Oak Room Interview: 'Every time you talk to me, show me the quality of product'

This interview with Associate Vice President for Auxillary Services Joe Pietrantoni is the first in a series of Oak Room Interview designed to shed light on the personalities of noted campus figures. The interview was conducted by Kevin Lees, The Chronicle's managing editor.

KL: Since we're here, let's start off with the Oak Room.

JP: I think it's Duke's biggest tradition as far as food operations.... I think the nice thing about it is that it really hasn't changed its ambiance at all. It's exactly the way it looked at the time when it was built. It's the only upscale resaturant, you know, as far as people service, the atmopshere, the quiteness of it, there will always be a function of the Oak Room in the Duke System.

KL: How long have you been at Duke?

JP: 32 years.

KL: Now before you worked at Duke you worked a little bit with NASA, right?

JP: Aerospace, air force... we did the manned space program for NASA, Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, from 1958 to 1970. I worked at Cape Kennedy.

KL: When you worked at Cape Kennedy did you know any of the astronauts?

KL: Moving to Duke, obviously a lot of what Auxillary Services is today didn't exist when you first arrived or has changed tremendously since you arrived.

JP: What happened is when I came to Duke... we built up all these different units, consolidated printng, created a copy center, managed copy machines, redeveloped housekeeping to be more productive, better equipment, better resources, redistribute people differently, drop the cost but increase the size. Grounds were the same thing.... [Then I took up] food, retail stores and housing.

I took the same attitude with those other three as I did with those original five or six. In 1985 I... formed a student group of five to six students... and asked them to sit down and talk with me about food services. We sat down and they said it's not delivering what we want it to deliver. And I said, "Well what is it delivering?"

"It's set up more like cafetria food, breakfast, lunch and dinner, and we as students don't necessarilly want that; we want something different." So I said "What if we start breaking it apart...." So we formed a student advisory board that turned out to be Duke University Student Dining and Advising Committee.

The story behind dining was we went from day one to today looking for market, what people would want, hours of operation, decentralized services, specilaized needs.... When I took over, the students were complaining at a rate that was, they even had echo boxes in the quad that were saying, "the food is no good," it would vibrate all the way up to the clocktower. After we started breaking it apart and redeploying the resources... that stopped. Today it's virtually nil. From a very heavy concern on the students' part that we weren't giving them what they wanted, and that came through the advisory board. I guess my style has always been to ask the customer, you know, "what do you want, why do you want it, if it's not anything that will take away from where we want to go, let's try give it a whirl, let's see if it can happen."

KL: Have people ever not or will they ever stop complaining about parking, or is that just a constant?

JP: I think, like food, parking is one that will always be picked on. We're going through a drastic change in that the number of buildings we're building is moving parking lots out to the periphary, so it isn't settling down fast enough

I think parking will settle down at Duke, because some of the core areas we've developed and will keep for years to come, for example, the undergraduate Blue Zone. The Blue Zone is going to be there, I mean we're not going to take the Blue Zone and put a building there. So I think we've addressed one category of customers, the undergraduates, on and off campus, the Blue Zone is big enough to fit them both. The east campus freshmen, they're not in a real bad place, so I'm saying I have 6,000 undergrads that we have positioned their parking to be okay where it is, and I don't see us changing that. The distrubtion is people asking to leave the Blue Zone and go somehwere else, grad students, employees, that's still causing unrest.... I really believe that if and when the University and the Medical Center combine their programs it will just get better. So it's got a good foundation, the parking system has a good foundation.

KL: Now the DukeCard didn't exist when you first came here, obviously. Where are access issues going in the future?

JP: The [technology] I want to keep an eye on, the one I think that in the end for access transactions like parking gates and door locks is going to be biometrics. We want biometrics online.

KL: How long do you think it will be until biometrics are widely disperesed?

JP: In a couple, three years, give or take. [The technology is] there now, its just a matter of getting people used to using biometrics.

KL: What are some ideas that we haven't seen that never quite got off the planning board?

JP: I wish we could have done more consolidation of resources and make things happen easier with more flow, which is what I did at GE. Because I'm near the end of my career, it's funny: The same thing that applied 40 years ago applies now��different technologies, but still the fundamentals. Do it right, do it efficiently.... What I did was say, "Look, I want to provide a quality product, a quality service, but I want it competively priced." Now those are three simple sentences that you could write anything you want around. But every time you talk to me, show me the quality of product, or services and product. Show me both, and show me if you put it on the street, it will be competitively priced.... I don't need more than that.

Auxillary services has to cover it, there's no subsidy or tuition money, it's just solely on the sale of the product or service. And if those three things aren't met, in my opinion we lose, we can't keep the company going, we can't pay the bills. If you didn't buy 21 million dollars worth of food, I couldn't have the food program I have.... In that sense, we're very customer-service driven. Frankly it's survival, because we don't have any other revenue source.

KL: One of the interesting things has been outsourcing. What do you make of the entire trend?

I pride myself in self-operation, if you talk to me, if I can do it, I'll do it. I like the ownership of anything. But I'm also a realist. When you look at auxillary srvices, you look at the level of things that we have to provide, and you have to ask yourself, "Can I do it at the level of quality product, service and competitive price? And if I could do it, what would it cost me to do it?"

In the case of food... it's just that the market is going up around it and the specalization is enormous. What would it cost me to have a dietician, what would it cost me to have a menu planner, what would it cost me to have training for all these different types of product/service offerings, and if I did all that, would it be a quality product/service and at a competitive price? Now some people would say to me, it doesn't have to be competitive, but I would say you're wrong.

Where it reaches the point where we are too small to have the infrastructure to maintain the market competitive price and the technological ability to deliver what's got to be delivered, when I look at it and say, no matter how hard I try, it's not going to happen because I'm not large enough... then I'm going to privatize.... Do I think there will be many more privatized? I don't think there will be many more. The areas where we are vulnerable, we got [already].

KL: You have a particularly good relatoinship with employees.

JP: If you were working for me, what would be the first thing you wanted me to offer you? Job security. So I've got to make sure that happens... The second thing you want is recognition, pay, opportunity to grow.... The third thing would be meeting with people, getting out on the side walk, shaking their hands and patting them on the back.... Sometimes it isn't just money; recognition, a pat on the back, changing a name tag to read employee of the month or citing you for being extra special, sometimes that is worth a lot more.

In the end, [privatization] offers job stablity for the remainder... was it an easy thing to do? No. Did it hurt because we lost some people? Yes, but would we have lost them anyway? Probably more. Indecision leads to some very scary things going down the road. When you're in a job like mine you have to make decisions, some are hard. But in all my years, nobody has ever gotten laid off because of my decision.

KL: Are you thinking of retiring?

JP: We're looking at within a year of so, unless something changes. We talk about leaving and enjoying the retirement life....

KL: Last question: One of your most enduring trademarks is your propensity to call everybody "friend."

JP: You meet an employee, you'd always have a smile on your face, so one day, somewhere back when, the word "friend" seemed like it wasn't offensive in any way or form, and... it just stuck. But the real secret behind it is that I'm really poor with names... The day I stop the friend thing is the day I know who you are.