Newspapers are dead?!? Well maybe in the dead tree format. On my way into work this AM, I was doing my usual listening to one of Leo Laporte’s many podcasts. In this case, this weeks TWiT, #138 Inventor’s Dilemma. They were talking about how there is another article about how newspapers are dead, going out of business. The TWiTters were discussing how the basically took themselves out of business by not responding quickly enough to the changes in technology. Missing Criagslist, their ad revenue, making people pay for information people could get free elsewhere, although they all changed that to free now, at least most of them. The thing that caught my ear was TWiT saying that it is dangerous getting your ideas from just a few sources. And not necessarily big media news reports, and in fact more and more from sources like blogs and twitters, and thus hearing things we have chosen to hear. Less reported and more editorialized. And thus only reinforcing our opinions and less and less reporting. My contention is isn’t that what we have been doing? More and more we listen to the news source that fits our opinions, my Mom and Dad are switching between CNN for Mom and Dad and his Fox news. The fact is yes Fox is biased, but so is CNN, in the 90’s often referred to the Clinton News Network. More recently with the Gov. Spitzer scandal, Fox was reporting that Democrat Gov, while CNN only said Gov. Like it or not that omission is a bias. In fact talking to my wife proved that, she thought the Spitzer was a Republican, assuming so because the news mostly aligned with CNN rarely said Democrat Gov Spitzer, and Republicans are bad, thus he must be Republican. The fact is we already choose news by our likes and dislikes. And if we don’t like the slant one channel says we switch to another. The long and the short is we like our opinions to be agreed with, and if someone doesn’t we seek out someone who does to replace that person.

Time Clocks at work. We are about to get Chronos, a new time card system here in Biomed. I don’t know when, but we have been notified. Here are my problems with it. 1. We are all adults, we should be able to come in and do our jobs and leave. We have managers, who’s jobs are, in part, to watch over us and make sure that we come and go when we are supposed to. Time clocks to me is essential saying these people are not doing their jobs, lets punish the little guy, instead of telling the managers to talk to the people that may be coming and going as they please. I understand if you manage 100 people there may be a need for a time clock, but here at Jefferson our managers at most have 20. If they can’t manage that, they are not doing their jobs. It is that simple. 2. If you are going to dock me for coming in 5 minutes late, you better be giving me the hour I stay late at the end of the day also. Yes I should be coming in on time. But right now if I am not finished with a job at 4, I stay until I am done, and only rarely ask for overtime. In other words, Jefferson will lose free time they get from me, because I will put my screwdriver down at 4pm everyday now and leave. Again go after the few that break the rules and the rest of us who are good will continue giving the company more time than they pay us for. But they don’t they punish that mass to promote the minority.

Paperwork/meetings. Managers are spending more time going to meetings to talk about more meetings. And since they are at these meetins they have lost contact with those they manage, whom if you notice are getting the job done, for the most part, while they are at these meetings. Which leads me to ask are these managers really needed. If I never see my manager again, and my hospital stays up to date with PMs and repairs, why do I even need that manager? Yes you can bring this theory all the way up that ladder, and it would show that you need no upper management, and that isn’t so. You need a captain that looks out for the ship, your next destination sort of thing. But if the captain is always at a meeting and not actually piloting, his value lessens. In order to help them compensate for not being there, and to get a pinhole view of what is going on they invented paperwork. Where they make the workers, most of whom are already over worked, do reports on what they do all day, and then the managers strip the reports down to a number, and when I say the managers, I mean their computers, the managers are still down the hall at a meeting, discussing their next meeting on an upcoming meeting. So Bob did 4 and Bill did 9, what does that mean. Well apparently Bill did more, end of discussion. When in actuality Bob repaired 4 cars, and Bill sharpened 9 pencils. There was a time when Joe, the manager, was working alongside Bob and Bill and knew what was going on, now Joe doesn’t even question it, he just knows Bill did more than Bob. Gotta love paperwork!

Why again has America lost its lead?   Well its simple  because its all about getting the numbers out, not the product anymore.   Its more important that you read 30 twitters, than one newspaper article.  That you are AT work 40 hours, than actually work 40 hours.  That your sharpen 9 pencils, then repair 4 cars. That you go to 7 meetings, than meet your staff once.  Its all a numbers game.