Los Angeles Daily News - June 24, 2007

LAUSD tries for nice
Brewer responds to complaints of rudeness

By Naush Boghossian

 

t happens every day in the hectic metropolis of Los Angeles, and all signs are that it's getting worse.

Someone cuts you off on the freeway.

Someone's curt on the phone, at a store, at work.

Someone speaks loudly on a cell phone in a restaurant, sharing details of a life you don't care to hear about. Or smokes upwind of you on the patio of a coffee shop.

Rudeness is part of life in many big cities but Los Angeles surely ranks near the top — from road rage to the cold indifference of government bureaucrats when dealing with the public.

Now the Los Angeles Unified School District is taking aim at its own surly workers with new programs to boost "welcome-ness" — inspired by a position created at other school districts as the "director of first impressions."

It's the brainchild of new Superintendent David Brewer, who wants all parents who walk in the front door of a school to feel "welcome and respected."

And he hopes to accomplish that broad task with Los Angeles-area business relaying their customer-service training to all school office personnel, administrators and teachers.

"One of the biggest complaints I hear from parents is how rude sometimes they're treated when they get to our schools," he said. "It is unacceptable to me that anyone who is visiting our schools does not receive the best treatment, so we will improve our customer service at our schools."

Exacerbating the intimidation factor in the district is that a significant portion of the district's parents either don't speak English or don't have a high school diploma, Brewer said.

"Parents talked about how they felt intimidated. There's the problem of parents not knowing how to work the system, and there's the problem of the meanie at the front desk," Brewer said.

"We have to change that. Teachers and principals have to come up with a welcome attitude. We have to work on that."

For decades, the cultures of organizations like LAUSD and the Los Angeles Police Department have rejected the idea of the public as customer — treating them instead with indifference, insensitivity and intimidation.

The LAPD's most recent display of that persistent "cowboy mentality" occurred when officers fired rubber bullets into a May Day crowd that included women and children at MacArthur Park.

At LAUSD, efforts by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to wrest partial control over the district were met with a stoic refusal to answer not only the mayor and parents, but the legislature after it passed a law giving the mayor a role in the district.

Fueling some of that rudeness is the perception that employees in the public sector are somewhat protected, said urban historian Joel Kotkin.

"It's not unique to L.A. It's something you see in civil service or whenever somebody has a protected job, and even though they are public servants, it's more like the public serves us," Kotkin said. "There is no quality control."

The attitude among public employees also stems from their large numbers and the political clout their unions often wield, Kotkin said.

"If you look at the politics that have evolved, and for years and years public employees have been a dominant part of the city's politics, I'm amazed how nice some of them are," he said.

Bill Ring, a former chairman of the Parent Collaborative at LAUSD, said his group told Brewer about the "director of first impressions" position after a member photographed a smiling greeter who has the title at a Miami school.

Ring said that while low pay, morale and difficult working conditions exacerbate the problem, rude school personnel create a disconnect with parents.

"They make you feel they're doing you a favor when you walk in and ask a question," Ring said. "It's more likely that when you walk into a school no one will look up from their work. ... It automatically puts them on the defensive.

"As a society, we're less tolerant of one another than we used to be and it's reflected in the schools."

Aleen Lodge, a parent at Woodland Hills Academy, said she's active at the school and has never had a problem with workers making her feel unwelcome.

But she said she has seen it at other schools.

"I've had experiences when I've walked into schools and they're not welcoming at all," Lodge said, emphasizing that she understands their difficult working conditions.

"I've had to ask, `Excuse me, can someone help me?' and I get, `Just wait a minute.' It's not like walking into a hotel or a store where they work on commission," she said.

Ethics Commission Vice President Bill Boyarsky argued that it's not fair to say Los Angeles has a culture of rudeness.

"I don't think it's anything endemic to Los Angeles," he said. "I don't think it's a generalization you can make of the public institutions of Los Angeles. It varies very much on the person."

But myriad polls have set out to gauge the level of rudeness in society and results show that, in fact, it's getting worse.

A 2005 Associated Press-Ipsos poll found nearly 70 percent of Americans said we are ruder than we were 20 years ago.

Even the Vatican has stepped into the rudeness fray, last week issuing a set of "Ten Commandments" for drivers in an effort to curb rudeness, cursing and reckless driving.

But amid a society that almost embraces rudeness - unable to tear away from the hit show "American Idol" to see just how rude judge Simon Cowell can get - can the culture really be changed?

"It's worth trying. And with the (Villaraigosa) power grab, they noticed that people are pretty dissatisfied," Kotkin said. "It's something that would be terrific. I just don't know if it'll ever happen here."

Lizzie Post, great-great-granddaughter of etiquette maven Emily Post, said changing a culture requires building better relationships and making people feel appreciated.

"Today we are as a society a lot more inconsiderate of each other," said Post, an author and etiquette expert at the Emily Post Institute, which offers seminars to global corporations on how to be more welcoming.

"You have people who are underpaid and don't get told they're doing a good job, so they say, `Why bother trying?"' Post said. "A lot of (Brewer's) job may be to increase company morale by getting on the bandwagon of positive reinforcement.

"That's a big undertaking he wants to do, and I'm impressed."

Laura Chavez has worked at the front desk of a Sylmar elementary school for years and said customer service training is a good idea.

"It is true that at some schools some personnel are not very welcoming or make guests feel welcome," she said. "This training would be very helpful for new people and for others who have been working at school offices for several years because we can learn new things and learn from each other."

Someone who's successfully changed a school district's culture is John Baracy, superintendent of the 27,000-student Scottsdale Unified School District.

Two years ago he created a "director of first impressions" position. Every three months he also brings in businesses such as Nordstrom and Southwest Airlines to share strategies and customer-service training.

Like Brewer, Baracy said one of the things he'd heard repeatedly from parents was that they didn't feel they were being treated well.

"When parents came to the district office, they said they didn't feel welcome, that they felt we were somewhat cold," Baracy said.

But with competition from charter and private schools, more public districts need to treat their profession as a business, Baracy said.

"The landscape for education has changed dramatically from what it was a few decades ago. We're in a new era and we should start thinking about today's and tomorrow's world," Baracy said.

Kotkin said L.A.'s culture used to be more polite, but as cities grow, things change.

"You give up a little bit of that civility and you gain better restaurants, more culture," Kotkin said. "It's the evolution of cities as they get denser and more diverse.

"It's a more aggressive culture than being in North Dakota with a bunch of Scandinavians."

 

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