Disaster is only one step away!

Sunday afternoon I went out our front door to take two containers of compost to the bins at the corner restaurant.  One moment I was vertical on our front walk, the next I was flat on my back.  There seemed to be no transition, no feeling of falling.  I felt my head bang against the concrete.  I hollered my wife's name.

The next thing I remember is being inside asking my wife to get the container of sidewalk salt.

Then I remember my wife telling me to sit in a chair and relax.  After a bit I felt fine and got up to put salt on the sidewalk.  When I got outside I saw little holes in the ice.  Somebody had already salted.  As hard as I tried, I couldn't remember being out the first time.  I did remember later, but was that just a reconstruction?

My wife's reconstruction is that our grandson, looking out the front door, said, "Grandpa!" and then she heard me holler.  She went outside and found me in a fetal position and helped me get up and inside.  She said a neighbor across the street watched her, wondering if he needed to help.  She said I wanted to take the compost then and there, but she made me sit down.

Now let's look at the what ifs.

What if instead of my head hitting the sidewalk it had hit the bottom step?  Would I have a broken neck?

What if I had not been wearing a hat?  My winter hat is not very thick, but it seemed to be thick enough to absorb some of the force.  Later I did see the imprint of the hat in the snow.

What if I had been home alone?  Would anybody have seen me in a timely fashion?  Chuck Frederick, Editorial Editor of the Duluth News Tribune, wrote "Duluth didn't watch out for student frozen on porch" 2013-12-12.  My situation could have been similar.  The neighbors on one side are gone for college break.  The neighbors on the other side rarely go out the front door.  Even if they did, the snow banks might have hidden me.  Drivers going by aren't checking every notch in the snow banks for pedestrians lying on the sidewalk.  Pedestrians going by are checking where they walk and will rarely turn their heads to look up a house walk.  Whatever, I doubt if all of Duluth should be held accountable if I were not found in a reasonable time.

Why did I slip?  I had cleared the sidewalk the previous day, there shouldn't be a problem, right?  Not quite, the temperature was around freezing on Saturday.  Some of the snow had melted and flowed in a thin layer across the sidewalk.  Carrying two containers did not give me a free hand to hold on to the railing.  I probably went "charging" down the steps like it was a spring day.  Skid, flop, plop!

Well, all's well that ends well.  I did have a headache later, but that was a sinus headache around my eyes, not on the back of my head.

The fallacy of paying by "productivity"

Many claim that more productive workers will get paid more.  That may be true of sales representatives who work on commission, but what about other workers who have several constraints on their "productivity".

I thought of this as I was driving on a weekday on the dirt road in Brimson on the way to our cabin.  In front of me was a trash hauler.  He stopped to pick up one neighbor's trash, and while he did so I passed him.  He continued behind me and I knew his next stop was not for another mile.

When I drove back to Duluth a couple of hours later, the same driver, or at least the same firm, was in front of me on the main highway.  I thought he has over an hour's drive to get to the landfill. 

It would take him a lot longer to fill his truck than it would for a driver with a city route.  Should this first driver be paid for his "productivity"?  Or for his time?

Possibly his lower "productivity" is partly compensated by a higher pickup rate for rural customers.

The same holds for UPS and FedEx drivers, and as far as I know the rate for the senders of packages are the same for a given large area.  The sender pays for the terminal-to-terminal distance, but not the local distance.  Should these drivers be paid for packages per hour or be paid for hours worked?

I had the same situation when I drove for a school and transit bus company.  I was paid by the hour no matter what I did.  And I got a premium for seniority.  Many was the charter on which I read, slept, played chess, ate, or went to the same event as the customer.  I had one charter for a theater company where not only did I not drive for the two-to-three hours of the production, the production manager gave me and wife very good tickets for the last performance.

So, what was my "productivity" on this charter.  Showing up on time, getting the passengers to their destination on time, driving safely, and being friendly.

I can't end this without mentioning another "productive" kind of employee who is often overlooked - the schmoozer.  This is the employee (or even owner) who takes time to know customers and make them feel welcome.  During this time they provide no goods or services.  But they certainly increase return business.  Think of places where the sales staff is on commission and you can hardly stand doing business with them.  They are know-it-all fast talkers who want to close a sale as fast as possible.  You may wind up buying from them, but only because of the salaried or hourly support staff who act like you are the only customer they have.

I had a vehicle for 13 years and for the last six I kept going to a certain dealer because the service department was good and the front guy was a schmoozer who always acted glad to see me.  They had a really good salesman who kept kidding me about buying a new vehicle from him, another schmoozer.  Well, by the time I decided to trade-in that vehicle he had retired.  A friend told me she bought a truck from him because all the other salesmen were jerks.  I found out she was right.  And so, I went to the guy who sold me the truck in the first place, also a schmoozer.  He was now selling another make of vehicle.  He schmoozed, listened to us, and had a selection of vehicles ready for us to test-drive.  We bought one of those vehicles.

For those not completely familiar with colloquial English, a schmoozer is someone who makes other people feel at ease with friendly, non-intrusive, conversation.