Claims and Grievances

My career as an elected Official started as the Union Representative for the Brotherhood Of Maintenance of Way Employees Union back in the early ‘70’s, first as Secretary Treasurer for the Western District out of Weed California and later as District Chairman for the Eastern District out of Oakridge Oregon.

The union job didn’t pay any extra, it was non-gratis, but I always insisted there was some “Glory” to go along with the duties and that was the extra incentive. In truth I was the only one who could read and write it was more de-facto than popularity that got me elected. But it was a perfect fit since I was a nosey cuss by nature and the union guy gets to know everyone’s business and what better way to gain access to all those transcripts and records.

The three main functions to perform were: collecting dues; filing claims and grievances; attending hearings and dismissals. The dues was pure dirty work in the early days but it was all payroll deduction by the end. The claims and grievances were mostly requests for overtime that went to a junior employee or complaints of mistreatment according to the written “Union Agreement” book that everyone carried.

The hearings were the most entertaining, covering a large number of drug and alcohol violators but it included punishment for other infractions such as crashing a truck, getting injured, or otherwise damaging company property. One time I even had to go to the local news channel to get film footage of their coverage at a train derailment on a bridge where all 13 workers on the gang were fired in one fell swoop. They all ended up getting their back pay but it took years of appeals.

The funny part was that I got elected because I was such a hard worker they were sure I would work just as hard for the union and I did but they all assumed I would stop working so hard during the day and start acting like a lazy dog so I could be the union rep after hours. They were sorely disappointed to find that I kept working as hard as ever during the day at work.

Once I quit the Railroad that was the end of my political ambitions and I started to pursue on an honest career but I did come away with the idea that elected officials should have to work for free so we know their heart is in it and not just their bankbook.

Governance Risk and Compliance

Governance, Risk and Compliance or GRC is another business process that does not quite match how we live our day to day lives. In the real world we live by laws (Governance) and if we get caught breaking laws we get punished (Risk), and then we promise to be good again (Compliance). In the Business world they get off easier. First, they get to write their own rules and then they hire their own Auditors who are always nice when it comes to the punishment.

In our industry the Governance is called ISO9000 and you can’t do business without it so everyone gets Audited, no exceptions. It all starts with a written document of what the Company promises to do and then another document to prove they did what they said in the first document. If they don’t match the Auditor declares a violation and you have to change the documents.

Here is a real world example of the changes in my Backup document.

2000 Version 1: Tapes will be shipped off site every Tuesday.

2002 Version 2: Tapes will be shipped offsite once a week.

2005 Version 3: Tapes will be shipped offsite once a month.

2008 Version 4: Tapes will be shipped offsite as needed.

2010 Version 5: Tapes have been replaced by hard drives

Each of these revisions was the result of a failed Audit where I had missed a Tuesday or we decided to decrease our frequency to save costs. I wish we had made it generic from the beginning but we had to learn the hard way.

In the Business world the Governance is self determined, they get to write their own rules, in the real world the Governance has more bite and we don’t get to write our own laws. In the business world the Risk is all monetary but in real life the Risk is all too real. In the business world the Compliance is voluntary but in real life Compliance is enforced with a heavy hand.

When it comes to enforcement in the Business world, it seems they get away with more money for less punishment compared to the real world where criminals serve more time for stealing less money.

Sierra Safari’s and Taxidermy

When I was a kid living way out on the shores of Lake Almanor in Northern California my Dad hung a sign out in front of our house advertising his second career. Being a School Teacher left the summers free to act as a guide on fishing and hunting trips with our various visiting friends and relatives. After a while word got out and there were too many requests to keep up with so he had to open a business of sorts to manage the schedules and take their money with a clear conscience. So Dad became an officially Licensed Guide and our house became a Sportsman’s destination specializing in Archery Hunting and Fly Fishing. After a while word of mouth spread through the medical community and the customer list was soon exclusively composed of well to do Doctors from the Bay Area.

As a 10 year old I was too young to get a hunting license unlike my older brothers who were 12 and 14 so they got to go out with the hunters while I was relegated to lesser duties. The best part was acting as the designated deer spotter on top of the jeep. Now it was well known in our family that I didn’t have the best vision on account of having two surgeries to improve my astigmatism, but I was an Eagle-Eye wizard compared to those city slickers and it always turned into a comedy as I would press the buzzer to stop the rig while pointing to the deer standing in the brush only a few yards away. The poor customers rarely saw the deer until they ran away and by then it was too late to get a good shot. Then we would drive around the next bend and find more deer standing there invisible to the good Doctors.

I was old enough for all the fishing assignments which included everything from fly fishing up and down the river to spending all day baiting hooks from the boat or lakeshore. It was all old hat to us kids but it was pure magic to those flat-landers and we almost felt bad for getting so much credit where none was due. One of our favorite fishing trips including overnight camping at Hidden Lakes high up near the tree line where the snow stays until late June. My greatest accomplishment was making it back down to the truck and back to camp in 45 minutes to arrive just at dark with the forgotten tent. I had a flashlight but was determined not to use it. I’m not saying I got scared but I ended up with enough adrenaline that day to make me remember the trip in detail to this very day.

Some people may find all that killing quite morbid especially the Taxidermy part but it was all in a days’ work back in the 1960’s.

There is No Such Thing as Zero

There was a time when the number zero was unknown to us. Then we got smart enough to invent the number zero. Everyone agreed we must be smarter now that we have this new number that really isn't a number at all but instead is just a "place holder". The number zero served us well back when we first learned to count but it is now time for us to abandon the zero as a child will abandon the tricycle and then later the training wheels on their bike. The number Zero has had a long and glorious history and we should mark down its place with honor as long as we accept that there must be an end to this nonsense so we can move on to the next level. Along with the Dinosaurs, the Horse Drawn Carriage and the Phone Pager, we can abandon this archaic device. We don't need no zero now. Here are my proofs.

Let's talk dollars: If you have one and then you don't, it doesn't feel like zero dollars, it feels like negative one. There is no such thing as zero.

Let's talk apples. You want some for a pie and you don't have any yet but your dream pie does. You never had zero with all those apples gleaming in your eye.

Let's not talk apples. If you don't have any apples, and we are not talking about apples, it doesn't feel like zero apples because there are no apples to begin with. Zero would be too many apples in this case. As soon as we talk about apples, the very absence or presence makes the total a non-zero number. It is simply not possible to stop in between positive and negative values. There either is, or is not. The existence of a Twilight Zone in the middle requires an alternate universe that none of us have ever or will ever see.

Let's talk people. Can you be zero years old? At birth? At conception? Is there a moment just before or just after that is somehow long enough to allow a third condition? The answer should be no. No matter how we measure, there is only before and after but not even one single instant can exist between or we would all be stuck there forever and beyond.

Why do I berate the poor lowly zero so much? My main complaint is the confusion with the alphabet character with the same visual image we call "Oh". To confuse things further we interchange the "Oh" sound for both the number and the letter. Not only does the number dilute the market price of the letter, but it should have its own icon rather than borrow one already in use. Then to top it off they put these two characters next to each other on the keyboard in order to maximize the possibility that mistakes will be made. How many times has the number not added up due to it being a Capitol OH instead of the number zero. They look the same, why not agree to put a strike through one or the other?

Yes, there was a time when we needed this crutch to prop up our fledgling intellect but now we are ready to think on our own two feet and prepare to run ahead to our next goal in the race for knowledge. What once was our central pivot is now our only anchor and it's time to cut the line and sail away. The real benefit will be in the computer world where we deal exclusively with 1’s and 0’s. Imagine the savings if we can banish half the traffic. We should all tell the internet to, “Stop sending any more zero’s!” Just think how fast the web will be when we only have to send the ones.

A Piece Too Far

When the price of Gold hit $2,000 an ounce it was only natural for people to start digging again in the last known hot spot according to the old timers. That’s how I found myself waist deep in the North Fork of the Feather river breaking my own rule by prospecting on my own. I was working under a huge boulder as big as my truck lodged in the gravel bar under the river bank that goes up a steep cliff for thousands of feet. The nearest road is more than three miles away and there is no one is in this area at this spring time of year. The ice cold runoff water is too deep and too cold for anyone but a fool. Everyone knows it’s better to wait until August or later to get down to these low water spots but that was before the price jumped.

Having been there the day before I started out knowing I would be digging in real pay dirt and not just the usual leftover tailings. There were some good sized chunks in my first few pans and I even had to go to my big plastic container to store the nuggets that were too big for my little glass bottle. My personal tradition had always been to keep the biggest nugget of the day in my mouth for good luck but these clunkers were getting harder and harder for me to chew . Then I felt something heavy in my hand as I was loading the pan under water and sure enough I had a beautiful piece as big as my thumb. I put it in my mouth for a minute but it was just too big to manage and I went back with the last little piece.

I was working like a madman after finding that big one and I soon turned caution to the wind as I dug deeper under the edge of the giant piece of stone where it was sitting on top of the bedrock. I was filling my pan from the downstream edge and started out on my hands and knees but soon had to lay down to squeeze into the narrow wedge between the bedrock below and the boulder above. By now I had to hold my head all the way under water to get to my favorite spot. I thought for a minute about going back to the truck for my gas siphoning hose to use as a breathing tube but I promised myself I would only be under for a moment at a time. I was able to load a few more pans with increasing amounts of reward in each one giving me the adrenaline to go back for more when I should have been taking a break and warming up.

It was almost dark, I was dog tired and cold but convinced that I could feel an even bigger piece of gold up there in that last tight spot and by golly, I was going to get it. But as soon as I reached in there something moved and I was stuck. The whole length of my right arm is being squished and my head is under water. At first it seemed funny but the next second was pure panic as I pulled with all my might and only made things worse. I spent a moment yelling at myself about safety and greed but there was no relief in that so I moved on to the reptile response that was appropriate for the situation at hand. As the need to breath reached the breaking point and the water was about to come in there was one moment of clarity and I moved myself around to put both feet flat to give one last push against the rocks and pull my arm free when something gave way, my arm tore free and I was able to breathe again.

Back at the hospital I finally grasped the gravity of the situation. A dislocated shoulder, popped elbow joint, torn tissues and tendons to remind me of what could have been much worse. The worst part of all is knowing that a whole hunk of my hide still resides back there under that rock. You might think a thing like that would cure my condition and the lure of gold would lose its luster for me but I keep thinking about going back someday to get that nugget.

The Last Typewriter Repairman

While attending Trade School in the early ‘90’s I ended up taking an outside job for the one semester when there was no Work-study job for me and I accepted a part time position at a business called Cascade Computers. While they did so some work on computers, the majority of the workers were involved with typewriters. Repairing, maintenance and cleaning typewriters was a big contract that once was a major money maker involving several businesses but they all ended up closing down one by one until only Cascade Computers was left servicing the Typewriter Industry.

At first I was embarrassed to work on the old fashion machines and was longing to work with computers. But once I finally settled down long enough to watch the expert guy put the pulley spring back on the rollers using two long skinny crochet hooks I could tell there was real skill involved. He was able to dig into the guts of that contraption and fix things again with the incredible dexterity. Most computers are quite simple to service but if you have to take apart an electric typewriter there will be lots of parts and pieces.

These were top of the line IBM Selectric Machines that were not like your regular Typewriter. These had a Golf Ball with letters instead of keys and no reaching up to push the carriage back for each line, instead the golf ball moves back and forth. These devices were state of the art in their day but when I got there they were already well on the way to extinction. The thing I remember most about them was the humming noise they made even while unattended that made them sound more like a refrigerator than a computer. And that was nothing compared to the noise they made when the worker started typing.

The job of cleaning these dodo-birds consisted of several steps requiring the use of toxic Chemicals to treat the different kinds of rubber on the rollers and spacers. This only added to the overall discomfort of having to disturb workers in their office to clean the thing and then their eyes would get bigger and bigger when the smell of those chemicals hit their noses. Usually I went by myself to the various places on the list of units to be cleaned. For the big Jobs we would fire up the old van out back and get all the workers together for an assembly line approach.

The funniest part was trying to find the typewriter at most places and then when we finally did find it, it didn’t need cleaning because it hadn’t been used. There were some places that really did need cleaning and then we earned our money but most of the time we felt like the Maytag repairman.

I love to kid around by saying I was also the Last Railroad Gandy Dancer. Sure there are people who still do that same job today but they never heard the songs or felt the thrill of working on the traveling System gangs way back in the last Century . I even go so far as to tell the joke that I will someday be the last computer Systems Analyst but when it comes to the Last Typewriter job, I swear it’s true. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a working Typewriter?

Soonest Cheapest Best

These are the three driving forces of the Business World but the concept applies to all facets of human life. Who doesn’t want the all the best things in life, except when it costs too much or takes too long, which turns out to be most of the time. If it wasn't for Soonest and Cheapest, we could go straight to Best. The only reason we aren't Best yet is because Soonest and Cheapest keep taking priority.

How many times have you had someone request to have something done ASAP. If everything needs to be done as soon as possible then why bother making the request. Have you ever been told to take your time, there is no hurry? No, it is always urgent. Even soon is not soon enough, nor is sooner; it has to be soonest. Soonest is another way of saying we are too busy fighting fires to do any long-term projects. In a disaster incident soonest can't be soon enough but even for long term and low priority projects the steps are broken down into what comes next: soonest.

Cheapest is not a goal, it is just a benchmark to see how much money got wasted. No one wants to be a cheapskate, but everyone wants to save money. No one ever got fired for spending too little. The rule of thumb is to find the cheapest item and then buy the next most expensive one above that. Reciprocally you never want to buy the most expensive of anything, instead buy the one just below. The ones on the bottom and top are always exaggerated in actual value.

Best is nice target to shoot for but it won't be cheapest or soonest. Soonest and Cheapest are the compromises we have been making over and over to end up where we are now. Do we really need Best? Maybe settling for second best is just as logical as buying the one just above cheapest. Best might cost too much. Best might be impossible. Turn's out, you can’t get there from here.

So the approach should be a balance between these three opposing forces: Soonest Cheapest and Best. In the end it turns out that getting the best in life either takes too long or costs too much.