The most boring post to date...

Dearest readers, I apologize for not posting the "sixth" post shortly after my last post as I promised to do. Of course, as you'll notice from the title, I've decided to end the pointless numbering of posts anyway, so although this is technically the "sixth" post you were promised, it isn't. In case you're wondering, in some deep, dark corner of my sleep-deprived brain, that last sentence actually made some sense. Anyway, onward. I imagine that you may be approaching this post with some trepidation, given the title that I've chosen. In fact, some of you may have not even reached this far. If you have, I'll give you fair warning: If you've come to this blog to read something about what I've been doing over the last week or to read my (hopefully) amusing takes on various situations, then this post will sorely disappoint you. It is exactly what I described it to be in the title - the most boring post to date. That is, unless you find a discussion of transportation entertaining.

Okay, so if I've got any readers left, here's the point of today's post: The utter ridiculousness that is the passenger rail network in this country. Out of curiosity, the other day I happened to look at Amtrak's website to examine the possibility of taking a train from Kansas City to St. Louis. Now, I don't really have much of desire to do such a thing, but for some reason I was thinking about train travel in Europe and wondering if it was even possible here. Lo and behold, it is, but they certainly don't make it easy. This got me wondering about the level of service between comparable cities in Europe (in terms of size). After some admittedly brief research into the subject this morning, here are my results:

According to the 2000 census, the population of the St. Louis metropolitan area was roughly 2.6 million and that of Kansas City was 1.75 million. Using figures from Eurostat (a statistical archive run by the European Union), two comparable cities (metropolitan areas) are Manchester (2.5 million) and Glasgow (1.75 million), both conveniently in the United Kingdom. Even more conveniently, Google maps gives the driving distance from St. Louis to Kansas City as 248 miles and that of Glasgow to Manchester at 216 miles. I can find no other pair of cities in Europe that match Kansas City and St. Louis so closely in population and distance. However, at this point the two pairs diverge. In the case of Kansas City and St. Louis, were you to wish to travel tomorrow, Tuesday February 27, your options would be limited. You could drive the 248 miles, which should take about 4 hours. Or you could fly, although there are only 6 flights per day between the two cities (all on Southwest) lasting one hour. Or, finally, you could take the train. Amtrak offers two passenger trains per day between the cities (discounting their stupid suggestions such as a train to Chicago and then one to St. Louis). One leaves at 7:30am (8:30am if going St. Louis to Kansas City) and the other at 4:30pm(3:30 if STL to KC); both take 5 hours and 40 minutes to arrive in St. Louis. Even booking today would only cost $25 one way. Compare this to Glasgow to Manchester. Once again, driving would take about 4 hours. Flying is a possibility - once again it takes one hour to fly between the cities, although now there are 10 daily flights if going from Glasgow to Manchester, 11 if going the opposite way. Or, one can take the train. The cost is much higher, roughly $140 one way, but this higher cost drops if the tickets are purchased farther in advance. The journey, which still takes over 5 hours, also involves a train change. However, if one eliminates all trips that require more than one change of trains, then there are 5 trains that depart Glasgow between 7am and noon alone that will take you to Manchester. Four of those (fully 2x the number from Kansas City to St. Louis in an entire day) leave in the 3 hours from 7am to 10am. There are fewer trains going from Manchester to Glasgow (again assuming one change or less): a train departs every two hours beginning at 7:07am. Still, that means that four trains depart Manchester for Glasgow in the gap in which no train leaves Kansas City for St. Louis.

I have no explanation for this discrepancy in the level of service between two pairs of cities oddly similar in size and distance. My only explanation is that Americans love their cars and hate the idea of spending lengthy periods of time in a confined space with strangers (I didn't examine bus services, but my guess is that you would find something similar). I also don't know how it can be changed. It seems that rail travel, which is so convenient to the traveler in Europe, is an impossibility here. Which is odd, for all the complaining that people seem to be doing recently about the rising cost of gasoline and the increasing effects of pollution. Yet it is hard to pick up a newspaper without seeing that another highway is being widened to accommodate increasing loads of vehicles. What if those funds, which would admittedly be too little, were turned to the purchase of land and the construction of rail lines (preferably electrified lines)? In turn, those lines could be leased to private companies operating high speed passenger services, or even freight if passenger demand was not sufficient. It'll never happen, of course, but it's something to think about.

Well, I've rambled enough. If you're still reading, I applaud your determination to muddle through what I'm sure came out as a very confused set of arguments and comparisons relating to transportation. I promise I'll come up with something funnier and more relevant to my life - and I'll try not to make you wait a week for it.

Five suggestions...

Dear readers, I apologize for the delay you've had to suffer through waiting for this newest post. I had originally intended to post it last Tuesday when many of the events that will be laid out below were still fresh in my mind, but the Wife got sick so I had to care for her. Granted, she repaid me by passing on a nastier version of the bug she had, but that's a different story. Anyway, the point of this post is to offer five suggestions for effective management based on mistakes my boss made this past weekend. Got it? Okay, here we go:

1. Staff meetings. I think I can safely say that not a single person reading this has ever been to a staff meeting that covered a single worthwhile piece of information. Simply put, they're a waste of time. They're an even bigger waste of time when half of the staff is out sick or on vacation. What is the point of dragging half your staff in on a Thursday night when you know 50% is the best attendance rate you can hope for? The Mister says: Cancel the meeting.
2. Scheduling. Allowing your employees to take a vacation is a good move. It makes you a popular boss. Scheduling someone to cover for an employee who is on vacation without asking if they are willing to pick up extra night shifts does not make you a popular boss. This is particularly true when those extra shifts result in a stretch of five night shifts in a row. Now, I've worked 18 night shifts in a row before, defending a thesis in the middle of that stretch for an added degree of difficulty, but I volunteered to do that. If I want to be an idiot and work several nights in a row, that's my choice, not the boss's. The Mister says: Don't assume your employees will cover for one another, or they may be unwilling to do so in the future.
3. Responding to the concerns of an employee. Let us suppose that in the above situation the employee who was scheduled for extra shifts without being consulted was a little angry at the situation. We'll also assume that the employee wrote a letter to the boss stating that because this employee's spouse was in school still and they only had one car, the boss should not assume that the employee was free to come in on nights that he was not regularly scheduled for. Now, for most people, this might suggest that the employee was not entirely happy with the situation. How would you respond? With a one-word e-mail that simply said "Noted?" No? Then you're already on your way to managerial success. The Mister says: When addressing employee concerns/complaints, at least make a reasonable effort to look like you care.
4. Promptness. As a manager, you most likely demand that your employees arrive on time for their shifts. Your employees, for some odd reason, probably expect the same from you. So, as a boss, it is probably best to avoid calling the employee that has been at work for ten hours throughout the night to say that you're going to be late because your husband hasn't finished clearing the driveway. Two things: First, if you're capable of being a manager, you're capable of clearing your own driveway. It'd probably get clear a lot quicker if you were out there helping. Second, if it snowed overnight, it might be wise to assume that the employee you're talking to would like to get home to a warm bed but will be delayed because he's going to have to clear his own car out in the parking lot. He's not likely to be too sympathetic to the "I'm going to be late but it's my lazy husband's fault" excuse. The Mister says: If you want your employees to be prompt, be prompt yourself and don't offer excuses.
5. General human decency. As a manager, it is always important to remember that your employees are people too. Let us continue with the above situation: Overnight snowstorm drops a quarter inch of ice and a couple inches of snow. One employee has been at work all night and is dreading clearing all that off his car in temperatures in the single digits. He's already a bit miffed at the boss for scheduling him for five nights in a row without his consent, and then calling to say she'd be late. Okay, flashing forward 45 minutes, this employee is now out in the single digit temperatures in the parking lot clearing his car. As he finishes scraping one of the six windows that must be cleared to make driving safe, he notices a car waiting for his space. The lot, granted, is relatively full, but not completely - this employee just happens to be close to the door because of the time of night he came in. Who could it be in the nice warm car waiting for the parking spot close to the door? Why, it is his boss. Now, there is only one employee inside handling a very high volume of business (the snow made people call in sick, call to check on appointments, etc.) and the boss is already late. Surely she'll drive on and park a bit further away so as to avoid being even later; plus, she can't really be so inhuman as to watch one of her employees scrape at a car for 20 minutes, can she? Oh, but she can, gentle readers, and she did. The Mister says: DO NOT SIT IN YOUR WARM CAR WATCHING ONE OF YOUR EMPLOYEES SCRAPE ICE OFF THEIR CAR IN FREEZING WEATHER WHEN YOU ARE ALREADY LATE JUST SO YOU CAN GET A BETTER PARKING SPOT!!! Oh, she didn't even wave. Good morning to you too.

Well, dear readers, hopefully you've learned something about successful management. Basically, the point here is: If you hated something a manager did to you in the past, don't do it to someone else. Okay, I'll let you go. Hopefully I'll have post "six" up sometime soon.

Four shame...

The shame, dear readers, is all mine. To have left you groping in the wilderness without my stern, yet caring, gaze watching over you (in written word form on this seldom read blog), is simply inexcusable. I humbly beg your forgiveness and promise to do better, which I believe may be the same thing I tell the Wife after every dinner I've prepared for her.

Now that the painful apologies and rending of garments has been completed, we can all dry our tears and return to the business at hand. What that business may be, well, frankly, I'm at a loss. I suppose that my main purpose here, other than unwittingly and unknowingly insulting individuals I've never met with attempts at reasonable arguments composed in the midst of frequent calls to a forgotten hospital in a forgotten part of the country, is to provide some rather pathetic attempts at humor. Such as continuing to title my posts with numbers. Such things seem funny before seven a.m. when you've been at work all night.

Now, there isn't that much to do in the middle of the night in a hospital. I suppose if I had shown any inclination to pursue a career in medicine I might have discovered that things are a bit different for the doctors and nurses that actually interact with patients, but in my secluded little corner of paradise things are remarkably boring. It gives me time to think, but more importantly it gives me time to read. Like this wonderful article. Now, I could make some joke about the Air Force and how people smart enough to choose the one branch of the military that is almost never shot at should be smart enough to not need to cheat, but that would be too easy. Noting the mention of pornography downloaded by cadets, I could joke about the appearance of women in the military, but to do so might lead some to conclude that I thought the Wife was something other than the most attractive woman I've ever laid eyes on, and there hasn't been the weapon invented that would give me the confidence to face down her wrath if that were to be suggested. No dear readers, I would like to draw your attention to the other disciplinary problem the article mentions: "...and there have been recurring incidents of alcohol abuse, academy spokesman Johnny Whitaker said." I'll let that sink in for a second.

Take another minute...

Okay, now name me a college (other than this, which I hardly consider a college, but that's just my irrational distrust of anyone who spends most of their time telling everyone how damned they are speaking), club, organization, or just gathering of college-age individuals where there is not a problem with alcohol abuse. I'll wait.

Still waiting...

Now, I realize that the service academies operate under vastly different rules than your average university, many of which, it is true, do not look too kindly upon the consumption of massive quantities of alcoholic beverages, especially if the person doing the consuming is under the age of 21. But the spokesman almost seemed surprised by the fact that these kids were drinking. When was the last time it was possible to pick up a paper and not read about a college kid somewhere drinking themselves into the wild blue yonder? Frankly, I'd be more surprised if they weren't having problems with alcohol abuse. Not only are these kids surrendering a good chunk of their lives to the military, with the possibility that someone in some remote corner of the world might be shooting at them soon, but my guess is that there is precious little else to do amidst the snow in Colorado Springs during those precious few moments when the rigid discipline is scaled back to a type of rigid discipline that is composed of a weaker metal alloy, and thus bends to a degree measurable only on extremely expensive scientific instruments. Besides, my guess is that these kids have already figured out that wearing a jacket with "USAF Academy" on it and flashing a military ID will get them free drinks in many locations (assuming they're of age, and likely even if they're not). Of course, now that I think about it, if drinking and driving is a bad idea, drinking and driving at Mach One near the Rockies is probably a really bad idea.