Not like Moses at all.

The company has been telling me for weeks that I must go to a meeting of managers from each station, to be held next week in the glittering desert oasis of Las Vegas. In the universe of station managers and corporate directors this is much-anticipated. They will wear expensive clothing and say heady things to the throng, making pronouncements in consultant-speak. Evenings hold the promise of good times at the bar and craps tables.

I don't want to go.

There is nothing I can think of that will interest me less than three days in a corporate prison, captive to suits telling us we must continue to operate "lean" and challenging us to have fewer injuries, accidents, delay time and a richer bottom line. Don't we all know that anyway--that we are supposed to gain efficiency and improve safety? Do we really need three days out of the shop to be aware of that?

I know some of these guys are licking their chops to get there. Perhaps it is to make presentations of successes forged in their shops at home, and get a public pat on the head from a vice-president. Maybe it is to refresh old friendships with former coworkers and acquaintances. Or maybe it is appealing for the prospect of such base activities as unchecked consumption of alcohol, gambling or the engagement of a paid escort. I have worked with folks who just don't do well without their wives to manage available free time.

For me, there are several reasons I balk at all this.

First, I could care less about gambling or the other sins of Vegas. While I love the desert climate, I am happily married and have no interest in professional women; I don't drink much at all; and unlike others who are actual managers, paid well by the company, I am in reality a much lower-paid supervisor-in-charge with scant funds for wagering. (I guess it makes me a joyless person not to take interest in gambling. Aside from not being lucky or skillful, I think I would rather just give a homeless fellow the $25 that most folks say they're willing to lose in a casino outing.) Believe me, I would just as soon be at home with my family from whom I am absent too much.

Second, in other travels I've had with this enterprise, I really haven't cared much for the people I've met. They tend to be pompous, demanding, competitive and arrogant. None of those qualities are endearing; less so in a dying industry which was never respected to begin with. It would be refreshing to meet people in my company who seem grateful just to be working. Not so.

Third, I am just not into this anymore. I would be happy to park cars or pump gas, without concern for monthly budgets and food cost and payroll. With only a few short years until a hopeful retirement, I lack elan for the business or the people who are in charge of it. Sufficient work exists now. Enough words have been uttered by consultants. Leave us alone.

And finally, I noted that the meetings are at a pricey resort just outside the city. Why should a corporation, struggling financially to stay on the good side of its owners, spend $175 a night, plus meals, airfare, and other incidental costs which eighty people will expense? Put it all in a letter. Print a brochure. Have a conference call and interrupt an afternoon instead of a week.

This is the kind of poor corporate judgment that AIG and Lehman Brothers displayed. No public money is involved, but how can the parent company allow this? (I guess I would have a little more respect if they were using a Super 8 and meeting in Dallas at the HQ building. All the HQ people could go home at night, saving a lot.)

The sleep I will lose, the time I will sacrifice and the money just our shop will waste on this venture into the desert is significant. Moses led his people into the desert back to Israel. I am just being led into the desert, period. Moses didn't have to listen to consultants.

Winter wonderland

Apparently the holidays are over. I have no idea where they went. I know they were here because I have no money left and I put the tree back in the box myself. The rest of it just passed me by.



Well not quite. It snowed. It snowed a lot, several times, starting with the big one on Christmas Eve. It snowed like Jack the Bear. And it got really cold. Minneapolis cold, Fairbanks cold. It is just now approaching freezing for the first time in about two weeks. The snow is not the worst part. The extended zero-degree weather outranks it. All of it is to be expected--for after all it's winter on the prairies--and all the cheery TV weather personalities got their "White Christmas" which they breathlessly had anticipated for two weeks. Maybe they should all church up on my driveway.



But this much snow, this regularly, is unusual here. We've already had over 20 inches, more than all of last year's snows combined. Parking lots are punctuated with semi-truck-high piles of snow. Road crews have labored countless hours behind plows. When the sun is out it's a blinding white world lacking only polar bears. We have had a whole season's worth of winter in about three weeks. And I'm not complaining. If I didn't want winter I would have gone to Arizona a long time ago.



The last few years have had relatively little snow. It seemed the extreme cold was a little less. Then this year the hammer came down, so I guess it all equals out. The climate change fanatics will claim both that the last few milder winters and this arctic one are--in their dememted view--clear signs of drastic climate alteration. I don't think so. I would agree that the climate has changed enough that the glaciers melted, but that might be a function of the earth's axis doing its slow turn--nothing you caused with your Dodge Ram or your Weber ourdoor grill.



It simply seems noteworthy that winter is off to a rather unusual flying start. The last one I remember with temperatures like these, for this long, was in December 1989. Somehow we survived that and Spring came along again. I just regret that the holidays, with all their joy and warmth, go by in a flash and yet they leave us the cold for three long months, which do not go by in a flash. I am pretty sure that the compacted snow on my driveway will be sparkling all winter to remind us of our very own winter olympics.

Now the thaw is under way. I can see patches of concrete and aging acorn husks on the edge of my walk. Warm weather is coming fast!