What’s at the core of a job at City Hall? Let’s re-phrase. What
should be at the core of any job at City Hall? Answer: customer
service.
What’s at the core of a job at City Hall?
Let’s re-phrase. What should be at the core of any job at City Hall?
Answer: customer service.
Locking the doors and turning off the phones on the Fridays that Gilroy city employees are not on furlough due to budget cuts is not fulfilling the customer’s needs.
How that very basic principle and common sense deduction is lost on Mayor Al Pinheiro and Council members Craig Gartman, Cat Tucker and Dion Bracco is a mystery.
Sure, the sentiment is understandable. Anyone who has a job that deals with the public in any way, gets it. Closing the doors and shutting off the phone can provide a window of opportunity for an extra push.
So come in an hour early before the doors open and the phone starts ringing.
If the four Council members, who tentatively backed the idea with a straw vote at the retreat, stick with this idea the message they send to the residents will be clear: It’s not the customers, the taxpaying public that counts, it’s the employees at City Hall that count.
There is nothing creative nor redeeming about this idea. Really, it seems to boil down to Council members pandering to the employees.
Yes, it’s difficult times. Yes, keeping morale up is tough when many co-workers have been laid off. Yes, there are no magic wands foreseeable in the future that will boost revenues at City Hall.
That’s reality. But the jobs at City Hall are good jobs, and there are many who would dearly love to step into those positions.
Boosting morale can and should be done in a variety of ways. But mollycoddling the employees at City Hall by shutting out the very people they are employed to serve is not the answer.
Surely, the mayor and City Council members can understand that. If not, they’re in the wrong business, and the residents should indeed remind them of a basic premise when they see them at the grocery store or the coffee shop: customer service counts.
