Leading economic indicators

The email contains the bullet, "The most up-to-date cost control and staffing reduction data anywhere!" With an exclamation point.

Who wouldn't be excited?

I took a survey somewhere on the Internet (no, you really don't know where my hands have been) and was sent the results.

Of 15,000 mill drones like me surveyed, 66% reported their Mill had not experienced layoffs in the past 12 months. Exclamation point! To paraphrase Sheila Murphy, "That is not a happy statistic."

It means 33% have.

Of those 33% who said yes, up to 25% of their service workforce had been reduced. Or as we say in software, "reductized." AND... say the majority of those 33%, other jobs in their Mill have not been cut. Service work can be easier to automate than most jobs at your Mill, but they are 40K jobs, so you usually have to eliminate a lot of them to make a dent in the payroll and benefits.

Question5:
"Excluding lay offs, what are some ways you are saving operating costs in this economy? "

Here are my favorite picks from 6 pages of verbatim for ways companies are "saving operating costs" besides firing you. Keep in mind, these were submitted by the workers themselves and are probably spun differently from the Corner Office.

Call it trickle down. You should be feeling these soon, next time you need some tech support.


We are trying to reduce the communication cost by changing our toll free number to chargeable number.
Hiring people who are willing to work on lower wages.
Link incentive strictly to customer satisfaction and productivity.
Guiding client members to the website.
Offer rewards to agents who want to go home.
Decrease the service level.
10% reduction in salaries for exempt employees.
Desk sharing. (like it should get any smaller)
We concentrate more on the small but stable accounts
We strictly enforce multitasking.
We will not measure our service level and/or other contact center performance indicator.
We have cut back on recruiting expenses by going with cheaper options.
Keeping training costs down.
Put more work onto the agents we currently have with us.
We're not allowing any overtime.
asking employees to do more with less
Assigning more responsibilities to the leadership team so that additional hiring is not required.

Have a meaningful day, fellow workers.

Workers' hygiene

You have recently received some helpful advice from your employer regarding how to avoid H1N1 (please don't call it "swine," they say) flu. This may have come in the form of a memo reprinting the Homeland Security Memo. You may have wondered, as I did, "why is Homeland Security running this issue, instead of the CDC?" Or maybe you just expect Homeland Security to run every issue.

Mme. Secretary was just addressing her employees -- the ones so often in harm's way abroad. Defending our homeland from.... over there. But if your Company wants to handle its liability the same way, one memo is as good as the next.

In the spirit of good healthy work practices, the DrawingIn room presents

Hygiene for the Worker, 1912

We boil it down (in carbolic) so you don't have to.

Authors: Tolman & Gutherie of the American Museum of Safety. (pause for effect)

Irony points: Adelaide Wood Gutherie. Not that Woody Gutherie, who probably wrote some very catchy tunes about workplace accidents.

Giggle milk through your nose points: General Editor C. Ward Crampton.

seriously? you're not even going to make me work for it, are you?

Audience: "designed for boys and girls from thirteen to eighteen years of age, for special classes preparing to pass examinations for labor certificates, and for vocational, industrial, and manual training high schools."

When your teenager won't get off his ass to put a dish in a sink, this is a good photo to hang on the fridge.

Add this caption from our text, " If he has finished the elementary school course, he will be able to meet most of the demands of ordinary business life. If he is fortunate enough to have completed a high school training, he will find that he possesses an equipment that will overcome many an obstacle in the way of success."

No miner boy, me. I gots me degree.

There are 19 chapters (the last of which is Tuberculosis). I treat you to these unaltered illustrations and quotations. Cross-stitch at will.

"If the person I want for this job is clean and neat and self-reliant, I may be sure that his morals and methods of work are equally clean and straightforward."

"We all prefer those friends who are cheerful and amiable. Isn't it just as probable that an employer will pick out the pleasant-faced, cheerful boy or girl to work for him, in preference to one whose expression is sour and gloomy and whose manner is short and surly ?"

"If you have any trouble in the nasal passages, a physician will tell you how to use a nasal douche."

"So it is well, if you cannot sleep out of doors, to have plenty of fresh air circulating through your room at night."

"...the Pennsylvania Railroad will no longer pay damages to any one injured in getting on or off their trains, if it is proved that high-heeled shoes or tightly fitting skirts were responsible for the injuries received."

"It is because milk is unclean and full of germs or has been
spoiled by standing or given in unclean nursing bottles, that
so many babies are made ill."

This problem of the coffee cups is older than first thought.

"It is believed that the largest number of accidents in shops and mills takes place on Monday, because the alcohol that is drunk on Sunday takes away the skill and attentive care of the workman."

"Many employers make the mistake of crowding too many workers into a small space...If you know such conditions to exist in a factory, avoid working there, and do not sacrifice your health and possibly your life. The factory laws of New York allow 250 cubic feet of air space to each worker."

"The children of parents who work very hard in certain occupations are usually smaller in size, less intelligent, and more feeble than the children born of healthy parents and brought up with the additional advantages of nourishing food, plenty of fresh air, and play."




To a minimum. It can't be eliminated.



I will let you caption this one yourselves.

"If the body is forced to keep at work after the fatigue point is reached, day after day, without sufficient sleep or opportunity to find healthful recreation, the reserve fund of energy stored in the cells of the body is used up ; 'and, if the strain is continued up to the limit of exhaustion, there may be a sudden revolt of the overtaxed organism and a collapse that may prove disastrous physically and mentally."



This is the modern method. The Victorian version of this book had the rescuer clap his hands sharply near the victim's face and bark, "I insist that you wake up a-twonce!"





Which brings us back to flu prevention and other workplace considerations. The President has already said you should use as much Sick Leave as you can.




Take this example from our text:

With AOL "news," blogging is easy!

The lost trees of worcester

The December ice storm was not the worst of it. And it was plenty bad.

All along Rt 2, and in the wooded areas of Central Mass, the trees are bent and broken and there has been plenty of clean-up to do. Most of them hang where they are; others are trimmed back hard from the road and the leftover pieces kicked aside. It is a spooky drive west between 495 and the Connecticut River. But that was not the worst of it.

The worst of it are blocks of streets, entire neighborhoods, cutting down their trees under order of the state. Like Travis shooting Old Yeller, they do what they must -- bravely and through tears. 63 sq miles of trees are now in receivership of the Commonwealth. And nearly every tree must go. If you don't... someone else will have to, by court order. And that just ain't fittin'.

The culprit: asian longhorned beetles

The expert opinion: "the only proven method of control and eradication of this destructive insect is the complete removal of infested trees (to include stump grinding) and the removal of select adjacent host trees that have a high risk of being infested."

The footage.

As you look at the piles of branches, note the size of the trees they came from. In this neighborhood, most of the growth is far above the rooftops. I thank Historyteacher50 for shooting the scene I was looking for. I drive past a view like this several times a week, and in some neighborhoods, there is not a single tree left.

This is a Googlemaps view of West Boylston St where I work. The circled hillside is bare now.

The replanting has begun. The neighbors are trying to move on. With a sense of humor.

Even though it is clearly the end of everything we hold dear. Put it on the list.

In case you're still sleeping at night

This might become a new series. I could call it Cures for Somnia. Let's face it -- it could be its own blog.

In any case, here's something to blow your mind, as told in the Economist.


Red Ash is the oldest of 36 fires currently blazing in Pennsylvania’s 180,000 acres (73,000 hectares) of abandoned mines. The most famous is beneath Centralia, which began in 1962 when residents burned some rubbish on top of an exposed coal seam. In 1981 a hole there swallowed an 12-year-old boy; Pennsylvania has since condemned the entire town, relocated almost all its residents and had its postal code revoked. Like Red Ash, Centralia’s fire is thought to have enough fuel to burn for many more decades.

The abandoned carousel is not just for creep effect (though it is totally creepy). It is from Centralia -- that Love Canal of coal towns.