Friday, April 16, 2010

So Easy a Cat Could Do it


What does this snoozing Metro employee have in common with a drowsy Japanese cat, other than being all pooped out?

They're both station managers!*

The big difference is one gets paid a salary to doze off, and the other "works" for free and has boosted the local economy by up to 10 million bucks!

We know you gave this idea a trial run, Metro, but let's face it, raccoons aren't as cute or as lazy as cats.** As we've mentioned before, dogs bring a unique skill set to the table, too.

*You don't need to understand Japanese to enjoy the video, but it helps.

**Unsuck DC Metro knows of a highly qualified cat that will work for treats. WMATA can rent this cat for very reasonable rates. We suggest A.M. Haynes and Khalil as potential participants in the feline replacement feasibility study.

h/t @hostagehoosier

Other items:
Metro can't keep track of spare parts (Examiner)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Our members go to work every day cognizant of their responsibility to perform a job on behalf of our customers – the riding public.”

Anonymous said...

Let sleeping dogs lie. They can't scream or curse at you when they're sleeping. Most of them aren't helpful when they're awake anyway.

Anonymous said...

Ah but sleeping dogs can keep you warm in the winter. Thus, on behalf of sleeping dogs everywhere I must protest this comparison! Woof!

Anonymous said...

I like this idea, but WMATA would have to have 12 people to clean the litterbox. A rock would be an improvement for many station managers I've come across.

dan said...

These are the stalwart employees whose union is fighting so hard for a raise, while we as paying customers still face the prospect of more rate hikes and service cuts? What more can you really expect from a company that hires so many cons and felons…

I really hope that the person that took this photo reported the manager to WMATA. Even if we can't reasonably expect them to do anything, why do we have to stand for this?

I implore Mr. Unsuck (or anyone else!) to devise some kind of tool to compile and submit petition-style grievances so we can protest and highlight the egregious safety violations (helltrain!) and other sundry outrages that DC Metro riders endure daily. I’d do it myself if I had the technical skill.

Obviously individual complaints to WMATA generally get little more than a terse and preformatted response, so why not try something different? Maybe Metro couldn’t ignore a petition style format so easily. This would also allow us to circumvent Metro’s laughable style of canvassing public opinion (such as framing issues like rate hikes versus service cuts so as to imply that they are the only two viable solutions to Metro’s misery).
We could even try sending copies of any functional grievance we petition to the Washington Post, The Examiner, or whoever (maybe even Street Sense! More rate hikes are going to really hurt bums, right?).

Yes, many publications run stories about how much WMATA sucks all the time, but I don’t recall ever seeing any kind of grassroots mass-opposition to WMATA’s incompetence advertised in their pages.

The titular mandate of this blog implores us to do more than just gripe. Together, maybe we can UNsuck Metro DC.

fdell said...

The Post will never run a story about one of the major underlying problems at Metro, an expensive, unaccountable workforce. The Examiner touches on it from time to time, but who reads it?

This blog has actually unsucked metro a lot for me. I love laughing at all the things that used to make me irritated, and I love knowing that I'm not the only one out there who thinks we deserve better.

Helen Bushnell said...

Actually, I look at this and wonder what hours these employees have to work.

Transit workers are a lot more expensive in other industrialized countries than in the US. WMATA needs more funding.

Anonymous said...

In this age of Terrorism society, an alert employee is the best line of DEFENSE and PROTECTION for any transit system in ANY CITY! An employee, who sleeps on the job FOR NO REASON, is an employee that's just advertising "fire me, I give up. Anyone can have my job!". I will bet you WMATA will have their door beaten down by a 1000 people who want that poor sucker's job before he's called into the boss's office and told "yer fired".

So, report them to the boss out there. The boss ought to be actively watching their employees. If a station employee that sleeps on the job and terrorism happens, they'll be ones in the most SOB trouble ever. remember 9/11!

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