For the Children: Insisting on Moral Capitalism

Today, more than ever before, we must insist that our businesses, the ones making money off of us, treat us like humans. We must ask questions, challenge standard practices, raise our voices and/or withhold our money. If we are marching forward, willingly or otherwise, into an even more extreme form of capitalism (and we certainly seem to be) then we must demand that the owners of capital exhibit morality, humanity, humility, and gratitude.

Recently, I took my daughter to Children’s Fairyland in Oakland this past weekend to see a musical put on by the Bay Area Children’s Theater.  I grew up here in the Bay Area.  I was born here, in Fremont, only 15 minutes away from where I live now in Hayward, only 25 minutes away from Oakland.  I never knew about this magical little place on Lake Merrit that celebrates all things fairytale for children.  There’s an Alice in Wonderland tunnel maze, an Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe greets you at the entrance, tiny Beatrix Potter books grace a little book cove behind a faux lake and farm village, and there’s even an actual small library for kids who just want to sit and read.  It’s adorable, and beyond affordable. A $10 entrance fee gets the kids in for all day fun.  I organized a group of us to go see the play, and we paid $15 per person to get into Fairyland and see the play.  It was a great deal. The kids had so much fun. The play was bright and lively with fabulous, animated actors and fun songs.  After the play the kids took off through the park to explore, and I wandered along behind them, chatting with the other moms and carrying my 6 month old in a front pack.

At the end of the day the kids all wanted to ride the train.

Let me describe this train to you in case you haven’t been. The train has 4 cars with a conductor car in the front. Max capacity is 4 people per car. By the time we got to the train we had 3 moms and 7 kids, 11 people.  So we needed 3 cars.  The train goes around in a fairly small loop twice, very, very, very slowly. The line to wait for the train is long and slow going. But the kids were patient, the moms chatted, and I waited with my infant outside the line, in a little small cove of shade, people watching.  My five year old was in the group, and as the line inched forward the kids all discussed (fought over) who was going to sit where and with whom. Then the kids got to the front of the line.  Two of the train cars had already been taken, so they decided to let the group behind them go ahead and wait for the next turn so they could all get on the same train together. The conductor, a kid who was about twenty years old, at best, watches all this unfold, calls the group up from behind our group, takes the train around for two very, very slow loops, and pulls the train up and waits as all four train cars empty.

“The line has gotten really long,” he announces to the waiting crowd, “so we’re only going to be doing one loop for now until the line gets shorter.”

To be clear, the line was exactly the same length as it was when our group got in line. They had been waiting by this point for at least twenty minutes. But the kids took it in stride.

I, on the other hand, did not.

“Excuse me,” I called to the kid.  “Excuse me.”  He turned to me, and I said quietly, “do you think you could let this group of kids go around twice, since they let the group behind them go ahead, so some of them missed their chance at two loops, and they’ve already been waiting for so long?”

“Hmmmm, yea, I really can’t.” Instant reminder of Gary Cole in Office Space. “I already made the announcement.”

“Okay. Well, I wish you would have thought of the kids before you did that then.”

And he let our kids into their train cars and took them around for their one loop.

“Oh well,” I thought. “I asked.”

This point is an important one to me.  If you think something is wrong, if you see an injustice, even a small one, you should speak up.  You should try to make a difference.  At the very least we should try to make people think about the decisions they make, especially when they are in positions of power, and we are the ones who put them there.

The day just before this incident I was at the movie theater and I had a similar experience.

I love going to the movies.  Love it.  With a capital L.

I fed my baby and escaped my house for exactly three hours before I had to be back.  I had my brother in tow this time and we headed out to Regal Cinemas in Dublin because he had a Groupon.  We decided on The Dark Tower (Idris Elba with a side of Mathew McConnaughey? Yes, please and thank you).  I was looking forward to my afternoon coffee; I was sure the cinema had a cafe, and if it didn’t I knew there was a Starbucks four doors down.  We head in and I see the concession stand, a full bar with beer, wine, and liquor, a video game section, but no cafe, and no espresso machine at the concession stand.  “No biggie,” I figure. “I’ll just run to Starbucks.” Then I see the signs, “NO OUTSIDE FOOD OR DRINKS” all over the place.

Hmmm.  So I ask the ticket taker, “Hi, since you guys don’t have a cafe, could you make an exception? Could I bring a Starbucks in?”

She smiles, a polite smile, “No, I’m sorry. You can’t.”

“Okay, well, can I talk to the manager?”

“Sure, if you can find her. She should be over there somewhere.” She waves in the general direction of the concessions.

I head over to concessions.

“Can I talk to the manager please?” I ask one of the kids at the register.

The kid goes to get the manager, and this young woman in a blazer comes out. “Can I help you?”

I explain the situation. “See, I’m breastfeeding, I have two kids, I rarely get to escape the house, and I love coming to the movies.  Every other theater I go to has a cafe. You guys don’t have one. You have a full bar, but I don’t want a beer. I want a latte. Since you don’t offer what I want, could you make an exception to the rule? I understand you make money from concessions. I still plan on buying popcorn and candy. We bought our tickets. I’m contributing to your theater, and I’m not trying to sneak anything in.”

Polite smile. “Sorry. I can’t.”

“Okay, well, I just thought I’d ask. Can I have the number or email address of the person above you? Maybe corporate? Whoever makes these decisions? I know it’s not your fault. I know you’re doing your job, just following orders, but I think this is unfair, and I want to tell someone who can possibly make a change.’

All the kids behind the counter, and the two managers, are now looking at me.

I didn’t yell. I didn’t freak out. I didn’t “get attitude.” I was calm and collected, and I had a smile on my face the whole time, and not a condescending smile. I was genuinely bothered by the situation, but I understood the system that these young people were a part of, and that they were mechanically playing out their roles.

I explained that I was not angry, that I did not blame them, that I just wanted to escalate this because I thought it was unfair.

The girls got me the number, they relaxed visibly by this point, realizing, I think, that I wasn’t going to freak out or scream at them about my Starbucks coffee craving.

As I was walking away one of the young managers smiled at me and said, “I would love it if we had a cafe here.”

I said, “hey, maybe my voice will get it for you.”

Because, the truth is, this is all we have, our voice. That and our dollars. This is our soft power. People matter, but businesses don’t see us as people, they see us as profit, as dollar signs, as an opportunity for growth or for survival. That attitude trickles down to employees and is pushed onto customers.

And perhaps the reason they don’t see us as people is because we don’t make them see us as such. We shuffle along and we accept the status quo, we don’t speak up, we don’t force them to see us as the reason they are in business in the first place. And, sadly, when we do speak up, we frequently do it in the wrong way. We get angry, we shout, we make fools of ourselves, and we take it out on the wrong people. I know, I have been in every customer service job you can imagine. I’ve been yelled at, spit on, threatened, and blamed for things that were out of my control.

The nice thing is that there are companies that practice something called moral capitalism. The CEOs of these companies believe that while they are certainly in business for profit, a company is only as strong as its employees and its customers, so they pay their employees living wages, they treat their employees like human beings with lives, sometimes like family members, and they hire and train people who are dedicated to providing customer services. My two favorite examples are Costco and Starbucks.

Costco CEO Craig Jelinek is well known for insisting his employees will not be forced to come in early on Black Friday or, even worse, come in late on Thanksgiving. The company pays a living wage, provides a good benefit plan, and hires from within.  Forbes recently named it the number one large company to work for. The Costco experience as a customer is a good one. Even on the busiest days I can get in and out of Costco with two kids relatively quickly.  The employees are all pleasant and efficient, and the deals are to die for.  I heart Costco all the way, and I feel good about spending my money there. (Get the Executive Membership. If you spend money like I do, it’s worth it to get the one percent back on purchases.)

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is so well known for his benevolent approach to capitalism that he has been asked if he is running for president (yes please!). Starbucks is also well known for living wages, benefits programs, tuition reimbursement for team members, and in house manager training programs.  And again, Starbucks is a pleasant place to be. I enjoy walking in, everyone is friendly, the product is a solid one, and their stars program makes me feel like I’m getting lots of free coffee and lemon pound cake!

You can’t force people to be genuinely friendly, you cannot scare them into it, threaten them into it, or cajole them into it. People are friendly because they are happy, and companies have the power to make their employees happy. Or not. And if an employee is not happy, that is going to trickle down to the customer.

Yet we stay silent, we keep going back to places that don’t care about us, and they keep taking our money.

Well, I say no. We should hold all of our companies to the same standards that companies like Costco and Starbucks have proven are absolutely achievable. In short, we should speak up.

So I did. I put my call in to Regal Cinemas corporate office. We’ll see where that goes. And as for Children’s Fairyland, well, the 19 year old train conductor just couldn’t let it go.

“So, um, yea..” he approaches me after he took our group on their one loop. “I probably should have let them go around a second time. But, you know, it was their choice to let the other people go in front of them.”

“Right,” I reply, thinking to myself that I’m glad I at least got into this kid’s head. I made him think. “So the kids get penalized for wanting to be together, for waiting until the next round.”

“I didn’t penalize them!” He got defensive really fast. He’s 19.

“No, of course not,” I respond immediately, calmly. “But you have to realize that that’s how it feels to them. In their heads the lesson they learned is that they should just go ahead, not wait for their friends, not let others go first, just take what they can, because they were penalized.”

“Look..” and he starts to get upset, his body language changes, he’s preparing for a fight.  And I’m calm the whole time; I’m standing in Children’s Fairyland with six kids under ten watching me. I’m not getting into a bitch fest with a child at a theme park.

“No no, no no no,” I hold up my hand, and I say very calmly: “do not get upset. I did not come up to you. I am not fighting with you. I had let it go. You came up to me. I am responding. What happened was wrong. You’re not in trouble. I’m not yelling at you. We’re done.”

I smiled.

He walked away.

As our group makes its way to the front of the park to go our separate ways, I am chatting with the other moms, laughing over the situation, shaking my head in wonder at the world, making plans for later in the week, and I hear, off to the side, in a quiet voice, one of the girls in our group, older sister to one of my daughter’s friends, saying to the other older girl, they’re both 8, “yea, because we were waiting there for all that time, and then we let the people go in front of us, so it wasn’t fair what he did, and that’s why Shanna said something. Someone had to say something.”

I found out later that that same little girl went home and told her father the story, then proceeded to tell her grandmother a few days later, about how Shanna stood up to injustice at Children’s Fairyland.

“You’re her hero, Shanna.” Her mom told me earlier today as we watched the kids play at the park.

It was so simple. It was a small injustice. I wasn’t thinking about the kids watching me when I spoke up. I just spoke up because it was wrong, and I think that that’s what you’re supposed to do. And as I was recounting all of this later in the day to my husband I got tears in my eyes at the last part.

You’re her hero, Shanna.

And I thought to myself: this is why I do what I do, the writing, the speaking, the teaching, the constant attention to detail of wrongs and injustices in the world. Maybe I’ll change one mind, maybe I’ll touch one heart, maybe one little girl will hear my voice speaking up against one little wrong, and because I touched her heart, her mind, she’ll grow up and touch the world.

So be on alert CEOs and middle managers and employees and anybody who thinks he holds all the power.  We’re watching you. We have voices; we have dollars; we have power.

And we’re winning.

Our kids will grow up and hold you responsible. They will occupy Wall Street. They will withhold their dollars from vulture capitalists. They will see your injustice and they will hold you accountable. They are the heroes of tomorrow, and they are stronger and braver and bolder than we ever were because they have us behind them.

So yea, we’re winning.