January 27, 1993
Dear Everyone:
A footnote to “Jeannie’s” rather remarkable
6-page tome (6 pages, “Marshall”!) regarding the case of the “Pleasant Hill” Police
Officers versus the city of “Pleasant Hill”.
The judge ruled that placing video cameras and hidden bugs in the
Men’s Room did not violate
the officers’ right to privacy.
It did, however, violate their right to free speech.
My company-supported Van Pool is folding, like a
dying camel, out from under us.
Not the van itself, the Big, Blue Brute is alive and kicking.
It’s the “pool” part that has petered out.
First we lost some riders to STREP (Special Temporary Retirement
Enhancement Program, also known as “take the money and run”).
Next we lost some to relocations.
Then we lost a few when an entire Operating company decided to go
on the 9-80 work schedule.
Actually, the Operating Company in question, Company International XXX
Company (pronounced C-I-X-C), only consists of about 30 people.
9-80 means that you work 80 hours over 9 days.
On week 1, you work 9 hours per day, Monday through Thursday, and
8 hours on Friday (44 hours).
Then, on week 2, you work 9 hours Monday through Thursday and
take Friday off (36 more hours, 80 hours total).
Or every other Monday, if you prefer and it suits the Company.
Most groups that use 9-80, like my buddies in the “Livermore”
Records Center, stagger it so that only one-fourth of the workforce is
missing on any given Monday or Friday.
As you can imagine, it can create logistical nightmares when you
throw in Holidays and vacation time and what do you do when somebody
calls in sick? (You cope,
that’s what you do.)
Getting back to the soon-to-be-extinct van pool.
Each time we lost a rider, we were supposed to find a new rider
to replace him/her. But it’s
not easy to find people who want to leave for work before 6:00 am
and who are willing to drive the Big, Blue Brute on a semi-regular
basis. Furthermore, when you
contact the Van Pool Office (there actually are people who do nothing
all day but administrate a fleet of van pools all over the country),
they keep trying to “match” riders with our pick up point.
In most cases, you try to make up a pool of
people who live relatively close to each other.
So you draw a radius around the main pick up points and look for
prospective riders within that radius.
But our one and only pick up point is the “Moraga”
BART Station.
We have people (several!) who drive from “Bay Point” and “Oakley”
to the BART Station to meet our van pool.
That way, if they need to stay late, which many do these days,
their car is at the station and they can just take BART home if they
miss the van. Conversely, if
they get caught out on Highway 4, which turns into a parking lot with
distressing regularity, and they miss the van in the morning, they’re
not stranded, they can still take BART into the City.
But the Van Pool Office computer doesn’t accept
“Bay Point” and “Oakley” because they’re not in the “Moraga” BART
“radius”. (Computers!
Don’t you just love ‘em?)
They keep trying to find people who live within walking distance
of BART to “match” up with our van.
And why would anyone live within walking distance of BART and
still want to ride in a van pool?
What’s the point of living within walking distance of BART if
you’re not going to walk to BART?
There’s nothing else close by to walk to.
Ask “Jeannie”, she looked at condos around there.
(Her main reject-reason was too much traffic around for her cat.)
So, this Friday will be the last day for our van
pool. Of which there are
currently only 7 people, plus “Simon” who almost never caught the van
when he was a regular rider, but now he’d riding “casual” (paying $2.00
each was as he goes), catches it all the time.
As for me, I’ll be taking the Great Silver Worm
under the Bay each day (BART).
It’s more expensive, but it has certain advantages.
It’s more flexible.
If you miss a train, another will come along in a little while.
It’s not that all-or-nothing proposition that you have with a
van. If a train gets stuck,
you won’t be the only one late for work; everyone else in my office
takes BART right now, except “Ken”, who lives in “Marin”.
And you can read on BART, unlike the van which is
too dark in the winter and too bumpy the rest of the year.
I can even buy the morning paper (getting my
Herb Caen fix) and
have it read before I get to
work, instead of waiting until lunchtime.
That means more time to read at lunch and on the way home.
I might even get caught up on my back issues of
American
Film, a magazine that I’m 2 years behind on and which went belly
up last spring. Probably my
fault, too. I’m sure there
was some vitally important readers survey that I should have filled out
and sent in about a year ago last Thanksgiving.
In other news…
“Jeannie” and I went to the movies last Saturday,
an idea that apparently occurred to everyone else in the Bay Area.
It had finally stopped raining, after about two weeks, and
everybody said, “The sun’s out!
Let’s all go sit in the dark.”
By the time “Jeannie” got to the front of the line, every movie
that we remotely wanted to see had been sold out.
So we went to another movie house and everything that they had,
except for
Body of
Evidence, had either just started or wouldn’t start again for at
least another hour. And
“Jeannie” had just seen Body of
Evidence a few days before, mostly because it was filmed in
Portland and
features that
Mansion that we toured at Christmas.
Apart from the scenery, she declared it something she had no
desire to ever see again, unlike
Kevin Costner,
which is what we’d gone to see in the first place.
So we bought “Jeannie” some
Baskin & Robbins
ice cream and I took her home.
Another wild Saturday.
However, I have a plan.
We can go to the movies next Sunday and have the whole place to
ourselves, everyone else being glued to their TV sets, watching the
Stupor Bowl.
Love, as always,
Pete
PS.
“Alice” & “Kelly’s” new address is:
XX Gilbert Drive
Hyde Park, NY 12538
Area Code and Phone Number remain the same as
before.
P.
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