Sunday, July 10, 2011

Take on government waste

There are thousands of conversation today about how to cut, control, curtail, cost-save and confront the size of government and at some point in the near future one-way-or-another we will have to decide the role of government.
But what everybody basically does agree with is that there must be ways to limit government inefficiencies and reduce redundancy and honestly some of the worst cases are ones that stare you in the face on a daily basis.
I'm driving down Houston Street yesterday and see the following scene. Seven guys working on some street construction project. I can't say I know what the reason is so for argument sake I'll say that there is good reason for this work. My problem is that out of the seven guys there are two literally standing in place holding signs saying 'slow'. I thought they were directing traffic but upon further review they were describing the scene.

Two guys paid $20+ and hour to hold signs, two guys paid $40+ and hour standing at the railing supervising and smoking butts. one guy paid $20+ and hour sitting in the bulldozer and two dudes paid $20+ and hour sawing concrete.
Why the hell we need two guys to hold signs is idiotic? Can't we just get scarecrows to do the same thing, it seems to work for birds. Only in a construction job do you have seven dudes doing the work of two. I know that at my job if somebody is done doing his or her task they are expected to take on another but in construction the one dude sitting in the bulldozer literally didn't touch the controls of the machine for the entire 15 minutes I looked at this scene. What prevents this dude from a shovel and moving some cement to help the two guys actually working?
Then the two dudes just 'supervising' are a complete travesty, maybe they could spend less time smoking and more time actually making sure there guys are actually doing something.
As if this wasn't inefficient enough on top of this it was Saturday and these guys are probably making time and a half
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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