The morning news programs were blathering about Wells Fargo pulling the plug on its $20 million, annual “2-week bash” that had been scheduled for later this spring at the new Wynn Encore in Las Vegas. When my wife and I went to Las Vegas for our annual pre-Christmas two-day respite, we stayed at the Wynn for the first time (our budget usually restricting us to lesser hotels) and were able to be Steve Wynn’s guest for a paltry $119 per night. Not bad for a 750 square foot room with plasma screen and all the amenities.

When the original Wynn Las Vegas opened three years ago, you couldn’t get any room for less than $250 per night on any day of the week. When its sister facility, Encore, opened on December 22nd, the even bigger rooms (850-900 square feet) were available for $159 per night and have since been available at various times for closer to $100.

So, where am I going with this? Wells Fargo was not so much encouraged, but rather coerced into taking the original bail out money. Wells’ Chairman, Dick Kovacevich, “took one for the team”. He didn’t want it. They didn’t need it. But, they are now in the trough with the rest of the banks and are being scrutinized for their every move.

As a consequence, they have felt compelled by public pressure to cancel an event that has been the hallmark of Kovacevich’s way of doing business for 30 years, the annual Sales and Service Recognition events. Yes, events, plural. The news stations are portraying this “2-week bash” in a way that conjures up images of AIG Senior Executives sipping martinis by the pool. The fact is that the Wells Fargo events are a series of 3-4 day recognition rewards meetings for each of their major businesses that are staged back-to-back in order to save money by having all the senior executives (who work their butts off showering recognition on the top performers) only travel once. By aggregating the events, they get a much better deal and save the shareholders’ money. For two weeks the top producers and the best service personnel in the company (the “best of the best,” along with a guest) cycle through the venue in waves and are shown the recognition they deserve for a job well done. A large percentage of these folks are making $50K or below per year; proof operators, tellers, call center service personnel and front line sales folks like the people who help you open or fix problems with your accounts; folks who may never have gotten on an airplane before, let alone having gone to a place like Wynn Las Vegas.

I have been a host at these events in the past and they are motivating experiences. They are a rare ray of sun amidst the usual drudgery of the service economy worker’s life in which those who keep things moving and give their best to serve others get to go up on stage and have a thousand people cheer them on for going the extra mile. This type of pat on the back is the important soft management motivation stuff that business schools have been teaching numbers-focused MBA candidates to not forget for decades. Apparently, the new era in America has no room or time for a pat on the back. Peter Drucker is rolling over in his grave. Call the editors. Rewrite those management text books. Run the numbers and get back to work.

Steve Wynn was on the news in December on a local Vegas station saying that “2009 will separate the men from the boys” in Las Vegas. Well, Steve, I guess your manliness is being put to the test pretty quickly. And, worse yet, the $20 million dollars Wells Fargo would have paid to your property would primarily have gone to pay the bell hops and waiters and support staff that keep events like this moving; the kind of folks these events had intended to celebrate; the “working class” families that the geniuses on the Hill are so intent on “taking care of.” Those Las Vegas service workers are now going to be sitting at home unemployed in April rather than waiting tables and setting up stages for the recognition their fellow working class colleagues so richly deserve.

Wouldn’t it be better to have our economy working in a way that supported these families through dignified work rather than hand-outs?

Under the new social order, I guess not.