Secrecy, in politics and music

[adaher]

The wikileaks controversy got me thinking about how a lot of things that seem like pure BS are kept secret, along with of course the legitimate national security or diplomatic stuff that must remain confidential. Governments are obsessive about secrecy, to the point where an English translation of a Belgian newspaper article was classified Top Secret.

But as I laughed about it all, I realized that people in the music industry aren't much different, or even people in any organization. Everyone wants to be able to announce things at a time of their choosing. If the PP roster leaked a few days early, Glenn would be pissed. But would this actually do him any damage? Sometimes there are rumors of possible reunions, but the band members and labels stay mum most of the time until they can make the Big Announcement. When Timo Tolkki was putting together his new supergroup, it was all hush-hush. I understand the human desire to control the release of information, but sometimes it just gets ridiculous.

Sometimes I think this stuff is harmful. Especially in workplace situations, there are things employees might really need to know, but employers hold information close to the vest(and I'm not talking about trade secrets here). My own company is leaving their building and moving. They put a For Sale sign out front a full month before they announced the move. So for a month we're wondering what the heck is going on and they say they'll tell us later. Now we know we'll be moving in march, but we don't know where. Have they chosen a location? Are they still looking? Where are they looking? And why would this information need to be kept secret? How long after they finalize the leasing or buying of the new office building will they tell us? Why not the very next day?

Just some random thoughts and ranting about the whole secrecy thing, and I thought since it had a tangential relationship to music and Progpower I thought I'd put it here.

 

[J-Dubya 777]

Totally the MO where I work at, sucks, and our group is being treated like shit... They usually execute the leaders first, and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm out of work soon. They deny any suspicions, and then WHAM! kick your ass. I fucking hate it...It's worse than it has ever been. Hope to jump ship before the ship jumps me......

 

[Rockbox1590]

Adaher, now you know why I hate Pizza Hut and it's parent company Yum Brands so much. Back in '07, Pizza Hut sold the Columbus market to a national franchise called America's Pizza Company. APC came in and decided they were going to close the call center where I worked and have the stores take their own orders after over 20 years of the call center doing it. We kept the stores as honest as possible, but APC didn't want the expense of operating the center. They made up their minds from day 1 but didn't have the balls to tell us. Shortly after they took over we started nearly rumors of being closed down, and the call center manager had been forced to sign a NDA and lie to us for an entire year. During all this APC even had us taking orders for the Denver, Colorado. In the end, 100 of us lost our jobs, and those that went from the call centers to the stores were treated like garbage and basically forced out. There was no reason to treat is like that, and the switch over has only cost the market profits. The stores are screwing over their customers and putting out garbage. They won't fix mistakes when they make them and are losing customers to the competition. Hell, they screwed up so badly that Little Cesar's was able to come back in to the market after being forced out years earlier.

 

[adaher]

Yeah, I love how employees are expected to give their employers notice, but employers hide the fact they are going to do layoffs until the last second.

Now Pizza Hut, that's interesting, because when I worked there from 1992-2000, we didn't have call centers, we took orders in store. There are two drawbacks to this: 1) less professional people, but you can probably pay them less. I'd imagine call center folks probably command more money than just crew members. 2) Inside crew don't tend to stay in one spot, so answering phones ends up being just one of many priorities to deal with. Having a call center would have meant one less thing to worry about so we could concentrate on getting pizzas made and out the door. And of course when you have other priorities, you tend to rush people through their order. I used to groan when people would call and then turn around to everyone else in the house and say, "What do you guys want"? If I had other calls on hold, that would always result in me putting that call on hold so they could discuss it amongst themselves. And while it would be nice if customers would discuss that before calling, it would also be nice if I could have given each customer the time they needed.

 

[Pellaz]

Gotta say, Pizza Hut began using their centralized order-taking system here (it was called c.o.t.s.) in Atlanta. I was delivering for Dominos at the time but ended up switching over to Pizza Hut back in the infancy of their pizza delivery operation.

And it sucked.

The problem with one call-center for a large metro city is that you have people who didn't have any idea where the orders were coming from taking the orders. Bake-shops would get tickets for completely wrong streets, in the wrong cities and towns. It was abysmal. We were taking pies out to customers 90 min to 2 HOURS after the initial order....in the meantime they had given up, ordered from Dominos, finished their pizzas and tossed the boxes in the trash. Wasted trip and usually no money for the company.
Things got a little better over time, but not enough, and they scrapped the centralized ordering system about five years later. It always meant that Pizza Hut would lag behind Dominos in efficiency, since at Dominos, the dough is already being tossed and getting put on the make-line before the customer is even off the phone....and if local conditions warranted, we could warn the customer of a slightly longer or shorter delivery time. With a faceless call-center far removed from the frontline, that was impossible, and Pizza Hut paid a heavy price in this market.

 

[adaher]

Not sure how much that matters given that it takes some time to really be familiar with a delivery area and inside crew usually doesn't have a chance to get that familiar with it. So there's no real advantage over a call center. The key is to have good IT systems to determine where orders are supposed to go. When you order online with any company, it sends you to the correct store 99% of the time, and your address is checked to make sure it's valid. No reason a call center can't have that advantage.

I notice some Dominos' are now using automated menus when you call. Which in theory sounds okay, but in practice is very cumbersome. It took me five minutes to place an order for two cheese pizzas and a soda.

 

[freakchylde]

That's why I use the website. I refuse to talk to store staff, except to get my food.

 

[AeonicSlumber]

T

But as I laughed about it all, I realized that people in the music industry aren't much different, or even people in any organization. Everyone wants to be able to announce things at a time of their choosing. If the PP roster leaked a few days early, Glenn would be pissed. But would this actually do him any damage? Sometimes there are rumors of possible reunions, but the band members and labels stay mum most of the time until they can make the Big Announcement. When Timo Tolkki was putting together his new supergroup, it was all hush-hush. I understand the human desire to control the release of information, but sometimes it just gets ridiculous.

When has this kind of thing ever gotten ridiculous? With tours/festivals/gigs of any kind, things are kept hush hush for a reason. For example, say Hammerfall is doing a headlining tour right now, but this spring, they will be a part of a major tour with Dragonforce. If they announced their participation on the Dragonforce tour right now, while the headliner was still going on, fans may want to skip these shows and wait until the spring, which could mean A) bad attendance records which means the promoter would get mad at the booking agent and then the band would get less touring, and B) bad attendance records which means not as many merch sales so the band loses money.

The same holds true for festivals. Alot of them can't just announce bands as soon as they are booked for the very same reason. They need to fulfill any other specific requirement beforehand before confirming involvement for a later time. Sometimes there are contracts between the booking agent and the promoter requiring that the promoter cannot announce the gig until a specified time.

The "secrets" aren't kept because they want to make a big deal out of the announcement or build hype, or keep anything from you, it's usually because they have to. The Wikileaks thing on the other hand (in my opinion) is a completely different story. If my taxes are going to pay to support a military that unloads on innocent Iraqi civilians, I have a right to know. Corruption should never be kept secret. As far as the current Wikileaks dump, I'm on the fence. It's all pretty stupid and inconsequential information so far, so it could've stayed hidden. But some of the stuff Wikileaks let out imo was necessary like the aforementioned video of our troops mowing down Iraqi children from the comfort of a helicopter.

 

[Pellaz]

Not sure how much that matters given that it takes some time to really be familiar with a delivery area and inside crew usually doesn't have a chance to get that familiar with it. So there's no real advantage over a call center.

Ummmm. No.

Maybe things are different now, but when I was working at Dominos, our 'phone girls' (yes, really, they were all girls) were all from the immediate area and had a pretty good idea of the streets that were in our delivery area. If there was any question, any longtime driver or manager could tell them immediately. (We also had a kick-ass wall map from the county surveyors' office that showed plat sizes and street numbers. THAT was a good store, and one of the busiest in the system.)

The key is to have good IT systems to determine where orders are supposed to go. When you order online with any company, it sends you to the correct store 99% of the time, and your address is checked to make sure it's valid. No reason a call center can't have that advantage.

"I'd like my order to go to 798 Peachtree."

I doubt even the best IT systems are going to get THAT right...not in Atlanta, anyway.

 

[adaher]

My phone people came from the area too, but that didn't always mean they knew the area.

AeonicSlumber, I'm well aware there are some cases where you wouldn't want to announce something as soon as it happens, but it seems like there's a default mode of secrecy to everything in the industry. Like the Tolkki supergroup which a lot of people knew about for some time, but not the public. Can you explain why that would need to be kept from leaking?

Or Van Halen, where insiders report they are working on an album, but Van Halen themselves say angrily that it's not happening. If it does turn out to be happening, that's just going to make me respect them less. Why deny it?

 

[AeonicSlumber]

AeonicSlumber, I'm well aware there are some cases where you wouldn't want to announce something as soon as it happens, but it seems like there's a default mode of secrecy to everything in the industry. Like the Tolkki supergroup which a lot of people knew about for some time, but not the public. Can you explain why that would need to be kept from leaking?

If they don't have a deal yet or a deal signed, or are in the process of signing a deal, they may want to hold off before announcing the band if they can't play any music for the fans.

 

[dcowboys311]

Yeah exactly, and supergroups are especially fickle. I mean look at how many people "know" about the Portnoy/Akerfeldt/Wilson supergroup. But where's the music? Where's anything? Things fall apart. Nobody wants to announce something and then retract 2 weeks later.