Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Lazy Government Workers
I was a government worker for a while, and I would never complain about the 'lazy government worker' stereotype because I wasn't one and didn't see that in my co-workers, and definitely I did see far too little compensation for the work required. Further, I was told I would have but did not in fact receive flex-time and job security in the position as compensation. The time wasting in government work is egregious - justifying every little thing you do and filling things in triplicate and making sure every gnat has notification of changes... that's a big time waste, IMNSHO. It isn't that the individual government employee is a time-waster, but that the culture of government work promotes - or perhaps just tolerates - bureaucratic time-wasting activities that are not tolerated in the public sector.
As an example, when I worked for the city of Detroit there was such a strictly enforced division of labor that we office staff were not allowed to unjam copiers. We had to put in a support request, and wait for building services to show up and unjam the machine. I can't think of a corporation, where they would even provide copier unjamming as a support service (except in very truly fouled-up mechanical cases); the waste of time for the wait while a support clerk was dispatched would not be acceptable. However, in a corporation I could probably make 5,000 copies at the office machine and not a word would be said about the inefficiency of using the copier for mass production of copies; at the state if I wanted 5,000 copies that job had to be processed through a document specialist, who would use an RFP (or not) to get the best price - again, at a time delay, but probably cheaper. It seems to me that neither is better; government spends far too much time to get things done (generally) and private companies often sacrifice economy for speed to market.
But having to pick between the two, I can say I'm glad to be back in public sector employment.
As an example, when I worked for the city of Detroit there was such a strictly enforced division of labor that we office staff were not allowed to unjam copiers. We had to put in a support request, and wait for building services to show up and unjam the machine. I can't think of a corporation, where they would even provide copier unjamming as a support service (except in very truly fouled-up mechanical cases); the waste of time for the wait while a support clerk was dispatched would not be acceptable. However, in a corporation I could probably make 5,000 copies at the office machine and not a word would be said about the inefficiency of using the copier for mass production of copies; at the state if I wanted 5,000 copies that job had to be processed through a document specialist, who would use an RFP (or not) to get the best price - again, at a time delay, but probably cheaper. It seems to me that neither is better; government spends far too much time to get things done (generally) and private companies often sacrifice economy for speed to market.
But having to pick between the two, I can say I'm glad to be back in public sector employment.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Polaroid PoGo Gadget a go-go
I was checking out Dan Wheldon's car in advance of the Meijer 300 race in Kentucky today, and was started wondering what Polaroid is up to lately. My first camera was a Polaroid one-step so I do have a certain fondness for the brand. I checked out their site and found a neat gadget: the
Polaroid PoGo. My kids would be wild for an instant sticker maker that worked with my phone. Neat product, Polaroid!
