A business exec told me that he thinks of consulting firms a bit like Charlie Sheen thinks about prostitutes. When I asked him to explain, he said that when Sheen was being sentenced for using a prostitute, the judge asked him why a man like him would have to pay for sex. And Sheen reportedly replied: “I don’t pay them for sex. I pay them to leave.” The exec went on to explain that he prefers hiring business consulting firms that also do their jobs and then leave.
I’m repelled, but fascinated, by Sheen’s reasoning.
This story got me thinking about the demand for non-relational contracting. Ian MacNeil, my former colleague at Northwestern, was famous for claiming that most contracting is “relational” — or extends the duty to perform contracts through time and repeated transactions. But Sheen’s (possibly apocryphal) quotation has me thinking that there may be contexts in which people would pay a premium to avoid a relationship.
Some people may at times prefer A.T.M.’s to tellers in part because they don’t want to speak to tellers. Some people may prefer Merry Maids to a regular housekeeper (or may prefer to be absent when the cleaning is done). Or some people may prefer buying at Amazon.com in part because of the lack of human contact.
Indeed, what’s scariest to me as a professor is that part of the student demand for “distance learning” may come from students who don’t want to have relationships with their teachers.
A rising demand for non-relational contracting seems of a piece with Robert Putnam‘s depressing Bowling Alone thesis that we are becoming increasingly disconnected from family, friends, and neighbors. I remember the day when you might have had a conversation with the person sitting next to you on an airplane. Nowadays, if you say more than a perfunctory hello when you initially sit down, you are trespassing into your seatmate’s personal space.
Of course, there are other ways to spin the demand for non-relational contracting. Restricting and regulating our contractual relationships allows us to control and concentrate our limited relationship energy on those people who matter most to us. Surely this is sometimes the case. But conserving our limited relationship energy may backfire. Our capacity to interact with others may atrophy if it goes unused.
Moreover, some of us may be healthiest and happiest when we interact with a variety of people on a variety of levels; it may not be good for us to concentrate all of our social energy on the most intense or important relationships in our lives.
I worry that there’s too much Charlie Sheen in the modern condition. Part of my revulsion is in the glimmer of self-recognition.
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I personally prefer to speak with people via email rather than on the phone and the only person I will IM is my wife.
I really really do not like talking on the phone just to talk.
However- I do regularly meet up in real life once a year or so with many of the people that I communicate with via email and we do enjoy this, but many of my “relationships” are Long Distance ones.
Talking on the phone or IM takes “real time” like watching TV Live with all the commercials.
Email allows me to “time shift” my relationships like a VCR or TIVO.
that being said, the beginning of your post reminded me of something I learned while working on TV commercials about Actors and why many of them would put up with sitting around all day just to spend a short time in front of the lens.
“Actors are paid to wait”
I would have thrived with “distance learning” in public school. Usually, what was taught in any particular course could have been mastered in a few days. Then instead of wasting the 1000s of hours in a classroom associating with kids who had no interest in learning or doing anything positive with their life, I might have had time to get together with others of a like mind. To my way of thinking, this is the primary failure of the school system today – locking the innocents in with the hard core criminals.
I avoid anything described as a ‘family hotel’ for the same sort of reason. I want a nice, anonymous corporate place where I won’t have to chat to anyone, or be friendly to anyone.
But that doesn’t mean that I don’t value spending time and talking to people that I want to talk to. I just don’t have the emotional energy to be so free with it.
Ian – this is thought provoking idea and I am equally repelled, but also (at times shamefully) guilty. When I get out of my comfort level, and interact more with other, I most always am glad I did.
I also believe however, the distance learning craze also has a lot to do with the perception that distance learning is easier and less work than a traditional degree requires. Right or wrong that is the perception I see in many professionals looking for an easy rubber stamp on their resume
I can’t provide citations for this, but I have read (some of Bob Pollak’s work?) that there may be a preference for homecare professionals over family care on the part of some elderly – easier to maintain dignity when you are paying someone for physical care?
I pay premiums all the time to NOT have to deal with people. And, I’ll continue to do so. Your article is brilliant!
maybe he watched “Office Space” ?
” I pay them to leave” wow. I can see how it applies to contracting though. Thanks for pointing it out. Giving an employee incentives to stay is expensive, but so is giving them incentives to leave (see shirking literature). It makes sense that workers would demand a premium for short term jobs and it makes sense that employers would be willing to pay a premium. This may be especially true in the government sector where it is very expensive to fire an employee.