Archive Listing
November 24, 2005 - November 17, 2005
Thursday, December 23, 2004
Time to Take a Break
Well, it's been quite a year. Thank you all for taking time out of your busy day to stop by and
give us a read. Hopefully, we have been informative and somewhat entertaining.
All of us here at InstaPunk wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year. Please leave us a comment for this post with any items you'd like to see covered in greater detail or anything else that you care to offer during the break.
We would also like to send best wishes to Glenn Reynolds at InstaPundit, Phil Hendrie and gang at The Phil Hendrie Show, and Michelle Malkin at MichelleMalkin.com for their support and sending visitors our way from time to time. As well as, all those bloggers that have a permanent link from their site to ours -- see the listing in the left panel under "Thanks for the Link!"
And, a special, "Thank You" to everyone that contributed to our efforts here through the Christmas Crawler that ran for the past few weeks, as well as, those that make regular contributions throughout the year.
The Christmas Crawler link is gone, but you can always CLICK the Amazon Click to Pay box at the top of the left panel to make a contribution. Always appreciated.
We look forward to serving you in the New Year.
All the Best,
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.357 Magnum |
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Eire 8 |
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The Glimmers |
The Headhouse Gang |
The Kodaks |
The Mudwasps |
The Nasticators |
The PR Machine |
The Shuteye Train |
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The South Street News Network |
And, of course, |
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UPDATED UPDATE: Over 35 Comments. Please leave yours NOW, we want to hear from you. Be sure to scroll down to the entry form.
Thanks for all the kind words. Have a Happy New Year!
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Things More Important than Money?
Well, well, well. Dennis Mangan, Duke Power shareholder, decided to pick
up for the power company, Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK), parent of Duke Power. He
also thought it would be appropriate to call us names. Let's clear that up, right away. Listen,
shareholder-dude, we ain't left
wing and we don't write "leftist rhetoric."
With that out of the way, let's highlight a few points. Our post called attention to a particular human phenomenon -- large organizations say one thing and do another. Individuals within these organizations do what they would otherwise consider unspeakable horrors. How does it happen? We pointed to The Boomer Bible's guidance for corporate CEOs. In this work we find that it is important for them to look out for their corporate culture -- especially when the press is around. One important prop for the corporate culture is to "Talk about how you value your customers" (Main.25.7). Of course, it is important to remember while talking about corporate culture -- not to listen to a word you say.
Thus, you can have a corporation that says Customer Service is important. And, people working for the company thinking that cutting off electricity to an 89-year-old widow in the middle of a freeze is in accordance with Corporate Policy.
Now, Mr. Mangan does admit at the outset that he is attempting to defend the indefensible, so we won't go on too long here. But, it should be pointed out that it is a very weak analog to liken the actions of Duke Power to a Safeway Super Market and a person with no money to buy food. To make that work, you would have to have the only grocery store in town going into a person's home who is two days away from starving to death and clearing out their home of every crumb of food because the person didn't pay for their last two orders.
We were going to get into Mr. Mangan's citing of Duke Energy's $2 Billion loss for 2003, but let's just say, it hasn't hurt their stock price nor did it have a single thing to do with giving away electricity (if you don't have an Edgar account, you'll have to click on the FREE Online HTML version).
Mr. Mangan seems to be saying that getting the weather page from the local paper and talking to a long-time customer are beyond the requirements of corporate responsibility -- and to suggest otherwise means you're a Marxist. Duke Power's own website says, "We take our responsibility as a corporate citizen seriously, working to protect the environment and giving back to the communities where we live and work." See, "Talk about the long-term contribution your company makes to the community . . ." (Main.25.9).
Now, how could placing an 89-year old widow in mortal danger be put along side that Corporate Citizen platitude. Employee's of large organizations might want to do a little digging into Dr. Stanley Milgram and his work regarding the dilemma of obedience. One of our own here has a quite elaborate explanation of the phenomenon, but it is beyond our scope here to get into Corporate Consciousness. At least, Duke's eleven-million dollar Chairman could demand that people in charge of terminating services in life threatening situations be required to read the web page and act in accordance with it.
Not being leftists, we don't think the answer to every problem is a new law that makes it illegal for large organizations to act idiotically, but that is exactly what is going to happen when companies kill their customers. The problem is that there is no individual within Duke Power who will say the death of Mrs. Verdin is good corporate policy (except for Mr. Mangan, of course) from the Chairman of Duke Energy down to the contractor that ultimately pulled the plug. Yet, untold numbers of procedures and individuals acted in a coordinated manner to ensure just that outcome.
Come on! The most cold-blooded capitalists can demand that the individuals in their employ not blindly follow policies and procedures to accomplish things clearly at odds with their stated and intended purpose. And, everyone that dutifully reports to work each day, should speak up and put the brakes on any policy or procedure that is taking the orgainzation over the cliff.
FREE STUFF
It is Christmastime. And, man, American
Digest is giving their readers something for FREE -- The Quotable Sherlock Holmes. Now, that sure is
nice and interesting, all at the same time. Thank you.
