Has the laws and policy benders of the city once again come out on top?

It would appear that once you’re in government management the sky is the limit. There are no effective check and balances to keep them in line nor a method to control their actions when caught with dirty hands. Just spins and excuses.

Even the poop farm and all that went on there, it was allowed to continue long after it had been reported. I am willing to bet that if it hadn’t been for both the Guardian and investigations that were carried out by other then the city that it would still be going on.

Unlike with employees, there appears to be a special catch and release policy in place for the poop managers.

EDITOR NOTE–
Stay tuned. Youn ain’t seen nothing yet.

Why don’t you check out the fact that ADA County pays BFI $25.00 to get rid of each computer screen and TV that ends up in the landfill? Why don’t people pay for disposal at the time of purchase? Who is benefiting from this arrangement

Seems to be for about a zillion reasons, too. Not just the Enrons, but all the bright bankers who lent money to people they knew couldn’t pay it back, to outfits like Mc-Latchkey (Owner of The Idaho Mistakesman and other papers) going millions of dollars into debt, to airlines either pricing low to keep customers and then not having enough money to buy fuel, or raising prices to pay for fuel and then not having enough customers …. well, you get the idea.

Does the *new* business model y’all are talking about help or hinder this whole mess I’m talking about?

I have no idea (so am waiting to read yours).

We’re are suppose to be out of the slave business, although I have to admit there are companies that haven’t gotten that clue yet.

Being judged and rewarded by results goes a lot further towards obtaining company goals than punching time clocks and being whipped all the time ever did. Most professional employees would not put up with working in the environment you so long for and most professional environments are not run that way.

Employers that have the kind of work environment know they are going to have a high turn over and don’t care. However, they are also quit to complain about getting and/or keeping good employees.

I question what any of this has to do with the actions of these two poop managers — Am I missing something here? Help me out Dave..

EDITOR NOTE–
I will repeat. I agree with all you have said in this comment. 35 years ago when I got canned at the Daily PAper my attitude was, “You can rent me, but you don’t own me.”

In no way do I advocate slavery–even wrote postings about it on the GUARDIAN. This post is about how technology has changed the workplace and it is nearly impossible to tell when someone is working, not working, reading personal e-mail, surfing the web, talking to friends on a personal cell phone…or running a side business on the company nickel. The expectations of management have changed and a whole new set of rules will evolve.

We seem to be in agreement as far as I can tell.

Skroo this werkin fer a livin!

I do not condone what the city employees are doing at all, especially working both sides of the fence.

A good excercise would be for the Guardian to figure out how much productivity is lost due to smoking. When public employees smoke, it is a direct subsidy to the tobacco industry at taxpayer expense. Not to mention the taxpayer subsidized smoking benefit in most public employee health insurance. If the Guardian does the math, 18% of population in Idaho smokes X # of public wokers X hours /day on smoke breaks X cost of smoking benefit to taxpayers for health insurance = Why politicians love the tobacco industry and will do anything for that re-election tobacco lobby coin.

EDITOR NOTE–Dog, who is trotting out what? I agree with your views–even if you have trotted them out before.

Slow news day?

EDITOR NOTE–Don’t think we disagree on anything other than the buzz words…for non-library types can you explain either a genuine or artificial “silo between staff and managers?”

Times do change and if your saying these two managers have the time to be employed full time by the tax payers at one job while doing another job of their own, maybe their time has come too.

In some aspects it is more effecient for a firm to allow more work-life balance in the work place. Feeling a little more free, employees may be more loyal, creative and even harder working. There are always some who will abuse the balance and when times get tough, they are usually the first to go, if not before then.

Be careful of work place studies, they always assume “unproductive” activities can be immediatly replaced with revenue generating activities. A good example are the studies based on March Madness Basketball Brakets, a study I saw a few years ago said it costs about $1B in producitivty during March, if these employees were not looking at basketball brakets, what makes the studies authors think these employees are not at the water cooler chatting, smoking outside, or some other non-productive activity?