paying attention or to confirm than someone understands what it being discussed.
Remote meetings have their place, but when the cost of a face-to-face day meeting can pale in comparison to screwing up a capital project, it's worth doing.
The difference of quality between meeting face to face and through a webcam is so high that it's sometimes worth taking a plane just for one lunch.
For example, I like to shake the hand of people I do business with.
Additionally, I think it's generally better to refrain from commenting on how people spend their time and money, because you certainly don't want them to reciprocate.
Agreed. As pg said in "Cities and Ambition:" "The physical world is very high bandwidth, and some of the ways cities send you messages are quite subtle." (http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html)
The same is true of face-to-face meetings. In addition, I suspect that Shankman wasn't just going for the meeting—he was going to communicate how important the meeting was. You don't just spend hours on a plane for something frivolous; he was sending a signal and reaping face-to-face rewards.
A brief story, although it's not on the same scale as Shankman's: I'm a grad student in English Lit at the University of Arizona, which means I teach freshman composition. Students e-mail me all the time. Constantly. Unless there's some compelling reason, I usually answer them in class, and, if what they want or need requires a longish explanation, I tell them to come to office hours (note that if they can't make office hours, I also do office hours by appointment).
This has a three-fold benefit: it cuts down on the amount of e-mail I receive over the course of the semester because students realize I won't answer frivolous e-mails twelve hours after they're sent. If I have follow-up questions, or the student does, those questions are easier to ask face-to-face. Misunderstandings caused by not not being face-to-face are evaded; it's hard to see context from e-mail. I think everyone has had misunderstandings caused by not having enough information. Finally, if they want me to read their papers or other work and show up to office hours, I know they really want me to read their work, and their desire to get feedback isn't just a passing fancy. The back-and-forth that can come from reading work and immediately responding to it can't be easily duplicated, especially among non-professionals, over e-mail or other asynchronous communications.
I meant to list three things, I really did. But the reasons kept popping into my head, and I think they're all valid.
Additionally, I think it's generally better to refrain from commenting on how people spend their time and money, because you certainly don't want them to reciprocate.
Speak for yourself, I'm fine with it. Not only that, but I am tremendously wasteful and unnecessarily luxury-minded at times, so if this guy wants to critique my spending then it might be more likely to be the opening of a fruitful conversation.
It's not a waste of resources because there is no upside. It's a waste of resource because you limit the effectiveness of anyone who travels as a significant portion of their job. A single lunch meeting courtship between executives can easily add up to well over 100,000$ for that single handshake. So, it's not a question of shaky webcam or face to face because the price gap quickly covers maintaining a high-end video conferencing room with support staff with the occasional corporate retreat / week in Tahiti.
I think talking about dollar amounts is a bit silly. What's the maximum acceptable dollar value for a lunch meeting, per person? $100? $200? $500?
Further, what if those who pay for the lunch meetings feel that it was worth any price? How are you going to convince them they are wasting their money if a webcam chat wouldn't actually be a replacement in their eyes, and if they don't care about the dollar amount spent on lunch?
Let's suppose your talking about an executive making 20 million a year who spends 2 days traveling for that lunch. 20,000,000 * 2 / 365 = 109,589$. Granted he can get some stuff done while traveling, but it's also far less than what he could do in the office and it will ofen take more than 2 days once you include jetlag etc. I have no problem saying that handshake could be worth 10k, but once the numbers start growing you start talking about someone’s full time salary for a year and I have trouble thinking that handshake is of that magnitude.
No, I am perfectly happy avoiding any company that requires face time to operate. Edit: I am not saying this just to be pithy; such negotiations have a huge upfront cost which requires a specific type of business structure to deal with and I have no interest in participating in those structures. (And yes I do have significant experience in this area, and yes I did decide to make less money to avoid such things.)
PS: Ever wonder why Berkshire Hathaway is not located in NY City even though it's managing so many subsidiaries? Could it be even with a crappy website they better understand how technology has changed the business landscape?
Berkshire Hathaway also owns NetJets which allow its executives to fly private jets around the country in a way that best meets their tight schedules. You better believe that Buffet flies all over for meetings.
Even better. Though I know he still uses NetJets quite a bit--my dad worked with someone who now works for NetJets and flies with the Buffets fairly frequently. She says despite the cash and jets they're quite down to Earth--down to cabs and not black cars.
I don't have any experience in this sort of thing beyond the ramen-profitable startup scene, so I'm not entirely well versed in what those structures would be.
I can easily imagine the traditionalist "A Gentleman's Word is His Bond, Seal the Deal With a Handshake" sort of C-level executives. From a purely economic cost/benefit standpoint, if the 100k in opportunity cost/travel/etc is going to turn more than 100k in profit, it would make economic sense to do it. You could probably get some marketing mileage out of it as a nice symbolic gesture with some glossy photos in $finance_mag as well.
At the same time, you need some way of managing/restraining that sort of thing lest you end up with $200,000 "working lunches" which are nothing more than a brief holiday on the company dime.
I've no idea how Berkshire Hathaway operates. Certainly I can see the opportunities for tech to reduce the need for physical meetings in the general case, but this whole argument is about the special cases.
Having a fancy Cisco full-room telepresence/videoconference rates higher than a skype call with a webcam, which (imo) still rates higher than a regular conference call. For higher latency interactions, email (or enterprise groupware and whatnot) is the hands-down winner. Those things might be where the real work gets done (and "my people get together with your people and make it happen"), but they don't have the same symbolic significance.
How do you know that single handshake isn't worth 100,000$? The old symbols are still very powerful. Just because costs seem excessive doesn't mean there isn't a reason.
Our new world mentality where such cost is considered obscene just doesn't map to the genteel, where spending that much money in order to secure a handshake is a matter of showing appropriate respect.
I'm not saying such a culture is _right_, but I am saying it has its reasons for its wastefulness.
I am not saying it's never a good idea for an individual actor. However, conspectus consumption is by definition wasteful, after all the whole point is to show you can waste large amounts of money. But, you need to approach these things with the understanding that people who avoid such rituals can and often will eat your lunch.
> Additionally, I think it's generally better to refrain from commenting on how people spend their time and money, because you certainly don't want them to reciprocate.
uh, no. there's no problem with the internet critiquing spending habits. certainly not because we should fear our own excesses coming up.
You don't have to be extremely privileged to have days like that, though I'm not saying that this person isn't (I've never heard of him, but I'd hazard a guess that he is pretty rich.)
Is it bad for the environment and a waste of time? Sure. But at the end of the day if flying out for a single meeting is going to be better for your business (or for your personal work if you freelance/etc), then you do it. I've flown from London to California before just for a meeting that will last a few hours - I didn't do it because I'm super rich, I did it because it was a good decision for the company I work for, and therefore they paid for it.
(Edit: I suppose a person who has the chance to travel around for free could be called "privileged", but I don't think that's what you meant by it.)
I understand that air travel for meetings is still commonplace and I wasn't intending to apply the label of extreme privilege to all business travelers - only to those who are given Free Steak Delivery. I do think the vast majority of business air travel for meetings is completely wasteful, but it is often suffering - not privilege - for the people who are tasked with it! Airports and airplanes are not generally very pleasant environments.
I can see how "upper percentiles of wealth" could be connected to (some though not all) people who fly around a lot, but having a company deliver you a free steak, that's really related entirely to how well known he is, not his wealth. There are random people with 10,000s of followers who aren't actually rich of it, but could be targets of similar PR stunts.
As to air travel, for me I consider it a privilege, I've loved being able to travel the world for free, and add on cheap holidays when I feel like it in whatever country I'm in. But then, I've never really minded sitting in a plane.
Imagine you are CFO of mid-sized public company, raising capital to get you through an industry downturn you expect to last several years. It's generally agreed the financing markets will close up at any moment. The financing is an important cushion against bankruptcy, and mass layoffs, 18 months from now. Your deal is almost lined up, but a key investor has raised important and tricky but answerable legal questions about the structure. At 3pm, you schedule a 7:30am meeting to allay their concerns.
You will want your attorney physically present, and never mind that they live in another city.
When your attorney lands at 9:30pm, you will want them to eat something better than Olive Garden. Good food relieves stresses and refreshes body and spirit. You will care a great deal more about the quantity of wine drunk than you will the money spent on it.
Now, imagine you are hiring for that attorney one month previous to this easily-imagined scenario. You are meeting with a candidate. You will care about their dedication, their thorough familiarity with your situation, their ability to confront make or break problems on short notice. Are you satisfied with a video-conference? Or do you maybe want them to fly down for lunch?
This is about your imagination. You can imagine "the upper percentile of wealth" is populated entirely by greedy, stupid people, paid only for structural position and spending only to indulge their ego and appetite. Note, this belief doesn't leave much scope for the reason and ability and pride of the people beneath them.
Or you can generate some curiosity about the world beyond _your_ cocoon.
I might not mind Olive Garden, but part of being a gracious and generous host is ensuring that your guests are well-fed with the best you can offer. It's admittedly a very ancient and possibly wasteful ritual, but one which persists culturally. How many lawyers do you think actually enjoy playing golf? :3
As someone who comes from a family of lawyers and attorneys, I think you vastly misunderstand what most lawyers are like. I think you also go to fancier golf courses than most of us. :3
I think we just know different lawyers. I'm also in Florida, there is no shortage of nice golf courses (though the nice day part is a bit tough to pull off in the summer heat).
It shouldn't be taken literal. He doesn't mean that everyone has days where they fly at 7am from Newark to Tampa and back, or between any other cities for that matter. It's that everybody has days from time to that that are jam-packed from morning till evening, doing whatever.
I've had days like that and they're horrible. It's certainly not something I would equate with extreme privilege unless I was flying around on my private jet.
If you don't understand that there is a huge difference in a face to face meeting or a web conference or telephone call, you are frankly missing a huge part of the human experience.
It takes money to make money. To assume this is wasteful when the author states the lunch meeting was successful is idiotic. GoToMeeting and Skype are a certain type of communication, but in todays economy you have to go out of your way to secure certain clients and that can mean meetings in person. Plus, aren't you downplaying the old technology of flight and the simple fact that it is amazing that someone can get to Florida from NYC and then back in less than 20 hours?
With so many people caught up in technology nowadays, it's actually refreshing to see someone wanting to take the time to actually meet in person over lunch.
This is an utterly wonderful counter to the original yuppie crap that governments tell us indicate a "higher standard of living", and the crap is driven by profit which we routinely give up our rights to protect.
I don't have days like that, and neither should anyone else. With modern communication systems, flying in airplanes to lunch meetings and flying back that night is such an absurd waste of resources it qualifies as obscene. The fact that an expensive steakhouse decided to pull a cheap PR stunt by delivering a free steak to the airport to some well-known Big Shot is less obviously wasteful, but still a repellent manifestation of gratuitous luxury.
People within the cocoon of the upper percentiles of wealth often have a sense of how they are perceived by others, and usually take some care to disguise their self-satisfaction. It is always educational to get a glimpse into the mental world of extreme privilege.