It’s About Making Babies!

Sharon Astyk at Causabon’s Book (”Sabbaths: Public and Personal“) admires the article that Aaron on The Oil Drum wrote, “The Four Day Work Week: Sixteen Reasons Why This Might Be an Idea Whose Time Has Come“.

10 years ago I worked at a Lockheed Martin R&D plant in Goodyear, AZ. They worked a 9 day/two weeks schedule. The work week began at noon on Friday. Monday through Thursday were nine (9) hour days. On Friday, we alternated. One Friday everyone worked Friday morning to finish the week’s 40 hours, and that Friday afternoon worked the first 4 hours of the following week. The next Friday no one worked - the 40 hours were completed on the previous day. Setting the beginning of the work week at noon Friday made the calculations and mechanics of working two weeks with one day less to commute work easily.

Sharon and Aaron enthuse about saving fuel, about saving the energy needed to run the plant, and about extra family time.

Sharon, for her part, wants to make not just one less commute day, but a legally mandated ‘no commerce day’, a day of freedom from supervision, work - a sabbath.

My first inclination, when I started reading Sharon’s post (good reading, very thoughtful, as always), was that she overstated the resistance and inability of industry to adapt to a four day work week, short of a law imposing the issue. My observation is that the resistance is in labor unions, labor union contracts, and labor union leaders. Labor unions are perhaps the epitome of conservative social agendas, dragging industries into bankruptcy to protect their status quo and their positions of power. And yet labor unions, by and large, support Democratic candidates and campaigns (maybe easier to influence, more naive? Hello! President Jimmy Carter - does that ring a bell?!)

No, corporations can choose to manage their affairs quite easily - many companies find Friday a weak day for productivity anyway. Whether the pre-weekend slacking would just drift to erode Thursday, assuming a Monday-Thursday work week, will be interesting to watch. Working out what a ten (10) hour day means for start times vs. other familiy commitments such as school times, day care, doctor appointments, etc. will be interesting, but doable. Breaks, meal times, etc. will work themselves out.

But Sharon seems enamored of the idea that the commuteless day means more family time. Ha! Unless schools go to 4 day weeks, that won’t happen. What families need is not ‘quality’ time as portrayed on TV - they need more time of kids working, parents working and all working together. It is in sharing work that kids learn values, learn discipline, and learn about society, culture, and beliefs in the family. And most families don’t / won’t share work with kids. They don’t have any work to share.

Sure, that extra home-day could be put to use doing major garden work, but various seasons in the garden need daily attention to prosper. Once-a-week, even a three-day span, will have to be awfully well planned and fit weather and garden growth status.

The results I saw of the extra weekend day every other week? More shopping, more time in the car than the usual commute. Yes, the plant did operate 10% fewer days. Except for those people that worked overtime for late projects, or critical projects, or because they needed the extra hours for utility bills.

Most companies use a number of computers. Most business computers assume that humidity and temperature will remain reasonably constant. Most businesses leave the A/C running when the plant is ’shut down’. Major industry will probably show a major change as heavy machinery is idled and powered down, but office type enterprises will show surprisingly little change in energy usage.

Sharon raised the issue of service industries, such as hospitals that are expected to operate 24/7. What about Telephone worker’s unions that hold out for contracts with mandatory overtime for employees - that the company cannot reduce?

What to do?

The cable company here in North Central Oklahoma has cables strung from utility poles. On any given day, I have no problem finding a service truck changing a customer’s services, or making repairs. This is a massive, ongoing operation - with a sizable utility truck. Recently the city installed satellite monitors on all water meters, so water meter trucks don’t have to check each meter each month for accurate billing - that saves fuel and resources. Ohio has been testing broadband over power lines for a couple of years. If that technology comes online, power companies can do many things - charge day rates and night rates, save the cost of human meter readings each month, remotely monitor for unexpected outages or voltage problems.

And I expect the cable truck will still be mending lines, tracking leaks and shorts, and looking for thieves that tap into the line illegally.

Does Wal-Mart have a setup for me to fill out a shopping list, that I can have a neighbor or a delivery service pick up? Not yet. I still have to make my own way to the store to get what is on my list. Does my community have a general delivery service, similar to UPS but serving local merchants and their customers? Not yet.

Does the IRS still limit moving costs, to be closer to work, to moving 35 miles closer, at least? As far as I know. I am also unaware if they mandate that that ‘closer to work’ be within 4 miles, or 10 miles. And moving closer to work has to be the single most effective way to reduce highway congestion for rush hour, reduce fuel usage for commutes, and increase time available for home.

Or time for the three-day-a-week second career that Sharon and Aaron’s four day week will create. Hide and watch.

Tam at View From the Porch laments why several people in a few minutes time, each searched for ‘Porch Girl’ and following to her post from December, “Girls Gone Vile“.

First, why the search? I would hope that Tam’s popularity has outgrown the bounds of reasonableness, and so many people are just interested in her views. Maybe. Why they think ‘Girls Gone Vile’ is Tam’s hallmark post .. ugh. I don’t want to know. But the title is provocative. Much better than something like, “Why would a maroon take pictures of his girlfriend puking, while she is worried about why he isn’t helping her stay neat?” Which is kind of my take on what Tam’s post was about.

As for why kids are posting pictures instead of helping each other..

I think the answer is ignorant parents. Parents that don’t cover the basics of etiquette - respect, courtesy, honor and defense of reputation - can’t teach their kids how to handle partying, relationships, or other social interactions.

It takes good role models (watching Mom and Dad sit in front of the TV doesn’t explain social drinking courtesy) or oft-repeated experience to extrapolate ‘Bless You!’ for a sneeze, to helping hold your hair while you ‘yell at your shoes’ (I like that one!).

It could be that girls still get more experience with handling babies - and cleaning up after someone spews. In college guys are often still uber-squeamish about bodily fluids and such.

My generation (that is about ‘grandparent’s for many today) grew up with the notion that a girl had to protect her ‘reputation’. If she engaged in sex before marriage, she had a ‘reputation’. Many guys would happily sleep with a ‘loose’ girl, but never marry a woman without her reputation intact, virgin as far as social reputation goes. Even more families objected and blocked marriages because of reputations for being ‘loose’, as in ‘loose morals’, promiscuous, or just gossip that one is promiscuous or ’sexy’.

Really.

It will take the current ‘on video’ generation several more years to understand that ‘reputation’ is still a factor in society today. While today’s young people are tattooing their hearts, sexual behavior, and cartoons on their bodies, in years to come they will find that some doors just won’t open for them. Not all of today’s rocket scientists, doctors, nurses, or figures of authority started their adult lives thinking of public positions. Many of today’s future leaders, caretakers, parents, and teachers will find that the path destiny has laid on for them - is now closed. That is a sadness to many of us older folk.

College is a time and place where kids act out in the absence of parental authority. This is a time to make mistakes and choose which values are most meaningful in one’s life. This is part and parcel of the flooding of information, and history, and ways or thinking that colleges inundate students with. Many students come to similar conclusions, occasionally a genius or obstinate one or skilled thinker will put together very creative answers to important problems. And the experience both degrades family values in the nation, with the forced separation of years from the family home, and also frees young people to make a new life unbound by the limitations of older generations.

Learning to drink and screw are the two symbols of rebellion and freedom most kids share as they approach college - and many parents fear.

What is troublesome about the ’snap a pic and share it on the internet’ is that many kids lack compassion. They still play the grade school taunting games, and think nothing of the harm they do to each other in front of adults and the public. They think of taking a revealing or embarrassing picture, posting it, and the next day tell the victim, “Got you!”

Only, the picture hangs out there. Peers goggle at it. The picture, and reputation, hang about for a long time, it gets to family, it gets to future friends. A picture of a girl spewing might be amusing, in a drunken sot way, for a moment, until one or the other sobers up. But it is gossip - nothing good can come of it. It isn’t kindly meant, reflects a meanness and abusive attitude on the photographer. “Oh, I want to date Janet, she caught a great pic of her last date tossing his cookies for distance!” Not. And the friends and family that view this photo-gossip suffer from being part of the should-have-been forgiven and forgotten moment. Lots of victims, and the likelihood of anyone benefiting is slim.

We are not Allan Funt (Candid Camera tv show). America’s funniest home videos, reality shows - real and contrived embarrassing moments are humor - using pain for recreation. We can choose to share joy, or share humor (pain).

I don’t like video or photographic gossip any more than verbal gossip. Nothing good can come of it. That is, no healing, no character growth, no increase in joy, no enrichment of lives (well, maybe for predators).