• Hi Guest!
    You can help ensure that British Car Forum (BCF) continues to provide a great place to engage in the British car hobby! If you find BCF a beneficial community, please consider supporting our efforts with a subscription.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

Lazy Government Workers

Share this page

T

Tinster

Guest
Guest
Offline
No insult is being cast upon any BCF members who might be gov't
workers and I hope this is non-political. Here's a really cool
concept.

The mayor of the municipality next to where we live requires
ALL his able bodied office workers to don jeans, work shirts boots,
reflective vests and for 1/2 day every week they clean up the
municipality. Litter pickers, curb painters, sidewalk
power washers, tree trimmers, weed wackers, etc.

What a fantastic idea and the results are amazing. The workers
get some sunshine and physical activity. The roadways, streets
and alleys and other public places are spotless and appear
neat, tidy and groomed. The taxpayers see their money being well
spent and can no longer complain about the..............
"lazy, overpaid gov't workers!!"

A win - win situation for everyone. :thumbsup:

Our Bayamon mayor has begun a similar program as has Dorado mayor.

D
 
And I bet they all enjoy getting out of the office and into the sunshine a little each week!! What a good idea!
 
I dunno - I think all those welfare checks should come with a little community service requirement. Learning to pick up fast food wrappers instead of dropping them might be no bad thing...
 
Sounds great for the "office" workers to clean up, but doesn't that say a bit about their workload? If they have time to clean the streets, wouldn't that mean they're a bit overstaffed since they have that kind of free time?

If office workers are spending several hours per week performing tasks completely unrelated to their core positions, I'd say that someone on City Council needs to take a hard look at staffing.

Sounds typical of government institutions. Pad the payroll. Ask me how I know this . . . I work for a municipality, it's the norm here! :square:
 
Yep - could be a bit overstaffed, that's for sure. But it likely applies to a *lot* of areas, not just government.

I used to be IT support for a non-government office of several 100 professionals. Ask me how many times I'd get calls about "I can't open an attachment".

Go to the caller's office, have them crank up their email, and find they've spent nearly the entire day online, on forums (oops!) or ebay, etc. I'm old enough to remember when people would download "screensavers" that were dummy Excel worksheets, so they could quickly cover up what was really on their screen.

Ain't everybody of course, but it's not just "government" workers.

T.
Curmudgeon in Training
 
. . . it may not only be government workers, but it sure is <span style="font-style: italic">typical</span> of them! :cryin:
 
I hope thios policy applies to the "chiefs" too, as well as all the "indians"....
 
JamesWilson said:
I hope thios policy applies to the "chiefs" too, as well as all the "indians"....
Click to expand...

Mark- I'll be happy to send you a work vest and you can start yer own program
up in Virginny.

Yes James, it pretty awesome. The outside activities apply to all. This mayor
has the absolute respect of his municipality when he's personally out in the
streets painting, etc. You refuse to do the outdoor work, you get two reprimands
in your folder. The third time you miss your 1/2 day shift, you're looking for a
new job.

And it's brought about a tremendous amount of pubic* pride: The home owners are
also sprucing up their homes and property.

I think it's great and I hope this doesn't get kicked but I agree with the old WPA
concept of welware. Ya gets a check - ya do do something constructive.

d

Edit*- substitue "public" :lol:
 
<span style="font-style: italic">"And it's brought about a tremendous amount of pubic pride: ..."</span>

might want to check the spelling on that. or maybe folks in PR are a bit less modest than us northerners!

T.
 
Trouble is if the office workers are not in the same union then the outside workers who are supposed to do that job would be out on strike. Personally I think it is a great idea even though I was a CAW union member for 26 years.
 
I'm not a gov't worker but I take umbrage with that policy!

What, he's punishing his employees because his citizens are slobs? Or, because his outside workers are lazy?

And who determines "able bodied"?

& that's all I'm gonna say about it because if I say more, it'll get political real fast!

Sorry, Dale....

In my community, we have a phone number we can call anytime we see somebody throwing trash on the street - you just give the license plate number of the car from which whatever was thrown...they get a little notice sent to their home....2nd time a phone call is made about them, they get a summons to appear in city court & are automatically sentenced to do exactly what those workers are being made to do! Regardless of who was driving the car - the registered owner picks up trash!
 
But, Tony, I don't think Dale was referring to JUST trash pick-up (I think the way they handle that here in Fl. is pretty good, using prisoners for that, at least along the highways!) but also getting community spruce-up work done...I can see where that would foster some civic pride if you ask me! The welfare programs which require some kind of service work for a check seem to have worked pretty well where it has been tried. I am against hand-outs for nothing!!
 
bugimike said:
But, Tony, I don't think Dale was referring to JUST trash pick-up (I think the way they handle that here in Fl. is pretty good, using prisoners for that, at least along the highways!) but also getting community spruce-up work done...I can see where that would foster some civic pride if you ask me! The welfare programs which require some kind of service work for a check seem to have worked pretty well where it has been tried. I am against hand-outs for nothing!!
Click to expand...
Alabama also uses inmates...when Ronald Reagan was governor of California, he had a program like that for some recipients of welfare programs: they worked at things like Tinster described...they worked, they got a check..they didn't work, no check.

But forcing state employees to do that kind of work which is definitely outside their job descriptions..uh,uh...that's just not right!
 
I'm with you, Tony. Also, compelling office workers to do labor-intensive jobs could be dangerous, lead to injuries, etc., which would increase workers' comp costs, litigation, etc.

Bad idea IMHO. Put 'em back in their cubicles.
 
nutmeg, i also think its a great idea, but here in stamford we do things a bit funny, last year our mayor got cought using the citys municipal workers to "freshen" up his personal home. :nonono:
 
tony barnhill said:
In my community, we have a phone number we can call anytime we see somebody throwing trash on the street - you just give the license plate number of the car from which whatever was thrown...they get a little notice sent to their home....2nd time a phone call is made about them, they get a summons to appear in city court & are automatically sentenced to do exactly what those workers are being made to do! Regardless of who was driving the car - the registered owner picks up trash!
Click to expand...

same here Tony,
Caught some guys last year dumping construction material at the side of the road, they took off in a hurry when they saw my headlights. Caught up with them and took their plate #. It was a rental cube van, called the cops and they told me they would be charged with illegal dumping and a fine of $5000.
 
" Caught up with them and took their plate #. "

Any fears of retribution? Seems that would be *very* likely in many places.

Tom
 
NutmegCT said:
" Caught up with them and took their plate #. "

Any fears of retribution? Seems that would be *very* likely in many places.

Tom
Click to expand...

it was at night and the plate was illuminated and after I got it I passed them and they turned down another side road
 
Back
Top