I find it odd that everyone finds the name change so racist. This is common practice in all call centers here in America and abroad. Do any of you really think that the Pakastani, Mexican or whatever country you are talking to when your cable goes out is named Tom, Jane, Sam, etc. As a teenager, I worked in a call center for 1 week. The first thing we did on the first day was pick a name off of a list of the most basic American sounding names you could find. As a delivery driver as a teen also, they would have drivers/waitstaff with long or exotic names shorten them to make them easier to pronounce. It is done everywhere. Ricardo becomes Rick, Antonio becomes Tony, and so on. It is done in schools everyday. It is a very common practice. Aol runs a story on it and people can't wait to yell racism, though. If you spent more than a minute thinking about it, you would realized this happenned all around you your whole life, but nobody thinks anymore. Everybody is a victim in todays society and people can't wait to scream RACISM!!!
What hypocrisy are you referring too and I didn't notice party affililation brought up in this thread previously?
It is legal to be a racist the problem is where and how you act on it. I don't know what New Mexico labor laws but under some jurisdictions I suspect firing someone because they wouldn't change their name would be cause for a lawsuit. Anyway even if NM's laws allow him to fire people for not changing names I would still consider that racist as say if he wanted his employees to wear blond wigs and blue contacts or if he said he wasn't going to hire Hispanics at all. The problem with the good business argument is that that argument has been used before. Many businesses resisted desegregation under the argument that their white customers would feel uncomfortable being around black patrons or black employees in roles other than as janitor of busboy. The argument then wasn't that this was racism just good business sense that since most their customers were white and that whites had most of the money.
This is another that makes no sense. How is it bad business? Has anyone in here ever been involved in a business or even taken a business class in college? In a customer service oriented business, rule #1 is to make your customer's as happy and comfortable as possible. In this case he and his employee's service is home for an amount of time, so in this case comfort is of the highest priority. Whether anyone here wants to admit it or not, most people are more comfortable when they can understand and communicate with those that are serving them. They are also more comfortable with familar names, which is why that has been a common practice in our society forever. I konow many won't admit to the fact they would rather deal with John than Ahckmad, but it is true in most people even if they don't admit to it. Everyone keeps saying it is bad business and just disregarding the fact that he has turned around multiple hotels including the one in question here. I guess it is easy to look past that fact when it doesn't fit your argument, though.The fact of the matter is, not being politically correct will piss a few people off, but will also bring in many people who wouldn't have come before. Also, his bad business just got him tons of free advertising. I am sure he will happily take the tradeoff
I've run multiple businesses. You're regurgitating business 101. Just as important as keeping customers happy is creating a good work environment for employees. Hotels all over that area have Hispanic employees unless your target market is racists, customers don't have a problem with that at all. So the whole "keep the customers happy" argument is nonsense here. However, employees are pissed at ownership. That will lead to subpar quality work and eventually the demise of the business. So yeah, this was a terrible business decision, as evidenced by the problems the owner is now having and the fact that this story made national news.
Again, I guess reading comprehension is not required, or maybe you thought I was from India. Either way, I am from Texas. I have never worked in an Indian call center or Indian Restaurant. I also went to grammer school and college here in Texas. So, Indian call centers do it, as well as Texas call centers, Texas Restaurants, Texas Schools, and colleges. It is common practice. I don't know how you pulled only Indian call center out of that whole post, considering that is one of the few countries I didn't mention. Re-read the post and get back to me.
P.S. - He bought the hotel in July. It's October. He hasn't remotely turned it around, and based on how the fact that his employees hate him, he's not going to. Even he admits he screwed up here.
I might've missed it but I don't recall the article saying that he had turned this hotel around. Its bad business in that he is trying to apply a one size fits all approach to a situation that is probably very different than what his previous situations. The market in Taos is probably not going to be like the market of his other hotels and neither is the workforce. A good businessman would understand the particulars of a market along with his workforce so that he could appeal to the market while keeping his workers happy and productive. Also in regard to names considering that we have had people with names like Julio Iglesias topping the charts, baseball stars named Mariano Rivera and movie stars named Benicio Del Toro you would think that there are few people out there who have a problem with Latino names. For that matter we have a President named Barack Obama so its not like funny non-Anglo names are holding people back. Signed, Sishir
OK so call centers do it so that makes it OK? I doubt any Texas College, at least state college, would make an employee change their name as that would clearly violate equal employment regulations they abide by.
I don't think it's been established that he turned around this hotel. And I'm not so sure this kind of 'free advertising' helps -- especially when hotels often rely on referrals from the towns people who he has apparently pissed off. Maybe the hotel needed a 'shake up' -- and maybe the other changes he implements will eventually make it a success. But I think he misjudged things here -- and it blew up on him.
Hotels everywhere have Hispanic employee's. I highly doubt you could find a single hotel in America without a hispanic employee. They are behind the scenes at the big 5 star hotels, but still there. That is not what is at debate here. Good work enviroments are very important. You are right in that regard, but you are failing to point out the obvious in that there are always disgruntled employee's when a new owner comes into a failing business and changes all policies to turn it around. It happens everyday. You weed out the bad apples whining about everything who will bring you down and replace them with good employee's who are on board with your vision. This is not the demise of your business, it is the start of turning it around. Again, the fact the story made National news is brilliant business. He just got more free advertisisng than he could have ever paid for. This story will pass, but someone will see the name of that Hotel and know it for some reason they can't remember.
You're probably equally jumping the gun, too, though. Three months is nowhere near enough time to turn around a business. And, disregarding for a second the current issue, losing certain employees might not be a bad idea anyway. Clearly, the way he went about it, mostly because of the negative publicity it has sparked, likely isn't good, but who knows. I find it curious as to how many think that forcing the employees to speak english is okay, but changing their names isn't ok. The basic argument being that it is good for business to force english, but can't possibly be good for business to change already relatively easy to pronounce names. It sounds somewhat hypocritical to me. I am on the side of this guy may be a racist, I don't know, but he clearly screwed this situation up. Clearly he thought that a name change would be good for business, so forced it on them.
So your business strategy is that the public will remember the name -- but not associate it with the controversy? Really?
Again, never said I worked at a College. I was a student there. It is a very common practice for every teacher/professor to shorten names of students to make them easier to pronounce. It happens from gradeschool all the way through the rest of your life. I guess it is only offensive if you are from Mexico. How big of a story would this be if he made Thomas go by Tom, Jacob by Jake, and Anthony by Tony? Nobody would give a rats a**, because they couldn't scream racism. It happens everyday to these names as well as millions of others and it starts when they are children. Political correctness gone wild is all this is. This is not even a real story, but was written so a few people could cry racism and many on here are eating it up without thinking it through.
