Money

Spending many weekends at the bus station this past semester has allowed me to observe their workings and failings from a customer's standpoint. I come from a place where spending more than an hour and a half in a ground vehicle travelling with meaningful direction is practically unthinkable. Thus I feel that I have been able to view their situation with a relatively unbiased eye. While they do manage to do what a bus station should do (get me to my destination in a semi-punctual manner), I have seen enough to know why they have developed their reputation as a rather unpleasant way to travel.

My outside impressions tell me that motivation might be a hard thing to come by in this kind of workplace. And my newly obtained inside impressions only worked to confirm this.

I interviewed a black woman on break who usually works the ticket counter and aside from the paycheck, there isn't much that she could find that was genuinely motivating. The job itself is not exactly enjoyable. But it isn't quite as monotonous as it looks. People come to her with any number of different problems and questions and they can often be quite funny. But for the most part, unusual customer experiences are of an unpleasant nature. There seems to be a constant stream of rude customers interspersed with the rest. And while her fellow employees are nice, they aren't the ones she has to deal with all day. And the drivers mostly keep to themselves since they usually only pass through. So people are not the reason she comes to work everyday.

As far as her boss was concerned, she didn't have much to say either way. As a person, he could be interesting to talk to, but whenever he slips into boss mode, that possibility ends. If anything, the boss is somewhat of a middleman between the employees and the paycheck, so in a sense, any motivation coming from his direction isn't any different. As outside sources, both money and authority can be seen as pull-type forms of motivation. I can almost picture a leash with the boss at the higher end, or a fishing pole tied to the employee dangling cash just out of reach. Either way, even though the employee is doing work, his/her situation is rather unfavorable.

I told her, in slightly muted tones, about a few of my unsatisfactory experiences with them. For example, rarely have I seen more than one person helping people get tickets, even at the busiest hour. I've seens situations where there is a line full of people waiting to get tickets for a bus that is about to leave in fifteen minutes and the one person who is supposed to be working is chatting with someone else who is counting the money from the register.

I then asked what kind of role motivation plays in these kinds of situations. She first defended herself by saying that they often have problems with the computers, during which all they can do is wait for it to reset and boot up again. In the face of a long line of harried customers, however, such a break is not unwelome. When it comes to dealing with customers, she reasoned that it was really up to the customer how their interaction would play out. Everyone behind the counter does their best to be courteous and when customers come flaring up to the counter, the problem is almost never the fault of the employee being chewed out. But she did concede that perhaps employees could do a better job of handling people without the thought, "I shouldn't have to do this," entering their heads.

Money as a motivator, while effective, just doesn't seem to be very efficient. In fact, one might even make the generalization that any pull-type motivation leaves something to be desired. When someone is getting paid by the hour, to some extent, it makes very little difference how well they do the job as long as it gets done. And thus, being the self-efficient beings that we are, this usually leads us to do just enough to keep the money coming. But as everyone can see everyday, this is not exactly a good situation. But what can be done? When money is the main motivator, how does one improve on the quality of work? Perhaps this can be answered by looking at work involving other motivators, which is exactly what I have done on the next page.