Look For The Union Label
Hello World,
Well, this could shape up to be an interesting winter in these parts, the way things have been going so far. We had snow in November, which is highly unusual around here, and after that, we've had two snowstorms in December, one of them looking ugly enough to inspire me to leave work early today and get home while the getting was good. (Well, "good" would not be an appropriate description of it in any sense of the term, but at least it was still light out, which if nothing else was an improvement over going home in the dark at 5:00 PM in this same slop, or worse.) Bill was already home and shoveling, and I put out extra bird seed for the critters, so we did our civic-minded part for the greater good of the wider community, and long may they wave. In fact, it was so nasty that our diner gave it up as a lost cause, and they were closed up tight when we tried to go there after work as we do every Friday. I was planning a busy day tomorrow, so having ugly weather today would not have been in my top choices of options, that's for sure, although I can't complain about losing my influence over the weather conditions at this point, since I obviously never had any influence with that to start with. But we've certainly gotten out of the expectation of having this much snow at such an early time of the season, and while I'm as much in favor of a white Christmas as anyone, I can't say this unexpected turn of events has been greeted with the unbridled enthusiasm of days gone by. I suppose in those halcyon days of yore, someone else used to do the shoveling.
Speaking of those halcyon days of yore, it's beginning to look a lot like 2005 around here, at least in terms of gas prices nowadays. I had been holding off getting gas, because I figured the price was just going to keep on going down anyway, and the longer I waited, the cheaper it would be, but finally I couldn't wait anymore without having to push the car to work. While the Exxon station around the corner was still at $2.03 for regular, I pulled into the Sunoco down the block and snapped up a tankful at $1.99/gal, and the whole thing wasn't even $22 when I was finished, which is a far cry from the $50 hit I took in July at the same station in the same car. Meanwhile, a co-worker said that the Citgo station across town was down to $1.71, which really seems like the good old days, and is the kind of early Christmas present I think we can all live with. Please remember to send a holiday donation to OPEC, so they can enjoy Christmas too.
Of course, Christmas is right around the corner now, as we'll be lighting the fourth and final candle on our Advent wreaths this Sunday (and you can't count on the "wreath stretcher" to add on more candles for you, believe me, because if that worked, we would all have done that long ago) and you can be sure that the 25th will be right on schedule on Thursday, along with the jolly old elf himself and all the trimmings. Walking around the hospital, you see the signs of the season everywhere, with trees and poinsettias in the lobby, stockings and candy canes in the hallways, and decorations of every sort all over the departments. This week, I noticed that the Mail Room had put up a Santa Claus and garland on their door, as well as Christmas cards they had received from other departments. I told the Supervisor that I was impressed at how popular they were, as evidenced by all of the cards they received, since we hadn't gotten any cards from other departments, and obviously no one liked us. Oh no, she averred (and I'm sure we can all appreciate her spirit of honesty in admitting this right up front) what she does is to save whatever cards she has received over the years, and just hangs them up on the door, so she has something for decoration, even if no one sends them any cards in a particular year. I had to laugh, and agreed this was a clever (if stealthy) idea. I was glad that she came clean about that and told me, so I didn't feel that my department was so unpopular after all.
On the popularity front, we have more unexpected news at the hospital, which has been in business for over 100 years, so you would kind of figure that they had ironed out all of the wrinkles by now, but you'd be surprised. Apparently the bargaining unit of 1199 SEIU local, which already represents the Housekeeping, Dietary and other service employees at the hospital, decided to extend their benefits to what they describe as the Business Office Workers, that would include secretaries, clerks and administrative assistants. They spent a few weeks making information available to the interested parties (I kept bumping into them in the cafeteria) which ended up being almost 200 employees in the qualifying categories at both hospitals. I'll be the first person to say that I'm not anti-union, and in fact, when I worked in the semi-conductor industry decades ago, I was a card-carrying member of IBEW and proud of it. I think a union is a good idea for people in low-paid, low-skill jobs, who mop floors and stock shelves, and it can't hurt to have an organization behind them to keep their employers from taking advantage of them. But I never thought that conditions were so deplorable for secretaries and clerks that we needed a union to protect us, and I found that I could not get on board with this idea at all. I figured after being there for 20 years, the hospital may not have lost its ability to surprise me, but it had certainly lost all capacity to scare me anymore, and I didn't need to hide behind anyone or fear the consequences. So I was perhaps more surprised than most people when the day of the vote came and went, and the union had been voted in by a landslide, 106 to 24, because I just never realized that people were all that dissatisfied with the way things were. So as far as they're concerned, and in spite of my personal opposition, I'm now officially a member of the 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, along with the floor moppers and shelf stockers, and the 23 other disgruntled people who voted against it. (A co-worker asked me to let him know when it was official, so he would know when he should start to shun me.) Of course, they say that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but I've got news for them. Don't forget that I'm in the Business Office Workers or BOW, and our hospital's official name is the Sound Shore Medical Center of Westchester, which we like to call the S.S. M'CoW. So all I can say about this is SSMCOW BOW WOW!
Also in the spirit of the season, television viewers were treated to a new holiday special called "A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa" earlier this week on NBC. According to a story in the TV section of our newspaper, it featured regular actors from popular TV shows, along with the usual Muppets cast of characters, like Kermit the Frog, living at a hotel in New York City. At one point, when Miss Piggy is waiting on line at the Post Office to mail her letter to Santa, she becomes indignant at the delay and demands to go right to the front of the line. Standing in front of her, Mayor Bloomberg turns around and deadpans in his trademark style, "Miss Piggy, that would be rude. And the one thing New Yorkers are known for is being polite." Frankly, I'm not even sure that Hizzonor is known for being polite, much less the rest of the local population, but I thought he was a good sport to play along.
Another favorite quip from the TV section this week was courtesy of Rachel Maddow, who has a new show on MSNBC, which has enjoyed a ratings bonanza since it began. In her remarks, she was modest about her role in the show's popularity: "I started my show the day after the second major-party convention, so I basically opened an umbrella factory at the start of the monsoon season. Everybody's ratings went up, MSNBC's more than anybody else's. To the extent I can claim credit for that, I'm happy to, but I recognize that all boats were rising at that moment." In all my years of reading stories about television programs, that's the first time I can ever remember anyone likening the launching of their show to opening an umbrella factory, so that was a welcome change of pace.
Also a change of pace, but in a completely different way, last Sunday we went to the local VFW on our annual trek for the perfect Christmas tree, and did not return empty-handed, believe me. It was a nice enough day, although it had rained earlier, and even with the straw they spread out over the mud, the footing was uncertain as we tramped around the lot. I admit that I sometimes look on wistfully at the people who pick out a perfect little 5-foot tree, carry it with one hand, and sling it casually into the trunk of their car without a thought. Meanwhile, we're wrestling with a 10-foot behemoth that weighs a ton and refuses to be subdued with twine or threats. (We once carried home one monstrosity that collapsed our roof rack under the weight of it, and the poor thing has never been the same since.) Every year, the VFW lot has very many trees, but they don't always have the kind of tree that we're looking for, which is between the small "apartment-type" trees and the massive gargantuan ones that you could only put indoors if you were a huge bank or shopping center. Of the height that we're looking for, there's usually very few, and of those, to find one with a good shape is very hit or miss. This year, we were surprised to find several that were the right height, and with pretty good shape besides. The one we picked is not the tallest tree we've ever had, but it's very full and has a good solid shape all around. We set it right up in the stand and only had to cut a little off the bottom and nothing off the top, and the angel went straight on without a fight, compared to her usual shenanigans. The cats greeted this interloper in the living room with the bored indifference of jaded socialites at a tag sale, as if a tree in the house was just another eccentricity of ours that was beneath their notice. Of course, we can't rule out the possibility that curious cats are in a different union (perhaps the Climbers and Swatters Union) while ours are in the Snoozing and Glaring Union, which is what they seem to do most of the time. Bill will tell you that their real strengths would be represented by the Food and Poop Union, which could explain those little FPU buttons that they wear. Everyone is aware that I'm not anti-union, heaven knows, but I'll be darned if I'm going to wear a button that says BOW!
Well, this could shape up to be an interesting winter in these parts, the way things have been going so far. We had snow in November, which is highly unusual around here, and after that, we've had two snowstorms in December, one of them looking ugly enough to inspire me to leave work early today and get home while the getting was good. (Well, "good" would not be an appropriate description of it in any sense of the term, but at least it was still light out, which if nothing else was an improvement over going home in the dark at 5:00 PM in this same slop, or worse.) Bill was already home and shoveling, and I put out extra bird seed for the critters, so we did our civic-minded part for the greater good of the wider community, and long may they wave. In fact, it was so nasty that our diner gave it up as a lost cause, and they were closed up tight when we tried to go there after work as we do every Friday. I was planning a busy day tomorrow, so having ugly weather today would not have been in my top choices of options, that's for sure, although I can't complain about losing my influence over the weather conditions at this point, since I obviously never had any influence with that to start with. But we've certainly gotten out of the expectation of having this much snow at such an early time of the season, and while I'm as much in favor of a white Christmas as anyone, I can't say this unexpected turn of events has been greeted with the unbridled enthusiasm of days gone by. I suppose in those halcyon days of yore, someone else used to do the shoveling.
Speaking of those halcyon days of yore, it's beginning to look a lot like 2005 around here, at least in terms of gas prices nowadays. I had been holding off getting gas, because I figured the price was just going to keep on going down anyway, and the longer I waited, the cheaper it would be, but finally I couldn't wait anymore without having to push the car to work. While the Exxon station around the corner was still at $2.03 for regular, I pulled into the Sunoco down the block and snapped up a tankful at $1.99/gal, and the whole thing wasn't even $22 when I was finished, which is a far cry from the $50 hit I took in July at the same station in the same car. Meanwhile, a co-worker said that the Citgo station across town was down to $1.71, which really seems like the good old days, and is the kind of early Christmas present I think we can all live with. Please remember to send a holiday donation to OPEC, so they can enjoy Christmas too.
Of course, Christmas is right around the corner now, as we'll be lighting the fourth and final candle on our Advent wreaths this Sunday (and you can't count on the "wreath stretcher" to add on more candles for you, believe me, because if that worked, we would all have done that long ago) and you can be sure that the 25th will be right on schedule on Thursday, along with the jolly old elf himself and all the trimmings. Walking around the hospital, you see the signs of the season everywhere, with trees and poinsettias in the lobby, stockings and candy canes in the hallways, and decorations of every sort all over the departments. This week, I noticed that the Mail Room had put up a Santa Claus and garland on their door, as well as Christmas cards they had received from other departments. I told the Supervisor that I was impressed at how popular they were, as evidenced by all of the cards they received, since we hadn't gotten any cards from other departments, and obviously no one liked us. Oh no, she averred (and I'm sure we can all appreciate her spirit of honesty in admitting this right up front) what she does is to save whatever cards she has received over the years, and just hangs them up on the door, so she has something for decoration, even if no one sends them any cards in a particular year. I had to laugh, and agreed this was a clever (if stealthy) idea. I was glad that she came clean about that and told me, so I didn't feel that my department was so unpopular after all.
On the popularity front, we have more unexpected news at the hospital, which has been in business for over 100 years, so you would kind of figure that they had ironed out all of the wrinkles by now, but you'd be surprised. Apparently the bargaining unit of 1199 SEIU local, which already represents the Housekeeping, Dietary and other service employees at the hospital, decided to extend their benefits to what they describe as the Business Office Workers, that would include secretaries, clerks and administrative assistants. They spent a few weeks making information available to the interested parties (I kept bumping into them in the cafeteria) which ended up being almost 200 employees in the qualifying categories at both hospitals. I'll be the first person to say that I'm not anti-union, and in fact, when I worked in the semi-conductor industry decades ago, I was a card-carrying member of IBEW and proud of it. I think a union is a good idea for people in low-paid, low-skill jobs, who mop floors and stock shelves, and it can't hurt to have an organization behind them to keep their employers from taking advantage of them. But I never thought that conditions were so deplorable for secretaries and clerks that we needed a union to protect us, and I found that I could not get on board with this idea at all. I figured after being there for 20 years, the hospital may not have lost its ability to surprise me, but it had certainly lost all capacity to scare me anymore, and I didn't need to hide behind anyone or fear the consequences. So I was perhaps more surprised than most people when the day of the vote came and went, and the union had been voted in by a landslide, 106 to 24, because I just never realized that people were all that dissatisfied with the way things were. So as far as they're concerned, and in spite of my personal opposition, I'm now officially a member of the 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, along with the floor moppers and shelf stockers, and the 23 other disgruntled people who voted against it. (A co-worker asked me to let him know when it was official, so he would know when he should start to shun me.) Of course, they say that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but I've got news for them. Don't forget that I'm in the Business Office Workers or BOW, and our hospital's official name is the Sound Shore Medical Center of Westchester, which we like to call the S.S. M'CoW. So all I can say about this is SSMCOW BOW WOW!
Also in the spirit of the season, television viewers were treated to a new holiday special called "A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa" earlier this week on NBC. According to a story in the TV section of our newspaper, it featured regular actors from popular TV shows, along with the usual Muppets cast of characters, like Kermit the Frog, living at a hotel in New York City. At one point, when Miss Piggy is waiting on line at the Post Office to mail her letter to Santa, she becomes indignant at the delay and demands to go right to the front of the line. Standing in front of her, Mayor Bloomberg turns around and deadpans in his trademark style, "Miss Piggy, that would be rude. And the one thing New Yorkers are known for is being polite." Frankly, I'm not even sure that Hizzonor is known for being polite, much less the rest of the local population, but I thought he was a good sport to play along.
Another favorite quip from the TV section this week was courtesy of Rachel Maddow, who has a new show on MSNBC, which has enjoyed a ratings bonanza since it began. In her remarks, she was modest about her role in the show's popularity: "I started my show the day after the second major-party convention, so I basically opened an umbrella factory at the start of the monsoon season. Everybody's ratings went up, MSNBC's more than anybody else's. To the extent I can claim credit for that, I'm happy to, but I recognize that all boats were rising at that moment." In all my years of reading stories about television programs, that's the first time I can ever remember anyone likening the launching of their show to opening an umbrella factory, so that was a welcome change of pace.
Also a change of pace, but in a completely different way, last Sunday we went to the local VFW on our annual trek for the perfect Christmas tree, and did not return empty-handed, believe me. It was a nice enough day, although it had rained earlier, and even with the straw they spread out over the mud, the footing was uncertain as we tramped around the lot. I admit that I sometimes look on wistfully at the people who pick out a perfect little 5-foot tree, carry it with one hand, and sling it casually into the trunk of their car without a thought. Meanwhile, we're wrestling with a 10-foot behemoth that weighs a ton and refuses to be subdued with twine or threats. (We once carried home one monstrosity that collapsed our roof rack under the weight of it, and the poor thing has never been the same since.) Every year, the VFW lot has very many trees, but they don't always have the kind of tree that we're looking for, which is between the small "apartment-type" trees and the massive gargantuan ones that you could only put indoors if you were a huge bank or shopping center. Of the height that we're looking for, there's usually very few, and of those, to find one with a good shape is very hit or miss. This year, we were surprised to find several that were the right height, and with pretty good shape besides. The one we picked is not the tallest tree we've ever had, but it's very full and has a good solid shape all around. We set it right up in the stand and only had to cut a little off the bottom and nothing off the top, and the angel went straight on without a fight, compared to her usual shenanigans. The cats greeted this interloper in the living room with the bored indifference of jaded socialites at a tag sale, as if a tree in the house was just another eccentricity of ours that was beneath their notice. Of course, we can't rule out the possibility that curious cats are in a different union (perhaps the Climbers and Swatters Union) while ours are in the Snoozing and Glaring Union, which is what they seem to do most of the time. Bill will tell you that their real strengths would be represented by the Food and Poop Union, which could explain those little FPU buttons that they wear. Everyone is aware that I'm not anti-union, heaven knows, but I'll be darned if I'm going to wear a button that says BOW!
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 7:56 PM
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