Monday, July 28, 2014
Ballston Common in Arlington VA could make parking chargers "consistent" with a programming fix
Here’s a modest proposal to improve customer service at a
parking garage, requiring some programming.
The Ballston Common Parking Garage in Arlington VA, effectively used for
the Ballston Metro stop although belonging to the County and not to Metro,
raised rates on weekends in 2013. It
also drops to a flat $1 after 6 PM until midnight all days. The problem is, if you park even one minute
before in order to go into DC for the evening, you pay the full hourly rate.
If you arrive at 5:59 PM, you could pay $5 for an evening,
but would pay just $1 if you arrive at 6:00 PM.
Why not do the job and program the system to charge
fairly. At 6 PM, break the fare into the
sum of two periods if the total stay is 3 hours or less. That’s a pretty simple “IF … else …” statement. So in the hypothetical example, here, if you
arrive accidentally too early, you would pay $2 instead of $5. That would sound reasonable and fair.
The ad shown is in the Ballston Common Mall.
Sunday, July 27, 2014
"Year Up" provides internships, employment boot camp for disadvantaged young adults
CBS “60 Minutes” has aired a report on a job internship
program in New York and Boston (and Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta,
and Providence) called “Year Up”, where underprivileged students can earn
$23000 per year at major companies in internships at the end of an “employment
boot camp”.
The CBS link for the video is here. The embed code doesn't seem to function on Blogger.
Year Up has an eye catching phrase on its website, “an
opportunity divide”, link here., founded by Gerard Chertavian.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Following up on customer service problems with Bank of America ATM's during "unexpected" construction; also, Starbucks
Well, a full week later, the two outdoor terminals at the
Bank of America in Ballston (Arlington VA) are still closed, and there is only
one terminal indoors, which has huge lines.
I asked the “doorperson” and she said, the landlord only gave them five
weeks’ notice of its intention to do exterior remodeling construction (that
seems unnecessary) and that “it’s their fault”. She said it was to be finished in one week
(or, a week and a half). I asked her why
they didn’t put in at least a second ATM indoors, where there is still plenty
of room (and it’s more secure), and she said, “Oh, a second one will come in
December.” It takes five months to get
an ATM? To the bank’s credit, it opened
another teller line for the queue at the one terminal and stayed a little past
the 5 PM closing tome.
Presidential Bank’s terminal, one door down, seems to have
stayed open. And other businesses were
not so affected. Starbucks stayed open – and busy -- during the construction. There is a Starbucks on Stuart Street, and
another one two blocks away in the Ballston Mall, and both are always packed on
weekdays. But, again, customer service,
the Stuart Street location generally has only one of two registers open to keep
the customer line going.
If the landlord thinks that exterior beauty matters so much, it might wonder why an interior escalator (often used by Metro customers) was out of commission for over a month. Both Bank of America and the property management dropped the ball as far as customers are concerned on this one.
Note: Starbucks is considering a smart phone app to allow pre-order before arriving at store to cut down on lines. That's a good idea!
If the landlord thinks that exterior beauty matters so much, it might wonder why an interior escalator (often used by Metro customers) was out of commission for over a month. Both Bank of America and the property management dropped the ball as far as customers are concerned on this one.
Note: Starbucks is considering a smart phone app to allow pre-order before arriving at store to cut down on lines. That's a good idea!
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Paid paternal leave is getting more attention as a "need": should the childless subsidize it in a salaried workplace?
The Washington Post Business Section Sunday heads off with “Pushing
for dad time: as millennials choose caregiving over a company job, employers
are pressured to expand paid paternity leave”.
Online, the title is “More than a paycheck: New dads want paid leave to be caregivers,”
story by Brigid Schulte, link here.
The article also, on the other side,
reports that 1 in 5 companies required to offer at least unpaid leave to
fathers don’t. It also reports that fathers are still less likely to want to
try to take it in many instances where it is offered, even overseas.
The article does discuss the importance of the issue for
same-sex male couples raising children (like “Will and Sonny” on the NBC Soap “Days
of our Lives”). It does not appear that
being married is essential for the benefits to be offered.
However, it gets to become cold water time. What is the impact on those do not have
children? In the IT workplace, many
people are salaried. Particularly in
on-call situations, the childless mind wind up working time for free for those
who have children. In the 1980s, this
was hardly ever an issue as in the old mainframe world programmers tended to be
responsible just for their own systems, and the responsibility was pretty
absolute. As systems became more
distributed and as the Internet and client-server gradually became more
important in the 1990s, the picture started to change. Responsibility for code was shared a lot
more. My worst situation happened in
1993, where I worked on call a whole weekend free when someone else was
pregnant, but I did get a large raise later than I would have gotten.
With hourly workers, the company simply has to pay others to
do the work. But it has to factor the
likelihood that the leave will be taken in setting up wages, and in union
situations, the politics could get sensitive, depending on cultural factors.
Elinor Burkett had anticipated some of this in her book “The
Baby Boon” back in 2000. Whether the
childless need to share responsibility for other people’s children, when they
have less choice in the matter, is a basic discussion we need to have, given an
aging population.
Some people will argue that paid family leave can be paid for out of corporate profits or public tax funds. That hides the debate. Ultimately, we have to decide when we need to pay for things and sacrifice so that some can do what matters most for the "common good".
Some people will argue that paid family leave can be paid for out of corporate profits or public tax funds. That hides the debate. Ultimately, we have to decide when we need to pay for things and sacrifice so that some can do what matters most for the "common good".
There's not a problem when a company decides to do this out of its own best interest. One can imagine slightly shorter standard workweeks for those with any dependents (including pregnancy). But there's a downside: that makes other employees "cheaper" and could make other employees (childless) relatively more secure during downturns.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Corporate management (banks, utilities, cable) doesn't think through customer service problems in advance very well
Well, some more gripes about customer service.
Last December, the Bank of America moved a couple block in
the Ballston area of Arlington, saying it was forced out by a landlord. Consumers had to close safety deposit box
accounts, and that defeats the purpose of having them. What’s ironic s that the original space
remains unleased.
Then, the bank put only one ATM inside (secured entrance)
and two outside. Now the new landlord
does construction on the outside of the building, making two of the three
unreachable. I was chased away this
morning, but fortunately the one remaining one was free. Why didn’t the bank
anticipate this problem by placing more terminals inside? That sounds like a security issue.
Think about something else.
Some convenience stores have trouble checking out consumers buying
lottery tickets or using food stamps, forcing those behind them to wait. If you think about it, that can present a
security risk to consumers in the store.
More customer service issues: Metro in Washington constantly sees
escalators fail, and take a long time to be repaired. There are many delays and mishaps, resulting
in single-tracking and delays. In New
York City, on the other hand, there are rarely any delays. Of course, the NYC transit may be more
vulnerable to strikes.
Amtrak service has not been as reliable in recent years as
it used to be, with many trains delayed because of power failures, even in
relatively stable weather (particularly between Baltimore and Wilmington). In two of my last three trips to NYC there
have occurred delays of at least thirty minutes. That’s not good when you hold prepaid tickets
in the city.
Electricity from Dominion Power in northern Virginia has
been more stable in the past three years or so.
(The repair after the 2012 derecho took three days for me, and it’s a
good thing I have the generator.) But
from about 2003 to 2009, there were lots of disruptions. Before that (in a neighborhood in which I
grew up) power failures were rare despite frequent heavy thunderstorms and
heavy snows in winter. Reason: trees do get old and weaker, but the power
company went through expansion with new customers without really caring for the
system. Pepco has had worse problems.
Comcast Xinifity has been pretty stable in the past three
years, except for one software change in May that caused a complete failure of
the cable (not the Internet), replacing a service visit and an amplifier
replacement down the street. But for
about three years (2006-2009 or so) there were frequent stops and slowdowns
during the day.
When you retire, you expect the services you “pay for” to
work and provide security. But there is
a labor issue, and an “idle rich” problem, perhaps. Best
source of stable jobs: investment in
infrastructure. The Democrats are right
about that.
Sunday, July 13, 2014
College fires professor for allowing his picture to occur on a beer can; more on employee work-related driving
A recent issue of Business Insurance, which appears in my
UPS box regularly, highlighted a couple of issues.
One is that people who have to drive their own cars for work
(often in sales) but who are not professional commercial drivers ought to get
defensive driving training from their employers anyway. Sometimes people wind
up paying higher car insurance premiums for business use. I had to do so when I worked for Census in
2011, and am still paying higher premiums despite leaving the job in Sept.
2011.
The other story that caught my eye was the firing of a
professor, Paul Roof, from a Christian college, “Charleston Southern University”
in S.C., for allowing his face (with a funny mustache) to appear on a beer can
for Holy City Brewing. Roof says he did
not know his picture would be used this way.
So there can be other legal questions, like “right of publicity”, or
even copyright. Furthermore, the affair
was supposed to be for charity. There’s
a writeup of the story at gawker, here. But the affair also echoes the “conflict of
interest” problem that I faced in the 1990s and have presented before. You
would expect to see a lot of this in social media, even personal accounts, and
you do.
Tuesday, July 08, 2014
Job searches should consider smaller cities, with health care and non-profits
Fareed Zakaria’s GPS show Sunday offered some practical
advice to job seekers: consider moving
to a smaller “boom town”. The city of
interest was Sioux Falls, SD (which I drove through a few times when I lived in
Minneapolis). Companies set up kiosks in
the Mall of America near Minneapolis to find workers. One reason for the book there: deregulation of banking by state laws, so
that almost all banks have jobs there. But, of course, you have to be “socially”
ready for smaller town life. (I would
wonder the same thing about Wilmington, DE, but I’ve only heard negative things
about that place from recruiters in the past.)
The Today show is mentioning some hot areas this
morning: health care, particularly as a
compliance officer or employee with larger employers and insurance companies
(and hospitals themselves). Specifically,
employers like older, mature, detail-oriented workers in these positions. Another
area recommended this morning is non-profits (and there are many of these along
K Street in Washington). Do you want to
work for a cause? Do you feel the cause
is yours, or somebody else’s?
Wikipedia attribution link for downtown Sioux Falls
picture
Monday, July 07, 2014
Comcast advertises for home sales reps, raising questions about "sales culture" and the job market
Comcast Xfinity has been advertising for sales positions
recently, showing employees in red uniforms saying, “Come show us what you’ve
got”. My own reaction is, I can’t show
what I’ve got by hocking somebody else’s stuff.
I don’t know if any of this is door-to-door (link ). The actual Comcast page looks pretty
upscale (link ). There are jobs designing ads for home
security and more expanded business services as well as home sales.
But back in 2002, when I was living in Minneapolis and was
repositioning after my layoff from ING (at the end of 2001), Time-Warner Cable
had advertised for jobs up to $75000 a year.
But these were door-to-door jobs mostly in new real estate developments,
sometimes city towhomes, more often in the distant suburbs.
Comcast has a video, and, yes, it is door-to-door. Average is to sell one out of eleven
homes.
I don’t like for unexpected persons to ring the
doorbell. One reason is security. Home invasions are very rare, but it one ever
happens, it’s catastrophic and perhaps life-ending. So I typically don’t work with door-door
salesmen, or with telemarketers. That’s
a problem, was we retreat into our own worlds, partly out of genuine security
concerns, we become more insular, and others find it harder to make a living,
and maybe social tensions only grow.
After my layoff, I had interviews for several “sales” jobs,
and in general, some companies were surprised and disturbed at my total
disinterest in manipulating others to do things, and my tendency to question
things. Some probably found interviewing
me a necessary awakening experience.
I think there is a profound cultural disconnect in our
society over unsolicited sales calls, and on the legitimacy of making a living
this way. I have a feeling that Mark Zuckerberg doesn't like to buy anything from door or telephone salespersons.
May own father worked in a different culture, as a manufacturer's agent for a glass manufacturer, selling to department stores. He came of age in a different world than his son did.
May own father worked in a different culture, as a manufacturer's agent for a glass manufacturer, selling to department stores. He came of age in a different world than his son did.
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