July 24, 2002
Dear Everyone:
Never say, “Never.”
Just last week, I was saying that my involvement in
the Conversion project was pretty much over.
This morning, I found myself in a “brainstorming” meeting
involving just that project.
Seems all the
Another example of “Never say, ‘Never’.”:
Being “vertically-challenged”, as “Jeannie” likes to put it, I’ve always had a problem with sitting properly at a desk. If the chair is low enough for my feet to reach the floor, the desk is too high. If the chair is high enough to sit at the desk, my feet don’t reach the floor. In the past, I’ve always said the only solution is to either raise the floor or lower the desk.
This would generally elicit a brief laugh and the condescending advice to get a foot rest. The problem with most foot rests is that they are designed for a four-footed chair. Most office chairs have a pedestal with five feet. (This is because someone discovered that four-footed chairs had a tendency to tip over. Five feet is more stable.) So the feet (casters, usually) get in the way of the foot rest, keeping it too far away to work properly. Plus, when you have a large desk, you keep having to move the foot rest.
This appeared to be an impasse, but I recently discovered that now, in our more ergonomically correct work environment, it takes a couple of workmen all of about 10 minutes to readjust the height of a standard desk. They just pop off the cover on the sides, pull out some screws, put the screws back in and viola! The desktop is now an inch lower than before. If that’s not enough of an adjustment, they can come back and lower it another inch.
So I finally have a desk that fits me. And all those years when they told me it couldn’t be done, what they really meant was that it wasn’t worth their while to do it. Now, in the quest for fewer workmen’s comp cases, it suddenly is worth it.
And that, of course, is the reason for all this concern about employee safety. It’s not that the company has suddenly gone all warm and fuzzy. I can remember a time when you had to produce a note from your doctor before anyone would listen to complaints about aching wrists and elbows. Now that RSI’s (Repetitive Stress Injuries) are the Number One cause of Lost Work Days, and of high insurance premiums, management is looking for any way to cut down on the number of cases. Hence, “…safety is our highest concern…”
And as long as I’m on this soap box…
Last week we had our monthly Staff Meeting in which all but one of us were actually in the same room (the one in “Hobby” dialed into a phone bridge). When we have these face-to-face meetings, the supervisor likes to have a “diversity” discussion. We pick a “value” from a list and everyone is supposed to write a paragraph describing their view of that value. Ironically, this month’s value turned out to be “Diversity”. So here’s my paragraph on “Diversity”:
“Diversity is a buzzword used by corporations in an effort to avoid lawsuits. It sometimes has the pleasant by-product of producing a more comfortable and productive work environment.”
Needless to say, I’m the designated cynic on the team.
Movies…
No way I was going to get “Jeannie” to see Eight-Legged Freaks, so I went by myself. This is actually an homage to all those Giant Bug movies that we loved to watch on Saturday afternoon television. But where those movies featured a single, suspiciously-mechanical-looking giant bug, this one (thanks to computer graphics) can fill the screen with dozens to hundreds of big bugs.
Hazardous waste, a by-product of corporate greed, is the scapegoat this time, instead of nuclear testing, producing a bevy of spiders the size of SUV’s. Oddly enough, they’re more scary when they’re the correct size than when they’re big enough to take over the town.
And you can’t apply logic here.
Otherwise you might question why a bunch of spiders, all
competing for the same food supply (i.e., the townsfolk), wouldn’t
turn on each other.
Instead, they are the epitome of inter-species cooperation.
Maybe we should send them to the
And, of course, the only person who actually knows anything about spiders is the nerdy little kid. In fact, at one point, he says, “But who’s going to listen to me? I’m just the kid.” If you liked the giant ants, locusts and other bugs that gave James Whitmore, James Arness and Peter Graves their starts, you’ll like this one. If spiders of any kind give you the willies, go see Stuart Little 2.
Love, as always,
Pete
PS. No
Letter next week. Family
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