Twelve Things to Remember

As with every new year, I look for ways to try and get the year off on the right foot. How can we improve the quality of what we do? How can we enhance our customer care? How can I  lick my own elbow?

Trying to take inspiration from the private sector I came across a chap called Marshall Field. He was an American entrepreneur who established a range of department stores in the second half of the Nineteenth Century. He became a big success by actually thinking about the customer. He was the man who made unconditional refunds and consistent pricing the norm in retail. In fact the cliché, 'the customer is always right' is attributed to him. The actual phrase he used was,

"Assume that the customer is right until it is plain beyond all question he is not."

A slightly more conditional phrase, but still spot on in terms of customer relations common sense.

Anyway I came across him as the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago is named after him when he helped fund the establishment of the museum. As an aside it is alleged an employee defrauded the museum of nearly $1m. a couple of years ago - if only my museum was rich enough  to enable me to do that. Stealing the days takings from my museum would probably not even cover my round in the pub, I usually end up topping up the till from loose change I find down the back of the sofa. I digress...

However Marshall Field apparently had a mantra of twelve things to remember.

• The value of time
• The success of perseverance
• The pleasure of working
• The dignity of simplicity
• The worth of character
• The power of kindness
• The influence of example
• The obligation of duty
• The wisdom of economy
• The virtue of patience
• The improvement of talent
• The joy of origination

Let's see if it works.

If you follow a mantra let me know, Happy New Year

Car Parks - the workhouses of our time?

I am aware that I am ahead of my time in my appreciation of car parks and the thousands of beautiful spaces they contain. I have been mocked in the street for it; told to move along by uniformed personnel when admiring well crafted spaces in multi-storey parks. Yet I will live to see the first car parking space museum. I will tell you why.

A beautiful space with multi-coloured
block paving
(Photo courtesy of the
Museum of Car Parking Spaces)

Bill Bryson, the well meaning but easily pleased American, wrote a book in 1995 called Notes from a Small Island. It was an amusing journey around this country that was on the whole positive. He ends on a strangely untypical effusive note,

"I realised what it was I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it...What a wondrous place this was - crazy as f!@k, of course, but adorable to the tiniest degree...this is still the best place in the world...."

He lies of course. In fact he condemns himself from his own mouth (or pen) on p.64 (Black Swan 1997 paperback edition). I have edited down the two page rant.

"Just consider the average multi-storey car park. You drive around for ages, and the spend a small eternity shunting into a space that is exactly two inches wider than the average car [3 inches too wide in my opinion]. Then, because you are parked next to a pillar, you have to climb over the seats and end up squeezing butt-first out of the passenger door....you have to find your way out of this dank hellhole via an unmarked door leading to a curious chamber that seems to be a composite of a dungeon and a urinal...all of this is designed to make this the most dispiriting experience of your adult life."

Yet he moans (p.103).

"..the British have more heritage than is good for them."

Wrong! We have too much PRETTY heritage, do we need 12,000 medieval churches? How about 11,999 medieval churches and 1 multi-storey car park?

Let's compare car parks with workhouses. It was a phenomenon that spread across the country after the 1601 Poor Law Act; had it's architectural heyday in the Nineteenth Century, before being abolished in 1930.

Here's an extract from George Eliot's, Scenes of Clerical Life (1854),

"...the workhouse, euphemistically called the 'College'. The 'College' was a huge square stone building, standing on the best apology for an elevation of ground....depressing enough to look at even on the brightest days."

She wasn't alone, Charles Dickens was no big fan (Oliver Twist cannot be described as a comedy). The word 'squalid' turns up frequently in his writing. In his 'A Walk in a Workhouse' (1850) he compares the workhouse unfavourably to prison.

"We have come to this absurd, this dangerous, this monstrous pass, that the dishonest felon is, in respect of cleanliness, order, diet, and accommodation, better provided for, and taken care of, than the honest pauper."

So why compare the multi-storey car park to the workhouse? Both are/were full of squalor and misery. BUT one is now 'heritage' and the other is an eyesore of no value beyond mere utility.

Today you can go to the National Trust owned Southwell Workhouse museum for a 'family fun day out'. It was built in 1824 and opened less than 100 years later as a heritage site. The first multi-storey car park was built in Chicago U.S.A. in 1918. Wouldn't it be great to celebrate its 100th anniversary with a car park museum (preferably built over a medieval building).

Time is running out - get behind my campaign now.