The new office

Last week (the week before?) I was listening to either an American Public Media or a National Public Radio phone-in show & the guest that people were phoning in to speak with was a woman who recently wrote a book, an egghead book not a mainstream book, about how many of the jobs that have not returned as the economy turned around are just plain not coming back.  Her theory was that technology had changed so much in the preceding ten years that the way business is conducted had also changed, specifically no one needs the kind of office support staff that was the norm.  While these jobs had been slowly falling away as people changed jobs or retired & the chairs went empty, the massive belt tightening meant a lot of them went all at once.

First let me say "duh".  Earlier this year we had our septic system pumped.  We used the same company we have used since we bought this house & it had been less than 4 years since the last time we did this.  The experience was night&day.  Last time I called on a ?Monday? & got the office manager/administrator/secretary/whoever & an appointment for the following week (it wasn't an emergency & that was fine).  The owner, an older man, arrived, dug out the two tank openings (we have two unconnected tanks, weird & yet very useful), pumped the tanks, hand-wrote a bill which I paid by check.  He was here maybe 3 hours total.  At the beginning of the following month, I got a typed statement in the mail which reflected a balance of $0. 

This time I called, got the office manager/administrator/secretary/whoever & she said they could be there later the same day.  Both she & the owner (a younger man who had worked with the other guy for years; he had been out on previous jobs in previous years) arrived.  They had a laptop with the layout of our property & where the tanks were (I could have told them but they tell me this is not the norm).  While he dug one, she dug the other.  While he pumped, she went back to the truck & made & received phone calls & printed my bill from the printer in the truck.  The bill had ALL my previous calls on it & a notice of when they were likely to be needed back for a routine job (3-5 years).  She offered to make the appointment for five years out with the understanding it might change.  They were here exactly 1 1/2 hours.

I realize it sounds like there are just as many people in both stories working just as many man hours, but there aren't.  In the previous visit, there is another guy in another truck also working alone & checking in with the office.  Now there is one guy doing all the driving himself, but becasue he has a n extra pair of hands when he needs them he is covering just as many places as two used to. 

All of this hinges on the reality that in the second story there is no office.  The office works all gets done on the road except for once a month, once a quarter, once a year stuff which they handle at home.  That is one less full-time job than there was five years ago with no loss in service.  & it doesn't stop there.

This elimination of offices generally has eliminated quite a few jobs:  no office means no once a week cleaning staff to come in & clean that office, driving the office around means no more delivery guy with office supplies coming out to the office every month or so.  That is another three jobs poof & gone.

I have a friend who cleans offices for a living, or rather she used to.  She used to clean seven offices a week & a public area on weekends.  Now she has two cleaning jobs during the week & the public area every other weekend (that one irks her actually because it is the same amount of work & now she gets calls on the off-week that the garbage cans are overflowing & when is she going to deal with them).  The offices she doesn't clean anymore are still there, empty & at least one of the businesses still exists.  Ironically they are the cleaning company she still works for except now the manager handles scheduling etc. in her car between cleaning jobs.

Last Monday I had my sewing machines cleaned & serviced by the same guy who has taken care of them since I bought them (trust me, it has been years).  I used to bring them to his shop & wait a week.  & I can still bring the machine to him & wait a week if I want, but mostly he just comes to the house.  His shop is now a room in his own house & he has maybe 2 or 3 machines there at a time, most afternoons he is on the road & although his travel expenses are higher, they are more than offset by the reduction in overhead.

Last night I accidentally tuned into a presidential candidates speech (I flipped the tv on & then went into the other room where I can still watch it but forgot the remote).  The gist of the speech was how when he is president he will bring these jobs back & the crowd went wild.  I wonder if they will be as pleased when they realize that bringing these jobs back will mean commuting longer to get to work (the average commute is a fraction of what it was ten years ago, by the way & generally it is longer commutes to lower paying jobs) & taking on all that expense (deductible if you are the CEO & the company send a car  but not for the average worker), as well as giving up their cell phones & a slew of other conveniences we really do take for granted.  Maybe it's time to consider we just don't live in that world anymore.  & unemployed or not, most of us don't really want to go back.

What would Sandy do?

I come from a family of avid & yet moderate Red Sox fans.  What does that look like?  Well, during the regular season it is Red Sox all the way.  & this years post season, they rooted for the Yankees because they are the same division.  That's right, no rabid saliva streaming "Yankees must die" rants.  It is just we would rather see the Red Sox lose, after all they choke with such style, than the Yankees win but if it is going to be the Yankees well it is going to be the Yankees.


Some of my fondest baseball-listening memories are of listening to Yankee games on the radio (baseball is just better on the radio).  Fondest retrospectively anyhow.  At the time, Phil Rizzuto's rambling about nothing happening on the field for inning after inning could get old. He would yak yak yak & then get around to giving the score, which was nowhere near what it had been.  I still remember the day he & his co-broadcaster (I think it was Bill White) disagreed about something & the other guy asked if Rizzuto was going to have some of his Money Store buddies talk with him.   Lately though, the Yankee I have been thinking about is Sandy Koufax.  & wondering what he would do.

Within days of the final exam date being assigned for A's class this semester someone observed it fell on one of the nights of Chanukah, neither the first nor the last, but one of the other six.  There was concern what this might mean for those students who could not be asked to sit an exam during a religious holiday.  This was a kind of funny concern, especially  1) Chanukah begins the day before exams begin & ends the day after exams end;  there is no such thing as an exam being given this semester that is NOT on a day of Chanukah & 2) of the three professors responsible for this particular large lecture, two of them are Jewish.  So far the administration has not suggested they sit out exams as well.

Sandy Koufax, for those of you not in the know, missed the opening game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur.  So we know what Sandy did.  Still, what would Sandy do?  Because  Yom Kippur is a very big deal & Chanukah is just plain not as important.  Also, Sandy made it to the second game of same series; he did not sit out the whole thing.

So what to do for the (potential) student who says he cannot take this (or any) exam because of  Chanukah?  The clincher might have to be: what did he do for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th & 7th nights of Chanukah last year?

I had to look it up, but for those nights of Chanukah in previous years, one of the two Jewish professors in this fable kept his office hours, attended his lectures & even proctored an exam.  If anybody did not take that one because it was Chanukah, he never mentioned it. 

//One of my brothers has a special name for the Red Sox:  Lords of the Rookie Mistake.  Someday I will write a novel & that just might be the title.

No news is bad news

In less than a week the local uni-radio station will switch from the classical music during the day, news radio on the fringes format to all news all the time. I admit I am a big fan of NPR & am happy there will be more news programming, but I wish they had not gone quite so whole hog.

I understand the fiscal arguments (listener numbers plummet when classical music takes the air), the civic arguments (there is a dearth of fair & balanced news in our culture no matter what the for-profit news media outlets call themselves) & the music is still around arguments (the classical music 'station' will move to one of the HD radio channels) & agree with 99.9% of them. I just wish they had made a partial exception for those classical music programs produced locally.

It is not that I think the local programs are better then the national ones (I am quite sure they are not) but because I think that just as important as information from a source who is not making his salary from the guy trying to sell you a car (or a stock or a healthplan or a not-healthplan as the case may be) is knowing that someone very close by is in media. & I firmly believe that still applies, even if the area of expertise is not today's headlines but instead Gregorian chants or unfinished fugues or some other not-previously thought of aspect of classical music.

For the record I am also for keeping two other locally produced shows, neither of which I can stand: Connor Calling a christian-right view of contemporary publications from a bicyclers guide to north/central Florida to a biography of Albert & Victoria & everything in between (or not, I mean everything) & Sikorski's Attic, where guy attempts the antique roadshow over the phone. Why? It is that local thing again. The book-sjhow oftens features local authors or books of local interest, the antique guy does regualr F*R*E*E programs at the library. I do not have to agree with them or even like what they do to know that their just being here & being themselves is good for this community.

We need to stop super-starring the news readers & having the lady up the street talk about Mozart or Bach or whomever five days a week did that. Even if you do not care about Mozart or Bach or classical music period. Hearing voices on the radio we also hear in the grocery store, on the football sidelines & every where else around our lives is almost more important than what those voices say.

& that is why I wish that they had decided to keep the handful of locally produced music programs on the air, even if the hours were reduced, even they were tucked around the edges, even if they played nothing but Rachmaninoff (which I loathe), even then I would make sure I tuned in. Do not get me wrong, I will be delighted with more NPR news. But I am sorry it is at this cost.