Rest vs. Customer Experience | Customers, Etc.
What does observing the sabbath have to do with customer experience?
The Supreme Court this week heard the case of Gerald Groff vs. the United States Postal Service. Groff, a former mail carrier and evangelical Christian, claims that the USPS failed to accommodate his request to not work on Sundays due to his religious beliefs. A lower court had ruled against Groff, citing an "undue burden" on the USPS and potential low morale for other employees. However, during oral arguments, there appeared to be consensus among the justices that the appeals court had been too quick to rule against Groff.
This case is interesting to me for a number of reasons, perhaps most notably because I’ve been thinking about what it means for me as an individual to rest from work, but also because of the implications of what it means for a society to recognize an individual’s need to rest from work, whether for religious or personal reasons.
It’s also interesting because, at its roots, this case is about customer experience and expectations (“wait, really?” yup—stay tuned). On the one hand, you have an employee who wants to take a Sabbath—a day of rest—on Sundays. On the other hand, you have an employer, USPS, wanting to fulfill a commitment to its customer, Amazon, by delivering packages on Sunday. These two desires—for rest and for work—are in conflict. Let’s dive in.
A nation rests
The Supreme Court case centers on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Since the case is about religion, that’s where I’d like to start. My interest is more anthropological than religious, at least in this context, but let’s start with a religious approach, and then move to the anthropological.
One of the ten commandments1 is “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy,”2 but the idea of rest is in the very beginning of scripture in the story of creation, in the first chapter in the first book of the bible. God created the heavens and the earth, and what did God do on the seventh day?
And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.|
And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.3
If you were an observant Jew in ancient Israel, the Sabbath would have been foundational to your life and to the life of all people in your community. Everyone had to observe the Sabbath and rest from work, even foreigners and laborers who were not Jews4.
What makes this interesting from an anthropological perspective? If it’s the law of the land that nobody is able to work on the same day of the week, one person cannot gain an advantage over another by offering a product or service seven days per week when everyone else is offering it six days per week, to put it in economic terms. Everyone has to rest. No exceptions.
Competing for customers
But what if everyone doesn’t have to rest? Fast forward a few thousand years to the United States. There’s of course no constitutional mention of the Sabbath; so for the most part, businesses are free to provide goods and services on Sundays5. If you have the resources and customers are asking for it, you can offer it.
I don’t know why, but I think one of the most interesting things about this case is that it’s Amazon that’s ultimately the catalyst for the USPS to begin delivering on Sundays. Since 1775, the US Postal Service didn’t deliver on Sundays. Then Amazon comes along and now they do.
Why did Amazon want to begin delivering on Sundays? To improve service for customers, of course.
"If you're an Amazon Prime member, you can order a backpack for your child on Friday and be packing it for them Sunday night," said Dave Clark, Amazon's vice president of worldwide operations and customer service in the statement. "We're excited that now every day is an Amazon delivery day and we know our Prime members, who voraciously shop on Amazon, will love the additional convenience they will experience as part of this new service."
What do you expect from the company that said the following as the very first (non-legalese) statement in their most recent 10-K?
We seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company. We are guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking.
For Amazon, improving the customer experience is like water finding a level. Whatever is legal and permissible is probably eventually where they’ll end up. Which is fine. That’s their goal. Organizations can have other goals, like running a sustainable monastery, but Amazon’s is to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, so they’ll do whatever it takes within the bounds of the law to serve customers.
Law and rest
This brings us back to the case before the court. If Amazon is doing whatever it takes to serve customers (“our customers want Sunday delivery!”), and the Postal Service is doing whatever it can to survive (“we are a veritable money pit—we have to take this contract with Amazon to justify our existence”), what prevents business stakeholders in this chain from compelling employees to work on Sunday, even if it’s in violation of their religious beliefs?
Much of the argument before the Court is about what constitutes “undue hardship”. Title VII states:
The term "religion" includes all aspects of religious observance and practice, as well as belief, unless an employer demonstrates that he is unable to reasonably accommodate to an employee's or prospective employee's religious observance or practice without undue hardship on the conduct of the employer's business.
If the businesses in the supply chain have made a commitment to customers to provide a service on Sunday, and one employee says “I can’t do that—it violates my religion,” what types of hardship create a significant enough burden to be considered “undue”? If there’s pain in rescheduling? If there’s not a sub available? If there is a sub available but the sub is grumpy and you have to pay them time and a half? Where’s the line?
I’m by no means a legal expert, but it would be disheartening if the response from the Court is: “Sorry, Mr. Groff, Sally over on Cherry Street was at a party on Friday when she ordered a backpack for her son from the Amazon app on her iPhone. We appreciate you working Monday through Saturday, but everyone is saying it would be really hard on them if you didn’t deliver this backpack to Sally over on Cherry Street on Sunday. If you can’t do that, we’re going to have to ask you to resign.”
It’s so weird to say “one of the commandments”, but which is it, the 3rd? the 4th? I don’t know!
Exodus 20:8, KJV
Genesis 2:2-3, KJV
Exodus 20:10: "But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.", KJV
Some states mention a sabbath in their constitution or have laws on the books about certain activities not being permitted on Sunday, but these kinds of laws are much less common than they used to be. Interestingly, in McGowan v. Maryland (1961), the Supreme Court held that Maryland’s decision to compel rest on Sunday did not constitute establishing of a religion, citing secular benefits for such a decision:
"[T]he Sunday laws, both statutory and constitutional, have a secular purpose. They provide a periodic day of rest for all citizens; they represent a recognition by government of a practice which has historically, not only in this country but in others as well, been considered an essential value because of its close relationship to the spiritual and moral well-being of individuals; and, as noted earlier, the nature of Sunday as a day of rest for all makes it peculiarly appropriate as a day for the promotion of this secular goal. Moreover, the presence of a secular basis for Sunday legislation is confirmed by the fact that even the United States Government recognizes the utility of a periodic day of rest, not only in connection with postal operations, but also in connection with the operation of a great many other governmental activities."