Future Tense

Here we are gently creeping into 2012. The year that will inevitably be the end of the world. According to the Mayan's, or even Harold Camping. I used to listen to Art Bell a number of years ago when my shift work made his overnight radio program easily accessible. He used to talk about what he called "the quickening". It was his impression that technology, world events, political change, etc. were changing faster than ever. Whether this was actual or perceived was difficult to quantify but none the less interesting. I find that my perception of the world is changing as well. I'm not going to give it a moniker like "the quickening" but it does seem that events are moving at a more rapid pace. That may be due to the increased access to information and information delivery. The twenty four hour news cycle and all news cable channels give the impression of constant "breaking news" and "alerts". Natural disasters can be viewed in real-time like the Japanese tsunami. 9/11 was essentially a live event. I recall getting ready to leave for work as the second plane plowed into the towers live on Fox News. News headlines are fed to our phones and displayed on monitors in coffee shops, restaurants and gas pumps. Twenty five years ago I had no thoughts of retiring from my current job. It was just the next best job that came along. I'm now three short years away from being eligible to retire. My frustration is mounting daily with the economic situation of this job. The feeling of being "trapped" here until I retire. I could actually leave now and have the same pension benefit that I would in four years. The reason for staying is the dang retirement medical coverage. That in itself is a HUGE reason for staying. My actual wage has diminished to where I am earning a mere fifteen cents an hour more than I did when I got hired twenty five years ago. I am tempted to forego the retirement medical coverage and get a job with a wage I can survive on. Working overtime is not the way I want to increase my income stream. I treasure my days off. Having a job with lousy hours and ridiculous days off used to be offset by a decent wage that made it worth the sacrifice. No longer do I see it being "worth" anything. The company has stripped us of our hard earned benefits under the guise of keeping the doors open. Yes, this is an industry in it's death throes. I hope it can cling to existence for just a few short years.

Decaf? Really?

Ethan keeping his Papa's job alive by "reading" the paper.

Very Disturbing Article Indeed

When the Russian newspaper Pravda runs a column that pronounces American capitalism is dead, one should stop and contemplate the course this country is taking. Pravda is the former state run newspaper of communist Russia. It was the mouthpiece of the regime.

"American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper" is the title of the opinion piece. This headline wouldn't stir any controversy if published in any right leaning conservative publication. It would be par for the course, even considered preaching to the choir. Published in Pravda makes it an entirely different animal.

Stand up, speak out. Contact your representatives. Call them out when they drop the ball or can't seem to tell the truth because they are too caught up in their own lies. Don't let them dictate the direction this country is headed as if no one cares. That may be asking too much. There is a multitude of citizens who are actually too busy watching American Idol and following the sleazy exploits of the pointless lives of Hollywood schmucks to care about the little details like freedom and liberty.

San Francisco Chronicle In Trouble

Nothing new here. They have been bleeding red ink for years but when there is an Associated Press story that reads "San Francisco Chronicle May Close" you know things are near the bottom of the toilet tank for them. There is a remote possibility that the company that owns the San Jose Mercury News could be a potential buyer. The only way that could happen would be if no buyers stepped forward to purchase the paper and the alternative option of shutting down was the only other choice. Then MediaNews could step in and buy the ailing paper in order to keep the presses running. Maybe even pick it up at a firesale price.

MediaNews, the parent company of the San Jose Mercury news, borrowed $300 million dollars from the Hearst Corporation, which owns the Chronicle, to purchase the bay area newspapers that were put up for sale after the McClatchy company bought them from Kight Ridder. Follow that trail of bread crumbs!

I guess whatever the outcome may be could only bode well for the San Jose Mercury News. If the Chronicle shuts down that would be a tremendous opportunity to "poach" a subscriber base that no longer had a hometown newspaper. If they have a huge company restructuring with cutbacks/layoffs and downsizing it could affect the overall stability of their subscriber base and there could be some customer migration to the Mercury News.

Either way it will be interesting to watch and see the effects on the industry as a whole.

My Job Needs Resuscitating

Back in April, the job that I was doing for the paper that I work for was eliminated. I ended up taking an entirely new job just created that no one else had done before. I would be replacing three soon to be former employees. I received a grand total of about one hour worth of training from the outgoing guy who had all the single copy sales responsibilities. That's the papers that are sold in stores and in the vending machines. I received zero hours of training from the slacker who was responsible for the home delivery distribution. She decided to call in sick her last week of work rather than stick around to help out the poor schlep who was booting her out the door. The warehouse guy was really the only reasonable one to work with for the last week that they were employed. At least he didn't bail and stick it to the new guy. Well, not actually a "new guy". I have 21 years in circulation, just not the circulation they were responsible for.

The first month as the big cheese, I worked seven days a week around 12 to 14 hours a day. I was essentially training myself. I had to learn everything about this new position on my own. To top things off, one of the home delivery dealers had given a 30 day notice that was effective the day before I took over the area. Making matters worse, he had a carrier who quit on him two days before that. I was throwing a route that took about 2 and a half hours to deliver. It was nasty...apartments, condos, businesses. I couldn't take a day off until someone knew how to do my job. Even if they knew the job, I couldn't leave them to throw the route. It would take them about 5 hours if they didn't know the delivery.

My "swing man" who works for me on my two days off could only be trained by me on overtime on my days off! He worked other districts his other three days. After about three weeks of training, (that's my 2 days off each week) he was able to have enough knowledge of the nuts and bolts of the job to at least let me have my days off. There were still things that he could not do that were necessary to the operation. I had to do these when I got back from my off days. This usually caused my Monday to be excessively long. I had become a zombie of sorts. Eat, sleep, work. Eat, sleep, work for weeks on end. My wife wasn't real pleased either. I missed some birthday's, doctor appointments, and various other promises of "I'll be home by....." all for the job. I felt obligated. I couldn't NOT be there and let the district blow up. How foolish to have such concern for a job well done. I could have easily taken the route of a slacker and been none the worse for wear. But that's not me.

Well the story goes along for a few months and I get the operation fine tuned. The operation is purring like a kitten and quite manageable. The home delivery dealers are doing a good job and I'm making sure they get paid. The single copy distribution is still a hassle for paperwork but that's the nature of that beast.

I get a call from my Teamsters Local Business agent. He says he has a meeting with the company the next day and he's planning a general meeting with the membership. This is never good news when those two events occur in close proximity. The news can only be bad and it generally costs us money or benefits. After his meeting with the company the rumors are flying. Layoffs, consolidations, cut backs. You name it we heard it from one source or another.

The next week I'm sitting in the union hall at the preordained meeting reading the informational page that was handed out and lo and behold, my district is being eliminated. The plan was to have my operation folded into the Mercury News operation in the same warehouse. In other words, I did too good of a job starting from scratch taking over from three people and making the thing work with just the one of me. Now I've worked myself out of a job.

The most galling part of all of it is the line that was fed to me by my supervisor. He had been on vacation the week prior when all this went down. He met with me and asked me what was happening like he hadn't been in the loop. I may have been born at night but I wasn't born last night. He said he just heard about it Monday when he came back to work. Yeah, ya lying sack of fertilizer. Nothing happens in his warehouse that he doesn't know about. He always sends some type of email when he's on vacation. He follows up on things even when he's gone, leaves voicemail, etc. Then he asks me what I thought would be the best way of implementing the "plan" for my area. I sat there thinking, "You've got to be kidding me!"

He was handing me rope hoping I would hang myself by telling him how to eliminate my own job. I don't get paid enough to create or eliminate jobs. The company can post the job description and I'll bid on it if I like it. If I don't, I'll bump into another department. The nerve of this guy. The longer I sat there the more upset I became. After repeatedly asking me what I thought I would do he came up with a scenario where I could keep my San Mateo Times district AND pick up the Mercury News circulation in Palo Alto. Let me see, here. That means I would have two jobs. San Mateo Times AND Mercury News. Along with that comes Wall Street Journal, Barron's IBD, Financial Times. Let me check the pay scale. Oh, right. Twice the work, same pay....sorry about that.

Never again will I assume that this or any other company has even a speck of gratitude at all for the work that the employees provide. For twenty one years I have worked Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, birthdays and anniversaries. I have missed countless family functions because of the ridiculous hours I work. I've gone to bed before my kids their entire lives. I work when the rest of the city is sleeping. I understand I chose freely to remain with the company all these years. The pay and benefits were just good enough to keep me from leaving. That has taken a turn for the worse as well. We have consistantly been diverting our raises to our health and welfare plan for several years now. This past September we actually took a pay cut to maintain our healthcare coverage levels. While we still have exceptional healthcare coverage, the company is moving closer and closer to eliminating the union. My hope is that they will stay afloat until I can secure a new career path. The newspaper industry is in dire straits with circulation in a free fall.

Get the paddles out, start an IV and CPR.

It's Only A Matter Of Time

My job for the last 22 years has been in the print media. Specifically circulation. While the circulation of the paper I work for has declined exponentially over the last few years, it remains afloat through a series of sales/mergers/acquisitions. There has been an increased effort to promote the "eEdition", an online version of the paper that looks identical to the print version. The difference being you can click on links such as advertising or articles or you can download coupons, etc. This "eEdition" is just another step in the progression away from a "manufactured" product distributed by employees and contractors. The Christian Science Monitor has announced that they will no longer print their daily newspaper and become an online only publication. This does not bode well for my future in this line of work.

Palin In The Post

Amazingly, the Washington Post did a fairly decent job on a biographical article of Sarah Palin and her family. In reading it I was getting the impression that it was leading up to a punchline that never came. There were a few paragraphs regarding her faith and background in hunting that were written rather condescendingly but never viscious. I think you see them for what they are. A conservative reader would see the valuable lessens she learned growing up in the environment she did. An urban liberal would see it as silly backwards upbringing. It depends on what you value in life. Self-relience, strength of character, rugged individualism are usually not the qualities the left looks for in a candidate (IMHO).

Hats (slightly) off to WaPo for a relatively non-hit piece. Click the post title for the link to the article.

Newsweek Columnist Sam Harris Displays Sexism, Religious Bigotry

Elitist bigot Sam Harris believes Sarah Palin is not qualified to run as a candidate for VP because, in a nutshell, she is a regular person and has religious beliefs. Her beliefs are tantamount to lunacy.

He writes, " If anyone could make Christian theocracy smell like apple pie, Sarah Palin could."

Why is it whenever a candidate on the right has religious beliefs of any type they are steering our country towards a fanatical religious theocracy? I hear no fears from the left that Obama will do that. He supposedly has a twenty year association with a racist extremist pastor and nobody bats an eye. This pastor stands in the pulpit preaching "God Damn America" and no one on the left flinches. The reason? The left are in agreement. Obama only distanced himself from Pastor Wright when he absolutely had to because the story was mushrooming out of control. When he did finally speak out he made it sound like this was the first time Wright ever made any inflamatory remarks by saying, "Obviously, whatever relationship I had with Rev. Wright has changed as a consequence of this". What would "this" be? The exposure of Wright as a racist. You cannot attend a church for twenty years and not know something like this about your pastor. The left was defending Wright the entire time. In fact an editorial in the Kansas City Star calls the concern over Jeremiah Wright's racist sermon's a "made-up issue"

Harris deems Sarah Palin to be ignorant because she expresses confidence. Yet if an elitist, Harvard educated male unswervingly said, "I'm ready, willing and able", Harris would be seen cheering in the crowd. He would not be asking, "Why is he so willing to do the job?" Here he provides a ridiculous scenario as an example of his viewpoint.

"What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she represents—and her supporters celebrate—the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Watching her deny to Gibson that she had ever harbored the slightest doubt about her readiness to take command of the world's only superpower, one got the feeling that Palin would gladly assume any responsibility on earth:

"Governor Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child's brain?"

"Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I'm an avid hunter."

"But governor, this is neurosurgery, and you have no training as a surgeon of any kind."

"That's just the point, Charlie. The American people want change in how we make medical decisions in this country. And when faced with a challenge, you cannot blink."

Harris displays a frightening stance on Palin's minor daughter's pregnancy.
He espouses a position that a mother should not have any control of her minor daughter's unplanned teen pregnancy. The only topic he touches on is abortion. One track mind.

"We know, therefore, that Palin believes that she should be the one to decide whether her daughter carries her baby to term. Based on her stated position, we know that she would deny her daughter an abortion even if she had been raped."

He goes on to explain that she is ignorant because she is a regular person.

"What doesn't she know about financial markets, Islam, the history of the Middle East, the cold war, modern weapons systems, medical research, environmental science or emerging technology? Her relative ignorance is guaranteed on these fronts and most others, not because she was put on the spot, or got nervous, or just happened to miss the newspaper on any given morning. Sarah Palin's ignorance is guaranteed because of how she has spent the past 44 years on earth."

Read the whole editorial by clicking here.

A Hole In The Sky

I was working in the field up the peninsula in Daly City and Colma and was coming over the hill to get to highway 101 when I came across this incredible light show. It was a very foggy morning. The small peninsula of land in the center of the picture is just south of Candlestick Park, the former home of the San Francisco Giants baseball team. It was truly a spectacular display! I took a series of pictures over about six minutes. I've posted them on my Flickr page. Check them out if you'd like.




The reason I was up there was because we were trying to determine if a guy we have contracted to distribute one of our publications is just ripping us off by picking up the papers and dumping them (or recycling them for $.08 a pound). He gets a flat fee weekly to distribute and we have audited and found no papers at the locations that he is telling us he is selling at. Thieving dirtbag!