Letters from North
America
Perhaps
it’s just me and maybe
I’m weird or something
(don’t answer this) but
it puzzles me how some
people can have a job
where they do nothing
all day long. This would
sincerely drive me mad.
I like to work. I enjoy
working and I don’t know
what I would do if I
didn’t have to work.
However this does not
seem to be the normal
for some folks.
Several years ago I had
a chance to visit with a
friend of mine from my
old Army days in
Korea.
We had a nice chat, went
to dinner and back to
his house for coffee.
During the conversation
he told me that he only
had ‘about seven more
years to hide out before
he could retire.’
My first thought was
that he was an outlaw
and was wanted for some
terrible crime. But,
nope that wasn’t the
case…..he had a job as a
maintenance service man
for a number of
government buildings and
was on call for any
problems that might crop
up from time to time. He
told me that since he
had so many building to
look after no one ever
knew where he was at any
given time, so he just
stayed home and worked
on his hobbies until he
go a call to go and
repair something. I
asked him why he didn’t
go to various building
and look for things that
needed fixing before
someone called him and
you would have thought I
asked him something
like… ‘What kind of
gasoline would you use
on yourself if you
wanted to set yourself
on fire?’
“Why would I want to do
that?” he asked me. I
didn’t try to explain
it; I just finished my
coffee and headed out to
the hotel.
A
couple of weeks ago, I
pulled into a local
McDonalds for a cup of
coffee. I asked the lady
at the drive in window
how things were going.
She told me…. ‘Terrible,
I haven’t stopped since
I got here…the cars just
keep coming….’ I noticed
the next time I passed
through this same
location, she wasn’t
there any longer. To
her, the fact that …
‘cars just kept coming’
was a bad thing.
Obviously this young
lady did not own the
store or she would have
appreciated the fact
that business was good
for that morning. In her
mind a lot of business
was a bad thing, not a
good thing. In
today’s economy anyone
having ‘lots of
business’ is certainly a
good problem to have.
This past week we saw
the new employment
figures for last month.
It seems most of the new
jobs created were
governmental jobs as
opposed to private
sector positions. In my
mind this is not a good
thing for this country
as more government jobs
do not increase the
economy. Increasing the
size of government
reduces the amount of
taxpayers contributing
to our overall tax base.
Government agencies are
non profit entities.
All
of our governmental
agencies are screaming
due to reduced tax
revenues and a general
economic malaise. I
think one suggestion
might be to examine what
jobs are actually
necessary and or which
ones could be combined
or eliminated
altogether.
For
example, all of us are
concerned over the
current oil spill in the
Gulf of Mexico.
There was a report in
our paper the other day
about a governmental
agency that monitors
‘tar balls’ on the
beaches. Now the spill
has put these folks into
overdrive, but my
question is what have
they done until now?
They interviewed one
governmental employee
who said he has
monitored at ‘least 55
miles of beach front for
the past 15 years’ and
usually reported 3-4 tar
ball sightings a year,
mostly the size of small
pebbles.
My
question is surely this
is not all this guy does
all day long, month
after month. Do we pay
folks to patrol so many
miles of coastline to
look for tar balls year
after year? I mean how
long can this take in
any one given day? What
does this guy do the
rest of the time? Does
he sit in some
governmental office
space and wait for the
phone to ring when a
beachcomber sees some
tar washing up on his 55
mile patrol area? Has he
really been doing this
full time for 15 years?
Has he got a truck with
red lights and siren so
he can race to the ‘tar
ball’ scene? I’m really
curious to find out what
kind of a deal this is
all about.
I’m
sure the people along
the Gulf coast will not
lack for work until this
disaster has passed. I
just question how
efficient and productive
their work has been up
until now.
Comments got to
www.pearyperry.com.
Complaints go nowhere.
