Today I received the following e-mail from World Gym in response to my rant about yet another number to have to remember and use. The e-mail has been edited somewhat to protect privacy of the sender and other information:

Dear Mr. Smith,

Thank you so much for your letter today explaining your frustrations with
the World Gym check in procedure. On June 1, 2002 all World Gym locations
in the Colorado Springs area were acquired by Excel Fitness Colorado, LLC
and now operate under new ownership. All your records and membership
information has been transfered from the previous ownership into the Excel
Fitness Colorado database. Unfortunately one of the drawbacks to our system
is that if you try to utilize a location other than the one that you joined
at, your membership info cannot be found without utilizing the membership
number. (Each membership number is coded to be club specific) We know that
change is difficult, so we have been gradually changing the check in
procedure over the last 8 months and posted those changes at each location.
I apologize for any inconvienance the new program causes you, I assure you
that was never our intent. We appreciate your business and thank you for
your continued support. To show my appreciation, I have lowered your
monthly dues to $(deleted) per month, which will be reflected on your March
statement. Excel Fitness Colorado LLC has been a leader in the fitness
industry for over 15 years, operating the largest World Gym franchise in the
nation. We have many exciting things planned for the Colorado Springs area
and hope that you will stick with us during some of these difficult changes.
Thank you again for your comments. Should any additional issues arise in
the future that you would like to comment on, please don’t hesitate to
contact me directly. I will do what ever I can to rectify the situation.

Thanks Again,

(name deleted)

VP / Operations

My Response:

Dear (Name Deleted):

Thanks for your response and particularly the change in dues! I really don’t have a huge problem with using a membership number, but hopefully you understood the real intent of the letter….

In my day job I’m the responsible for Information Technology for a large semiconductor manufacturer. One of the major problems we have in business is the overwhelming number of ways that our employees and customers (the politically correct phrase these days is “business partners” rather than customers) are identified. It seems that literally every computer system requires it’s own unique method of identifying and authenticating the system user. Getting that under control has been a major project at my company. The rule has become: Use a method of identification that the system user already knows or has. About a year ago we instituted a policy that we will not deploy any computer system that does not make use of our standard, already-in-place identification and authentication process. We have standardized on either the user’s name or an ID of their own choosing. We do have system users with the same name, but the identification system is required to handle that issue through the authentication process.

While this is probably more detail than you’re interested in, the point is to make it "falling off a log" easy for people to do business with us and interface with our computer systems, kind of like Amazon.com’s 1-click buying process.

Please feel free to pass this along to those who are responsible for your computer systems. With only a little effort, they can do the same thing for Excel Fitness Colorado LLC!

Meanwhile, thanks again for your response. Many companies either ignore letters like the one I sent to you, or don’t have the sense to put in place a process to promptly respond. I’m impressed. I’ve also put your response (with some editing to protect pricing and your privacy) on the web at https://www.rnsmith.com/

Thanks!

Roland Smith

Yesterday morning when I went to the World Gym for the daily ritual, the guy at the front desk (a less-than-2%-Body-Fat kind of a guy) looked me up on their computer and then gave me a card with a membership number. I’m now supposed to give them the number when I come in each morning rather than my name!

Yet another number to identify me. I’ve got a social security number, a drivers license number, several bank account numbers, pin numbers, user ids and passwords for computer programs, license plate numbers, frequent flier numbers, Safeway Savings Card number, Avis Wizard Number…. In fact, there are so many of these numbers that I have most of them entered into my PalmPilot PDA that I carry with me almost everywhere so that I can remember the number I’m supposed to use for each situation.

I asked the guy at the desk why I now needed a number. I’ve been going to this gym for more than three years and until Thursday, my name was sufficient. He told me it was so they could "be more efficient."

Now that’s a not-so-novel concept: Inconvenience the paying customer so that the goods and services provider is slightly less inconvenienced! I’m sure this makes the Dale Carnagie How to Win Friends and Influence People top ten list. But even more intriguing is why World Gym needs to have a different identifier for me than my name. I’m certainly not the only Roland K. Smith in the world. In fact, there are probably a couple hundred other people in the U.S. who use the name Roland K. Smith. Despite that situation, however, the Post Office manages every day to deliver the mail destined for me to my house and has never yet in my almost-sixty-years of living, sent some other Roland K. Smith’s mail to me. There aren’t any other Roland K. Smiths in Colorado Springs. In fact, there aren’t any other Roland Smiths in the city, either. So uniqueness in a somewhat common name can’t be the driving issue for the gym.

Sometimes I think that computers assign numbers as primary identification just because it’s so much easier for the person writing the computer program. Programmers like numbers. They work better in the computer than letters. Comparing two numbers, for instance, is much easier than comparing two names. The computer can easily determine that 140 is different than 2500. But the computer just as easily decides that "Smith" is different than " Smith" unless the programmer goes to a bunch of extra effort to write a comparison routine that accommodates spaces in names as well as the length of names.

Although my name is fairly common — particularly when using just the first initial and last name — I do like it and would prefer to be identified by my name. I suspect that the computer didn’t agonize over my number like my mother did over my name. It probably took the computer a few nanoseconds to assign the number unlike me coming home from the hospital unnamed because just exactly the right name hadn’t been decided, yet (compounded by the fact that I was supposed to be a girl and just the right girl’s name had already been picked, but surprise, I was not a girl and so a new, more gender appropriate name, had to be chosen).

United Airlines knows me by my name, even though one of the numbers I have assigned to me is a United Airlines Frequent Flier Number, which I’m supposed to hold confidential and only use in appropriate places. When I call United Airlines and say something like, "Hello, my name is Roland Smith and I’m flying from Colorado Springs to San Jose next Thursday…." The nice person at United Airlines invariably answers, "I’ve got your record, Mr. Smith. How can I help you today?" Even though the record that the reservation agent is looking at is filed in the computer under a record locator number, and my travel agent sends me the flight itinerary in e-mail with the record locator number as the prominent information on the page, United Airlines never asks for that number. It’s almost like the locator number is an inconvenience for them. All they want is my name and any flight information I may have. They’ve even found the necessary data by just using my name. Now that’s a system where the programmer did the complete job. On the other hand, United Airlines is currently having lots of trouble with numbers, in particular the revenue versus expense numbers. Perhaps that’s why they prefer using names instead than numbers?

The guy behind the counter at World Gym said this morning when I came in, "Good Morning, Mr. Smith. Have a good workout." I told him I was now supposed to give him my membership number and not my name, even though I hadn’t said anything to him yet. He allowed as how he was supposed to ask for the membership number, but that since he knew who I was he didn’t need for me to give him my number, as long as his lady boss wasn’t there!She’s apparently the enforcer!

"Well," I told him, "I’ll still just use my name. It’s too early in the morning to try and remember yet another number." As I started my forty-minute-treadmill jaunt, I was watching CNN and the latest news from Iraq and the impending war and thought about how we’re living in a place that we fairly reverently call the home of the free where people have names and convicts have numbers. I think that I’m much more than a number and I plan to somehow forget my new World Gym Membership Number.

By the way, I took several hundred digital pictures in Maui. Slowly but surely the best of the crop (but close to a couple hundred pictures) are being posted on the web. Click on the pictures link to left, select Maui, and enjoy the pictures.

Turns out that someone (or maybe someones) are actually reading this journal from time to time. So, I need to become much more diligent about actually clicking on this link, logging in, and writing. The previous post came while we were still in Maui, several weeks ago.

We’ve finally had some snow. Not much, just about four inches, but enough to be called snow. The weather has also turned quite cold as well. The front walk needs to be shoveled — even though it’s a south-facing sidewalk, the sun hasn’t become warm enough to melt the snow. City ordinance says we have twenty-four hours after the end of the storm to shovel the walks. I’m in violation!

Maui was a great experience. I’d highly recommend a week or two on the island for anyone. Don’t plan on it being a relaxing vacation, however. There’s so much to do that one week isn’t enough. Next trip we’ll put Sunday in the middle of the trip so we can have an automatically slower day to rest up from the previous few days. I’ve thought about what I liked most about Maui. The sights were beautiful, the weather was lovely, the ocean was pleasant. But, overall I think it was that Maui was much different than I had expected. I was thinking we’d be in a jungle, kind of like the Philippines, that it’d be hot, and that the mosquitos and bugs would be out in abundance. None of those preconceptions were valid. I don’t think the weather got about 85 degrees while we were there, and there was always a breeze to keep things cool. The air was not very humid. The western side of the island, where we spent most of our time, was actually quite arid — no jungle here! And finally, we had a great time. We’ll definitely return. I’d be quite happy to spend a fair amount of time on Maui.

In the meantime, after returning from Maui, I made a quick trip to California on business. I convened all of my managers as well as their managers and supervisors in California for a planning / goal setting / motivational meeting. The economic climate is not improving with any speed, so the next six to twelve months will continue to be very tight. Helping them to understand how tight things really are was an important part of the offsite. To emphasize that, we didn’t even go offsite for the offsite meeting! It was held in a conference room at the facility in Milpitas, California. We had a good time, however, and the time together seemed to be very well spent. Best part of that trip, however, is that I’m staying home for all of February! No travelling anywhere in February. While that doesn’t help rack up frequent flier miles or flight segments, I’m quite happy to spend a month at home.