One Thing Leads to Another

(This post is actually the origin of “You Get What You Pay For: Low-Wage Locale vs. Qualified Workers”, posted Sept. 15^th . This is the wordy version.)

 

May 28, 2021

 

You know how you get the germ of an idea, and one thing leads to another, and pretty soon you’ve got a whole scenario in your head?

 

There was a company whose Accounts Payable department was not getting discounts for early bill payment because goods in the warehouse weren’t being entered as Received in the computer system. If the accounting department doesn’t see that the goods are received, they won’t pay the invoices; and money that could have been saved by early payment was being tossed away. 

I thought that either they needed more help unloading and doing quality control checks, or the procedures might need streamlining. I was betting on the former, but couldn’t rule out the latter, either.

So then I started wondering how the company was trying to recruit more workers. Were they going with Indeed.com, or the DOL website, or Manpower, Inc., or doing something else?

Then I started wondering about the workers themselves. The state where the warehouses were located had a dismal record for public school education. Did the business locate its plants there because labor was cheap? If so, they weren’t increasing the tax base much, which meant that education wasn’t being funded, which in turn led to…a substandard labor pool to draw from.

So, then I started thinking that maybe I could convince somebody in the company to actually visit the plants, and the cities they’re located in, and look around. Start by looking at whether the plants need more staff; then look at procedures; then look at the quality of the staff they’ve got, and the quality of the labor pool they could draw from if they needed to replace the current staff; then work with school and civic leaders to invest in local education…

By the time I got done with the scenario in my head, the company was a Public Benefactor, schools were humming along nicely, and the prospects of young people had improved dramatically.

 

All because some invoices at company headquarters in another state weren’t getting paid very fast.

 

So far, the scenario is still in my head, but I’m hoping to get it into somebody else’s fairly soon.

 

I Heard It on NPR

September 27, 2021

 

I’ve found out some interesting things from listening to National Public Radio. (I’d hear a lot more, but I generally only tune in when all the other radio stations in my car are playing lousy music.)

 

New medications for humans used to be tested only on male rats, so their different effects on females were never taken into account. You may ask yourself, “Why?” I ask myself, “Who took the time to separate the sexes?” Also, of course, “Why?”

 

There is an annual convention for vacuum cleaner aficionados. At least one working vacuum is 80 years old. Many of the owners do their own repairs, but there are specialty shops that do repairs as well.

 

Plants are not as passive as we used to believe. In addition to standard protection devices like thorns, spines, or a bitter taste, there’s a more focused one: Some plants, when being bothered by a predator, emit pheromones that attract predators of their predators. Just because they can’t move doesn’t mean they’re not sneaky.

 

 

This concludes my “Boy, that’s fascinating!” segment.

 

Wolf Whistle

September 22, 2021

 

Remaining true to his credo of, “If one is good, ten must be better,” Dick Wolf has created a third show in his “FBI” series.

This comes after 8 “Law & Order” series (including “Law & Order: UK”) and 4 (three surviving) “Chicago” shows. There is at least more “Law & Order” series in the works.

Frankly, none of the series but the original “Law & Order” has ever floated my boat; but he apparently knows what the rest of the public likes, so he'll keep mining that gold for as long as he can.

Just a Spoonful of Ivermectin...

September 23, 2021 

A reader wrote in to the Post-Dispatch and suggested that, if the government wants people to get vaccinated against COVID-19,

It should hide the vaccine in horse deworming pills. He predicts that people would be vaccinated in no time.

 

 

Embracing the Minimalist Genre

September 19, 2021

Apparently made optimistic by my minuscule donation to the virtual Met Gala of 2020, the Metropolitan Opera sent me a fundraising letter, with the promise of goodies should I come through.

For a $100 donation, I could get a calendar or a tote bag. 

For $500, they would gift me with a DVD of Puccini’s Turandot or a DVD of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten.

The incentives all seemed pretty puny for the amount of the donation. 

It could have been worse, though. They could have offered a CD of John Cage’s “4’33”. (Look it up.)

You Get What You Pay For: Low-Wage Locale vs Qualified Workers

September 15, 2021

As a former Workforce Development Director, I pay attention whenever somebody says, “I can’t get qualified help.”

If you moved all or part of your company to place with low wages, on the grounds that you’d save money that way, remember that the quality of education depends on the tax base. If you’re not paying the population, they can’t fund good education for their children, your future workers.

And you may have a hard time importing “qualified” workers, because who wants to raise their kids in a place with a lousy education system?

So basically, you’ve just shot yourself in the foot.

 

If you want a steady supply of quality workers, you should consider partnering with local authorities to ensure that the population of your chosen locale can get the education that they need.

 

Take Them Off the List

August 28, 2021

The Gospel reading this weekend was from Mark, where Jesus says, “...out of the heart of man come evil thoughts: sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.”

 

Not a word about sloth or gluttony, though. Maybe those aren’t deadly sins after all.