Rant / Strange things / Sunday

Rant

From an job ad I received by email

We offer a progressive range of benefits which include paid vacations, holidays and a medical/dental/vision plan among many other great benefits.

This would be funny, if it were not so sad. It is so sad, that this country cannot provide job-independent common health care system for its citizens (it would be cheaper and better, but, of course, no idealogy is free, some are extremely expensive). Also, I think having paid vacations/holidays is more or less universal right. Even in China they have them, and in Europe, they have 4 or more weeks per years. This ad, and other as well, make me think that the whole political progress of the last 150 years has somehow been wasted. But then, if there are desperate persons, who want to spend all their adult lifes in the office, who am I to tell them not to.

Strange things

Some strange things:

• If the -up-escalator breaks, the down-escalator is never reversed. So, everyone has to climb up, but can take the escalator down. It may be, that nobody with sufficient authority to reverse the escalator is present, never.
• Having "Caution - wet surface" yellow triangles every 15 meters in dry corridors. Just in case it might rain inside. I also saw one in an elevator. It was hanging from the wall.
• A sign saying "No passengers are allowed on the platform" on the door leading to the platfrom, from where the busses leave. Hard to get to the bus...
• A sign saying "Nobody is allowed to step beyond the yellow line for security purposes" on the above mentioned platform. Maybe an area reserved for dangerous activities? Like placing bombs?

Sunday

I visited New York to meet Peter Elk yesterday. I also met his wife Anna. It was nice to meet a Finnish fellow-blogger and discuss on USA, life, sturdies, politics, etc. Visiting New York means sitting 8 hours in a bus, which is quite enough for reading one or two books. I read parts on Mandelbrot's book on economics and the whole Ehrenreich's "Bait and Switch". It seems, that there is something really badly wrong in the US job market. More later, but I wonder the emphasis on networking, or hiring only people whom the hirer knows already. It is not in the interests of the shareholders, since no hiring manager can know all the possible candidates: most likely hiring only already familiar persons results in hiring not the best available ones.

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs October 2005".