A tale of
two TriMets
One of the
Trimet’s is staffed by people who get up and go to sleep at all hours of the
day and night.
They work
outside in all sorts of conditions, the wet, the cold, the hot and even the icy.
They deal
with every type of human being alive, some of them are violent, some are mentally
ill, and some are severely physically handicapped.
Some of the personnel
in this Trimet operate equipment that is
20 years old, full of dust and mold exposing them to all sorts of bacteria and
viruses.
They work
long days, some work days are 15 hours then a few hours off and back to work
again.
These people
work hard day in and day out to make the transit system operate. Without these
people there would be no transit system.
Then there
is the other TriMet.
This TriMet
is staffed by people in suits; they go to meetings and have air-conditioned
offices.
They mostly work 9-5 weekdays only.
They go on
company junkets around the country giving speeches and listening to others
giving speeches.
They deal
with big money contracts and big money grants.
They make advertisements
for themselves, they throw functions congratulating themselves.
They also
make big money, many of these people in the other Trimet make six figure
salaries, and they retire with huge pensions.
Nobody knows what other perks
they get, this Trimet operates like the National Security Agency, they don’t give up any
information unless they have too. And even then they charge the citizens to get
it.
If the
people that work at that TriMet didn’t bother to show up for work nobody would
notice, the transit system would still be operating fine.
This is the
tale of the two TriMets.
3 comments:
Great essay Al.
I second Steve's comments. Absolutely true. Then again it's true for many governments...Washington D.C., City Hall, Metro...
Those that run the establishment often lose the sense of what it is like to be on this site of the podium. Neil ought to hold himself to the same terms that tens of thousands of TriMet commuters do each day - we don't get to show up late, take off work early. We can't just alter our travel plans; when the kid is sick we don't care about TriMet's issues - we just need to get our kid. We don't have a company car that we can use instead of the bus.
I've seen the argument that the worker bees get to go home at the end of the day while high-level managers are always on the job dealing with the issues. I do know that Neil has a pager and Blackberry that probably don't know when the end of a workday is.
Not saying that Neil and them are perfect managers, and I don't know how much work they do beyond the 40 hours a week, but that there might be a different side to it.
And, Erik, I haven't seen you answer my questions about your comments.
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