1983 How Botched Jobs Happen

We have been considering this topic in this space for years: how do people get away with doing a terrible job... and finally have come to something of a conclusion, even a benevolent one.

It's not universal, of course. But it's epidemic -- or close to it.

Call customer service, shop in a store, eat at a fast food joint, or even a multi- star restaurant.

Go to school. Go to work. Ride mass transit, hunt for a house or for a car.

Often, what you find is someone who isn't paying attention to you, gets an order wrong, can't move a line through a checkout register, can't mow a lawn, shovel a walk, inject a medication, polish a nail, change the oil, print the photographs, catch or prosecute or defend a crook, file a piece of paper, operate a toll booth, fill a gas tank or scramble an egg.

We've searched and searched for answers. Considered bad training, bad bosses, bad working conditions, bad hair days, low wages, low self esteem, low IQ, low people skills, low communication skills.

How about an explanation that doesn't account for conscious inadequacies or deliberate lack of interest?

Okay, here it is. Some people (a LOT of people, really,) don't know what work IS or is supposed to be.

All the dandy training programs and MBA-driven business plans one can get on the job are worthless if you don't know what work is in the first place.

First, it's showing up. that's worth a LOT of points up front. Even better is showing up on time or (perish the thought) even early.

Then it's paying attention to the needs of the job.

It's almost inconceivable, but some people just don't know that work isn't a social occasion for which one is paid.

The office or factory or phone bank or kitchen is not a place to go to have conversations about the latest fashions, baseball scores, weather, boyfriends, girlfriends whatever.

Sure, there are down moments you can do that... but it shouldn't be (as often seems to be the case,) the primary function.

When you're on the line at the burger joint, and the counter operator can't get the order straight, it's annoying, maybe infuriating. But you'll live to go through it again.

What happens, though, when the worker in question is, say, a pilot or the clerk in an emergency room? or a broker's assistant -- or the broker him or herself? Or a doctor or dentist.

There is training for this, but it has to happen long before anyone is old enough to enter the workforce.

This is something that should be taught at home.

In order to work, you have to know what work IS.

GRAPESHOT:

-When you ask your digital assistant to do something and it does it, do you have the urge to say “Thank you, Siri…” or Cortana or Alexa or Anonymous Google Voice?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

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© WJR 2018

1982 The Sins of Sinclair

1.

Out here in the bucolic boonies we have a law called theft by deception.  Usually it applies to such vultures that steal your identity or your pension money or your house.  But this is a story about a company that is trying to make off with the airwaves, property of the people -- and thus with the world of ideas.

II.

Before you pronounce TV Dead On Arrival, check with David Smith, Executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcasting, the largest owner of TV stations in the country.  The biggest owner you never heard of. Until recently.  He was ready to throw something like four billion dollars at the newspaper formerly known as Tronc for its 42 television properties. Chicago Tribune TV.

This is an idea so bad that even the anti regulation chairman of the federal agency that regulates broadcasting turned his back on the deal which promptly collapsed.

Each Sinclair station is affiliated with at least one of the traditional or newer networks, ABC, CBS,  NBC and Fox and the little guys that live off the carcasses of real network reruns and b-grade originals.

There were two good reasons the deal fell apart.

First is because the company puts words in the mouths of its news broadcasters and second because of a corporate move so dumb and brazen that even FCC chair Ajit Pai couldn’t take it.

III.

Those words have to do with the Sinclair local anchors promoting false equivalencies in news stories and right wing diatribes pretending they’re unique to the station you’re watching but running word for word everywhere.

Now, about that corporate blunder.  Sinclair -- remember, they’re already the biggest owner -- wanted to buy Tribune Broadcasting.

 Expand the empire from about 200 stations to more than 242 all part of the great right wing chorus.  

Believe it or not, there still are some regulations governing use of the peoples’ airwaves.  One of them sets ownership limits.  So Sinclair had to sell some stations.

In some cases the proposed sales were to friendly buyers who would allow Sinclair to program them without owning them.  And that’s where Chairman Pai had enough and set the wheels in motion throw this train off the tracks.

Pai was once a trump favorite. Pai took steps to let the merger to go through.  Until those baloney filled sales to friendlies.

Sinclair is used to those backroom arrangements.  Here in central PA they own the NBC affiliate, but also program the Fox and ABC affiliates.  All three share a news department.  Nice deal, eh?

Among the “must run” segments from headquarters: the near-daily reports from the “Terrorism Desk.” Who are the terrorists?  Guys who look like Timothy McVey or the Klan? No. They’re almost always identifiable as Muslims.

IV.

Now, what about this guy Smith.  He has an interesting history.

As Rolling Stone Magazine reported, Smith briefly ran a porn film bootlegging operation out of the basement of a building owned by his father.  The “advocate.com” website says he’s fond of hookers. No big deal, really.  But in some still-civilized countries, character is considered when granting licenses to broadcast.  I guess we’ve outgrown that.

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A Message From Dino:

To all my friends on America’s highways, please be assured that I am no relation to the broadcasting company of the same name, though we both are dinosaurs.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is fake.

© WJR 2018

1981 Uber Grounded

1981 Uber Grounded

Wessays photo by Fast Eddie Satlien

NEW YORK -- Well, not grounded, exactly but at last facing some spine from mayor de Blastoff and his merry band of wimps on the City Council.

They have legislation to freeze the number of Uber ride-share drivers who have turned this town into a second Los Angeles, transit wise.  With some help from the MTA, of course.  But that’s another story for another day.

The city wants to figure out how ride shares and real cabs can coexist.

The onslaught of these interlopers has put the taxi and black car industries into the toilet.  Not that they didn’t need a little flushing.  But not to the point where a hack medallion which cost six figures becomes just scrap tin.

But the whole ride business needs a shakeup.  Too many private cars.  To many Ubers.

First, control of the medallions:  too few people own too many of them and turn freelance licensed cabbies into meter and tip slaves.  And the TLC, the Taxi and Limousine Commission needs Roto Rooter, to continue the bathroom analogy.

Then there’s the proliferation of amateurs.  Yeah, people may be hard pressed to find a living wage but putting their private cars on the road isn’t an answer. And neither are the usurious rates that medallion cabs charge these days.

Uber isn’t all bad. It has rules for what kind of cars are used and in what condition.  But if a minimum wage sewing machine operator has the bucks for an almost new Toyota, Subaru or Honda SUV something’s wrong somewhere.   

Then there’s Mike Bloomberg’s throwback idea, still living years after the ends of his terms: imposing tolls on cars entering midtown at certain hours.  That’s a traffic magnet, not traffic relief.  Once the cars get north of 14th Street or South of 96th Street, the clogs will re-cauterize.  And what would such a tax cost to collect?  

As a child of the city all those decades ago, there was no problem hailing a cab on Queens Boulevard.  Try that today and see how long it takes.  You’d better be a day early for wherever you need to be.  Ditto Grand Concourse or Flatbush Avenue and even north of 96th Street in Manhattan.

TAXI QUOTES:

“I am a professional driver and I will make all the driving decisions.” -- Unidentified NYC Cab Driver fishtailing north on 8th Avenue in an early morning snowstorm and asked by his passenger to go slower.

“Yes, it’s my real name.” -- Muhammad Ali, my frequent yellow cab driver from Penn Station to Rock Center.

“That frickin’ Giuliani is messing everything up. That frickin’ Giuliani” -- Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani playing a cab driver on Saturday Night Live.

“Yeah, you’re right, so what do you want to pay me?” -- unidentified cab driver to whom it was pointed out that his meter was fast.

“If I could afford the New York Herald Tribune, I could afford the 7 cent White Owls.” -- Cabbie Eddie Satlien on why he started smoking the New York Daily Mirror when White Owl raised it price from 5 cents.

“This car is fine, but the TLC demands I get six grand worth of repairs.  This thing has more than one million miles on it. And it’s on its third engine.  It’s time to stop.” -- Earl Johnson, owner of the very last Checker Cab to operate in regular service in the five boroughs in 1999.

“Off Duty.” -- the sign on every cab on 6th avenue at any weekday between the hours of 4 and 5 PM.

“Where are all the cabs?” -- Any potential customer in any rainstorm on any street in Manhattan at any time of any day.

Monday: The sins of Sinclair Broadcasting.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

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© WJR 2018

1980 The Jobs Report

It’s the best ever.  Everyone’s working.  Everyone’s rolling in dough. Just ask our fearless leader. And while you’re at it get out your Psych 101 textbook, the one you still have even though you graduated in 1852, and look up what they say about people who don’t experience fear.

It isn’t pretty.

So, if the figures are rosy, how come there are so many people who can’t smell the roses?  Well… for one thing, you have physics professors and chiropodists working at Wendy’s.  They don’t do well there.  And they don’t last.  Sometimes they don’t do all that well at their chosen profession, either.  But people are less likely to complain about a bad course or teacher than they are about cold fries or an undercooked Dave’s Deluxe Double.

Jobs ain’t what they used to be.  And they’re not as steady as they used to be.  And the employees often are working beneath their level of competence just to keep the current flowing and the mortgage payments more or less current.

But Karma has raised its pretty head.  Those job creations, says the Associated Press, are mostly in areas where trump had fewer votes than Clinton.

Now, onto those Yoooj tax breaks. Biggest in history says President Fearless -- which they aren’t. You remember them, right? They were the ones that were supposed to fund new facilities, new employment and employee raises?  Another piece of fakery.

That money is going into stock buybacks.  Stock buybacks were illegal until the reign of St. Reagan. Why? Because the money enriched the corporate bottom line without adding actual value and enriched the larger stockholders while ignoring the workforce.  Good thing we had Ronnie.  Otherwise, you can’t imagine how much a 30-dollar-an-hour autoworker with a union card would be making today.

Buybacks make the remaining un-bought-back stocks more valuable per-share without changing the value of the underlying company.  And it’s not just the Engulf and Devour conglomerates that are doing this.  It’s also the touchy-feely companies like Apple and the Hippocratic Oath companies like Google.

And sometimes those buybacks backfire.  Here’s an example from a big publisher of local newspapers, the McClatchy Company.  They have a handful of good properties like the Miami Herald and the Kansas City Star.  But most of them are small and medium market losers. Their stock was on a downslide for years.  So they bought back a bunch of it.  A big bunch, which made their penny stock rise to about 10 dollars a share.

But it’s on the downslide again, and that makes the company worth little more on paper than before the buyback.

There’s Karma again. Except if you’re an executive who’s paid in stocks or options.  You… have a windfall, as long as you cash out before the bottom falls out.

SHRAPNEL:

--That walking cow chip Alex Jones has been kicked off most of the internet sites he used to spread his lies, hatred and conspiracy theories.  His followers responded with love mail and product purchases.

Jones is the guy who said the Newtown CT shootings were a hoax.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this post is fake.

© WJR 2018

Granny's Cranky Today So Let's Dope Her Up

The papers say a lot of nursing homes are giving psycho drugs to men and women who don’t need them because they’re “disruptive.”  That turns them into head-bobbing, drooling, sleepy, creepy docile people.  And drooling, sleepy, creepy docile people make things at Kittendale Nursing Home go smoothly.

Many more people get psychotropic drugs than have the matching psychoses, said the Wall Street Journal years ago, which is not given to slighting profit-grabbing psychos of another kind, the kind that make money for their stockholders and, not incidentally, for themselves.

So if the Journal says this is happening, it’s probably happening because they don’t do anti-business stories without extreme provocation, like when an editor’s mother gets an overdose of Thorazine because she bit an attendant who wanted to steal her 150-year old family heirloom necklace, or her teeth.

They’re turning your grandparents into zombies so they don’t fuss about the food, the dirty laundry, the dirty floors or the stink.  They’re turning your grandparents into zombies because they complain about the lousy food and the bad lighting and the cheap cable TV service – cheap, but not inexpensive.

They’re turning your grandparents into zombies so they won’t call for help while the floor nurse and the resident MD are doing the nasty in the pantry and don’t want to be distracted.

They’re turning your grandparents into zombies so they won’t notice that no one’s made the bed in four days and the eggs at breakfast are cold, the prescribed medicine isn’t being given or is being over-given and the sink and toilet don’t work.

But this isn’t anything new.  Antipsychotic drugs get doled out like samples at a pyramid scheme sales pitch and always have.  What’s new is the latest incarnations of the drugs themselves.

They’re so effective the victims don’t know they’re under the influence.  Unless, of course, they try to pilot those rusty wheel chairs into some area where no chair has gone before – like the sex pantry.

These drugs have black box warnings.  A black box warning, says Phil Metcalfe of the Citizens Against Drugs Work-Group, is one that’s so important they put a black box around it so you won’t think it’s just another anti-tobacco spiel.

These drugs, says Phil, are so powerful the people who are forced fed them have no memory of the crime, and bob and drool as if they’d done it all their lives.

Time to go ‘round the wards at the nursing homes, collect this stuff and give it to people who really need it.  Our president, for example. And his Amen Cabinet and our Cowardly Congress.

If we’re going to zombify anyone, it should be the people who got us into the social, tactical and economic messes we’re in now.  Let them sit around the oval office and the various legislative offices and drool and bob their heads. 

Psychotropics and antipsychotics will help them forget who they are, which will benefit us and, to an extent, them.

Meantime, someone give Zombie Grannie a wakeup call and a new set of teeth.

SHRAPNEL:

--The Association of Pet Obesity Prevention, of which most of us had never heard of says 100 million American dogs and cats are overweight. That’s 56% of cats and 60% of dogs.  Is there a “lite” version Ken-L-Ration or Fancy Feast?

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is fake.

© WJR 2018

1978 On the Bread Line

1978 On the Bread Line

Today’s entry is abbreviated due to a small, storm-related flood in the basement of the Wessays ™ Secret Mountain Laboratory in NewRoses PA.

A secret friend found occasionally in this space has reappeared.  We call him Young Einstein when he makes a common blunder or doesn’t know something everyone should.

This time, a story about a trip to the grocery store.  Here he is with his basket full of stuff approaching the cashier.  He has his Visa card handy. He is putting cans and bottles and jars and bags of vegetables on the conveyor belt.  He is checked out.  The tally comes to $48.83.  He hands his driver’s license to the cashier. She looks at it curiosity on her face.

“You can’t use a driver’s license to pay for your order, sir.”

Y.E. replies: “Yes, I know that.  I’m just showing it to you before I put my chip card into the reader.”

Cashier: “You do not need to do that, sir, unless you’re buying beer.  We do not sell beer.”

Y.E.: “I heard the president of the United States say you need photo i.d. at the grocery checkout.”

Cashier: “That’s not true.”

Y.E.: “You mean the president lied when he said that?”

Cashier: “Yes.”

Y.E.: “But I heard him say it on You Tube!  Or maybe it was Twitter.”

Cashier: “Well, then, stop getting your news from the internet.  Now, please insert your chip card or I’ll call security and have you thrown out.”

Young Einstein wanted the last word.  Something along the lines of “You know, you’re beautiful when your angry?”  But he thought better of it and decided to check out before he got thrown out.

All of which brings us to the issue of voter IDs the main subject when trump commented on grocery lines.

Even Young Einstein knows this is a trick from Republicans who don’t want low income people to vote because they generally vote for Democrats.

Besides that, why don’t they want poor people to vote?  Because if poor people vote for Republicans, then Republicans will hit them up for contributions. Poor people don’t have enough money to make contributions.  So when they don’t contribute, the party has to turn to its True Friends, which include but are not limited to Big Moneybags.

This has two distinct advantages.

1.    They make big contributions. And

2.     They tell the party what to think, feel and --most important-- to do.

This eliminates the necessity of thinking.  And who these days wants to think? 

GRAPESHOT: “Young Einstein” is what I call myself when I do something really dumb.

  

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is false advertising.

© WJR 2018

1977 Retail Marriages

There’s a mini Starbucks in the local Target.  This is a violation of two major principles:

1.  You must be able to see another Starbucks through the window of the Starbucks you’re in and Targets don’t have windows.

2.  Big box coffee must have taste and character. Starbucks coffee is bitter and has to be disguised by hiding it under gobs of sweet and/or fattening chemicals.

Other than that, this is a retail marriage made in heaven.  That’s because both companies obey two other major principles:

1.  Make large donations to worthy causes and humble brag about it.

2.  Make the displays well organized, color coordinated so people don’t realize how much they’re paying.

Of course, no marriage is perfect so there are some bad moments between these two lovebirds.

1.  Target’s motorized shopping carts are stabled far from the entrance and it takes so much time and effort to reach them that users need an energy boost.

2.  The mini Starbucks cannot accommodate the carts and if they could, you’d need a megaphone and a hearing aid to ask and tell the Barista standing at a much higher altitude which combination of flavor disguises you want in your coffee.  Baby carriages don’t fit well either.

But the idea of putting two unrelated businesses under the same roof has its merits.  

For example, ailing McFatburger Paradise could put kiosks in the cardiac unit of the local hospital. Good for business in both cases.

Beleaguered department stores could open couch departments where beleaguered husbands could test sofas while their shopaholic wives try on armloads of tops and pants and drool over the jewelry counter.

Public libraries could install kiosks in furniture stores so the waiting spouses have something to read while the browsing spouses give the sales people the third degree about fabric choices.  

And Dunkin’ should think about a kiosk in the break room of the precinct house.

Meantime, around here, people are signing petitions urging Target to install a window so they can see the other Starbucks they’re building across the parking lot.

SHRAPNEL:

--The local hospital which doubles as a Jiffy Lube when the weather’s good enough to roll the inpatients out into the parking lot, has closed its dermatology office. The lone doc there gave two months’ notice two months ago and no immediate replacement has yet been found. In the meantime, they turned the office into an extra Lube service bay.

--The hospital announcement comes from its “Department of Care Excellence,” which is staffed by injured former cheerleaders of the local college football team.  It’s the department that sends out a quarterly slick paper magazine extolling its so-called virtues and -- natch -- asks for money, some of which it could save by transferring the cheerleaders to the Jiffy Lube Department. The manager there is a disbarred MD who was too good at raising money to be fired.

--It’s a good thing all this didn’t happen in the maternity department.  Otherwise they’d have had to issue a repeating MP3 that says “...hold it in, mama… hold it in, mama.”  That could get painful.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is fake.

© WJR 2018