Whatever Happened to "My Bad!"?

 

I really try not to use this venue to vent and make readers suffer through my whiny complaints, no matter how justified they may be. But sometimes you just gotta make it public. Feel free to drop out here, but if you persevere, I’ll do my best to take it out of the personal and frame it in a way that you can relate to it. I hope we all might leave committed to paying more attention to what feels like a growing cultural problem. Here’s the story: 

 

A few weeks ago, I wrote to the organizers of Flower Piano in San Francisco to suggest my jazz band could play at that event again, as we had two years ago. I was a bit shocked to get a letter back suggesting I should never play there again because last time I went five minutes over. The amount of shame and guilt I felt for that, even though people thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the show and it seemed like the next group could go five minutes over if as well— heck, we’re out making music on a sunny day in the park. What’s the hurry? But I get that it must have felt disrespectful and was willing to accept my blacklist consequence (which for another reason, they backed off from and I think I will be playing there again). 

 

Why am I telling this story? Because I was asked to be accountable for my transgression and pay some kind of price, from heartfelt apology to giving up that venue. And yet. Everywhere around me are incompetent people not doing their jobs or competent people having a bad day and from what I can tell, there’s no consequence or accountability whatsoever. For example, the printing of my new book. 

The printing company I’ve used for the ten Pentatonic Press books I published did great work. Not a single complaint. But last year, they were bought up by another company and the transition has NOT been smooth. In fact, an absolute nightmare. In preparing my new book for them, they promised one printing date, then postponed it. The first date was reasonable and perfect for some opportunities to sell them, so it was a great disappointment when they failed to honor their original “gentleman’s agreement.” 

 

So I asked for a special printing of 50 books that could be sold at two occasions perfect for selling— a local Conference I was presenting in and the Canadian National Conference in Halifax. They did print the books— but then forgot to mail them! So now I had 50 books that missed their opportunity to be sold. I had one more opportunity to sell them at a workshop in Toronto and they mailed 25 of the above to Halifax!! Then had to re-send from Halifax to Toronto and miraculously, the books arrived one day before that workshop. (And they charged me for the extra shipping).

 

Now I had other deadlines coming up, so just checked in to see if the 750 books I originally ordered would be ready by the end of the week as they promised. Here's what my contact there wrote to me:

 

Doug, 

 

I think this job is the disaster of all disasters! Apparently, this job has been sitting in “proof out” since early April when Jamison left and the new person took over, so it isn't even printed yet.  It was completely overlooked. Since the original estimated ship date was today 5/11, and you want this delivered to the warehouse before you leave for Europe, I have asked this to be escalated to a manager for expedited printing.

 

Are you feeling me here? Do any of these people feel accountable to me? Offer me profuse apologies, discounts on the printing, some kind of well-deserved compensation for their mistakes which I suffer from. Is anybody acknowledging “My bad! Sorry!” I think you can guess the answer. 

 

The same holds true for schools that take six weeks to pay me, with me having to constantly remind them. If I’m one day late paying my VISA bill, I get slapped with a late charge, but it doesn’t seem to go in the other direction. Perhaps this has always been so, but am I wrong in feeling that it seems to be happening more and more, with less and less accountability and apology? If this were a two-way venue, you could all chime in, but meanwhile, I’ll just imagine your answer. “I think you’re right! I am noticing that!”

 Having named it, let's change it! Please?