The Never-ending Labor Pool

How do you think the job market would change if there was a endless
supply of affordable labor? To me the answer is it would be like
India. There such an enormous supply of labor that there is an over
saturation of employees. This is most evident in retail related
positions. At the malls there are 'security' guards at every corner
of the parking garage waving you in the direction of available
parking. I can see how in theory that streamlines the process of
finding parking, but that really only works in situations where no one
is leaving at the same time (ie sporting events and concerts). As we
would drive through the garage 'directed' to turn at a particular
corner we saw a spot open up next to us, but we were chastised for
trying to park in it by the 'security'. The presence of these guards
adds no value to the parking situation. In the stores the number of
staff outweigh the number of customers at least 2 to 1 and maybe more.
However, what good are sales reps if they have no interest in helping
the customer? In both cases it is as if people have been employed
just to fill a quota or to give the impression of something being
done. Is there a point in paying someone to do something if there is
no value added?

One man's trash...is still that man's trash

While in India I was faced with one of the most repeatedly troubling aspects of travel to India that I always experience: littering. It will come as a surprise to Westerners, but for those of us that travel to India regularly there is nothing new in the fact that everyone litters in India. For the first time on this trip did I actually notice that one of the main causes of the litter problem in India is the fact that there are no garbage cans or waste bins anywhere. On several occasions we would be in the car with some trash and the instinctive response from those in the car with us would be, "just toss it out the window." No matter how small the piece of paper, gum wrapper, or toothpick it is I have never been able to toss it out the window. So I did what I do in the US when I can't find a trashcan I kept in my pocket or hand (assuming it wasn't wet, dripping with chutney, etc.) until I could find somewhere to toss it. It seems like such a fruitless exercise when I am witness to things such as entire plastic bags of leftover food being thrown from a moving train, but every little bit counts. One person told me, when they saw me collecting and holding onto the trash, that the reason they throw it out the window was because they want to make sure that the people that sweep and clean up "have work to do". I think that that is a cop out excuse to avoid taking responsibility for one's own actions. I know
the argument can be made that if I take the trash home or to any other receptacle it will likely be thrown on the street when the receptacle is emptied. Being an outsider I can only take the fight so far though and maybe I should take my relatives to the task of properly disposing
of it, but that's another battle.

The following posts were all written during a trip in November and left on my work email for me to send when I had Internet access.  However, I didn't get to them in the pre-India travel madness so they are all going out now.  Expect several more India related posts soon.

Sporting Experiences

After writing the above post about a sporting experience at the Big House I was thinking about other events that I would like to attend:

 

-A baseball game at Fenway Park

-A baseball game at Wrigley Field

-A hockey game for one of the Original Six NHL teams (Detroit, Boston, Toronto, Montreal, New York City, Chicago)

-A soccer match in between Celtic and Rangers (one representing Protestant and the other representing Catholic Glasgow) or between Boca Juniors and Riva Plate (rival teams in Buenos Aires)

-A soccer match in Camp Nou (home of FC Barcelona)

-A college football game at Auburn

-A college football game in Austin

-A college football game in Baton Rouge (LSU)

-A college football game in South Bend (Notre Dame)

-A college basketball game in Chapel Hill (University of North Carolina)

-A college football game in Eugene (University of Oregon)

-An FBS Bowl Game (Rose, Fiesta, Orange, or Sugar)

-A series of games in March Madness

-A World Cup match

 

Many of these will be difficult or near impossible to get tickets for, but I have a lifetime to work on it.  Anyone want to join?

The Big House

Whether you like college football or not one of the best experiences in sporting events is to find yourself in Ann Arbor, Michigan on a fall Saturday when the University of Michigan Wolverines are playing a home football game at the Big House.  In other college towns such as Gainesville, Athens, or Eugene people spend the whole day tailgating in preparation for the game, but in Ann Arbor where there has never been a night game (the stadium has no lighting) the tailgating started well before I was even up.  At 8:30 in the morning I could hear the sound of fans heading towards the stadium to get ready for the noon kickoff.  Walking to the stadium there were the undergrads all dressed up and half drunk spilling out of fraternity houses along the way, the alumni that organize enormous tailgating spreads and travel in huge RVs, the visiting fans proudly sporting their colors impervious to the jeers of the hoards, and wide eyed visitors like myself that incomprehensible at the fact that nearly everyone around me was going to the same place.  Passing the Big House the night before my hosts pointed out a stadium that was surely a high school stadium.  It was no more than 50-80 feet high and certainly not capable of containing over 100,000 fans, but it was then revealed to me that one enters the stadium nearly 2/3rds of the way up and then walks DOWN towards the field.  Sure enough we entered when we entered the stadium, which was almost full we just walked up a dozen rows to our seats looking down on nearly 80 rows of fans.  This is where the real experience began to sit amongst 110,000 people who were all singularly focused on the activity of about 30 individuals on the field.  I have been to other games where the crowd gets into the game as much, where they are just as passionate, just as crazy, just as loud, but never had I seen this many people congregated in one physical space.  There was also an amazing historical context of being in a space that for the most part has not been changed for over one hundred years.  Only now are modern luxury boxes, press boxes, and a lighting system being installed.  I enjoy imagining fans watching games 40-50 years ago where the only difference is the clothes being worn.  In the end the experience was everything that I imagined and then some. 

The Electronic Buzz

A few weeks ago we had an apartment full of guests, which led to unusual sleeping arrangements.  During this time the HyWy and I were sleeping for a few days in the living room.  One night when we went to sleep I was perturbed by a rather continuous hum in our new “bedroom”.  Unlike the HyWy I don’t sleep with earplugs so falling asleep with this humming sound was going to be difficult.  I looked around the room at the potential culprits: the DVR, two laptops, an external hard drive, and several cell phones.  It struck me then how prevalent it is to have a battery of electronic gadgets surrounding us at all times.  It is one thing to be connected at all times, but I didn’t realize how much technology had made itself a part of the background in my daily life.  Even in our normal bedroom I use an old cell phone as an alarm so I sleep with it nearby.  In the past I have slept with my active cell phone near me at all times, but that was when family or the HyWy lived in other time zones.  The omnipresence of electronics in our apartment is so common that until I focused on it I wasn’t even aware that something was running.  In the end I concluded that the best option was to find and turn everything off.  The HyWy stresses (and for very good reason) the fact that our bedroom is to be free of electronic stimulus. 

 

This abundance of electronic stimulus is not unique to the home as I found out when I was in the airport today.  Maybe it is the preholiday travel rush or the end of the week road warrior trip home, but I was amazed at how many people there were in the airport and more importantly how nearly every person was nursing some device (yours truly included).  The terminals were lined with people camped out on the floor seeking precious real estate by power outlets of all things.  To close I see a great deal of irony in my writing this reflection on my own laptop.