Posted on 01/29/2014 1:46:20 PM PST by Dick Bachert
As this is written, Atlanta is still in the throes of another winter weather situation. The TV is filled with images of major highways littered with abandoned vehicles. Many of their owners are stranded in make-shift shelters until warmer weather makes the roads passable again.
The governor and other officials just concluded a news conference to explain how the mess unfolded and that they've learned much from this experience.
One of the lessons they “learned” is that, once the potential severity of this event became obvious, dismissing public and private employees all at once to try to get home was a really bad idea as it is many of their abandoned vehicles now clogging the roads, making it impossible for the salt and sand trucks to do their thing.
How unfortunate that so many of these state officials and private business management folks seem to be slow learners. We've had a number of these events in years past and the result is the same: Hundreds of thousands of gallons of expensive fuel burned, multiple thousands of people stranded, some folks even dying in accidents or from exposure, etc.
There IS a sensible solution for at least SOME of these folks and the problems they faced, a solution that could also seriously curtail the massive and growing year round Atlanta traffic rush hour gridlock and, just incidentally, conserve that precious fuel and reduce the CO2 and other emissions the Algore and the other “climate change” charlatans insist causes “global warming” (despite growing evidence that they're nuts).
In the 60s and 70s, Tom Peters, an American writer on business management practices, wrote and spoke extensively on what he called the “Electronic Cottage.” It was a very sensible proposal made possible by the coming of age of the electronic revolution.
In a nutshell, his proposal, even MORE sensible now that the electronic revolution has had 50 years to mature, is that, unless a worker's occupation absolutely required that he leave his home each day to drive to where he performs his duties, the need for him to do so was becoming unnecessary. If he or she was one of the growing number of INFORMATION workers from whom an employer needed mainly or only an INFORMATION WORK PRODUCT, that product could just as easily be created in an “electronic cottage” in some small portion of his or her home.
If I have to explain the societal benefits of that, please stop reading now as you may be one of Obama's no/low information folks and wouldn't grasp how it would save vast amounts of valuable energy resources and human time as folks no longer would need to sit in stop and go rush hours breathing noxious fumes for several hours each day. If you are one of those whose job requires you to navigate a rush hour twice a day, try to imagine how YOUR rush hour experience might improve with half or more of the vehicles removed from the highways?
Speaking of noxious fumes, I sincerely believe that these big city rush hours and those noxious fumes are damaging our brains, exacerbating the dumbing down begun in the government schools to the point where 47% or so of us actually believed the BS laid down my Obama and put an unvetted, unqualified, Marxist community organizer in office – TWICE – and still haven't noticed that his every act is designed to destroy America.
(I'm tempted to raise the issue of school busing but that's a topic for another rant.)
There is another reason why Peters' common sense proposal has not gained more traction. That is the ego driven flaw that dictates that the corporate guy who makes it up the food chain to a corner office feels the need to be able to periodically stroll from that office and gaze around at a mass of cubicle enclosed fellow humans and know that they are “his” people. Their absence from his sight would cause him to feel less important and secure.
And, speaking of security, it COULD come to pass that those above him in that food chain might begin to question just why HE is in that corner office. Can't have that sort of thing now, can we, lest it ripple up and down the entire food chain.
So, while I don't hold out much hope that the electronic cottage with all its many benefits will get any serious consideration, it is possible that coming events here might force it upon us.
Carry chains in your 4x4?
Agree.
I have that “electronic cottage” in my home.
In the DC area today there was a slight dusting. Knowing the transplant idiots that come to this city (particularly from the south who have no idea how to handle snow) I prudently worked at home rather then venture to the office.
The fact that anyone with a laptop and internet connection commutes to an office anymore is ridiculous
If I know a big storm is coming that will really tie up traffic, I take my computer home the night before and work from home.
A better lesson from the storm:
Chick-fil-A gives free food to motorists stranded in Southern snowstorm
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3117140/posts
Once Chick-Fil-a determined that stranded drivers, stuck in their cars for nearly seven hours, went without food or water, the Chick-fil-A staff went into action, cooking several hundred sandwiches then braving the icy storm to hand out the sandwiches.
Chick-Fil-a staffers braved the falling snow and ice, slipping and sliding, as they offered their famous hot juicy chicken breasts tucked between two buttered buns. Chick-fil-A refused to take a single penny for their sandwiches. The meal was a gift – no strings attached.
At least we got the Lead outta gasoline.
How about the lesson is that not everything can predicted.
Atlanta is rather far south.
On the other hand, I believe it is at the highest elevation of any East Coast city. Hard to understand how they can be THIS totally unprepared.
The lesson I see is if there’s weather inbound to your area that your area almost never gets, things will be crazy, try to stay home (electric cottage, call in sick, whatever it takes).
The problem with telecommuting is that anything that can be done from your home and an Internet connection can be done by some guy in Mumbai or Bangalore from HIS Internet connection.
Wait until management finds out who costs less!
Those crazy homophobes!
8^]
It is a brave new world, however there are many jobs stateside that are information jobs that you simply can’t get the same quality in Mumbai. Along with that you have certification requirements, clearance requirements, citizen requirements as well.
Then wait until they find out how difficult it is to terminate an employee, or not pay him even if there is no work to do.
I've been responsible for sending work to a sub-group of my department in India. I don't want to be in that position again. The biggest fear we had in staffing up for a large job was the inability to back staff down.
I wonder if they asked someones sexual orientation before they gave them a sammich. I rather doubt it.
1. They let everyone out at the same time 2. 2" of snow turned into solid ice 3. No one I know, and I've been around a while, can navigate successfully on solid ice. Atlanta is a southern city that rarely gets storms of this magnitude. Last one in 2011. I know, I was snowed in for 8 days. Previous to 2011, the last big one I remember was a huge ice storm in 97 or 98. Now why would a southern city spend untold millions to stock sand, salt and snowplows if they're only going to be used once every 5-6 years?
It's not the employees who want to be in the office(s).
It is the employers who insist that they need butts in seats.
“Now why would a southern city spend untold millions to stock sand, salt and snowplows”
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While my family was from Atlanta in the 30s, I grew up in Memphis, where we had a 14 inch snow in Dec. 63 and 17 inch in March of 68.
I remember hearing that the city had one snow plow, but sold it back in the 50s.
I also remember ice skating on city park ponds. The park service set up barrel fires along the banks to help us keep warm. The 1963 snow was accompanied by a MINUS 13 degrees.
My cold spells now are temps dipping into the 70s. It is now 78 outside at 7:30 AM, haha. I might have to put on a shirt.
GLOBAL WARMING!!!!!!!!!!
Maybe the drivers thought they could cheat their way thru the snow.
Of course, cheating didn’t work out so well for those Atlanta teachers either.
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