The Societal Impacts of my Coffee Consumption

I love coffee. I love the smell, the taste, the feeling after the first sip. Rarely a day goes by that I don't have coffee and never a day goes by when I don't have coffee at work. I also have an interest in Public Administration. That interest stemmed from a PA class I took in college that I hated until I was able to apply it to real life and my job. The most important thing I learned in that class from Dave Ivers was that if as an employer your workers are producing at 50% of their capacity, you as an employer are playing about par for the course. With that thought in mind its comical to think about the 40 hour work week. I'm convinced though that there are a ton of public administrators out there that assume their employees work at 100% capacity for exactly 40 hours per week. I find it even more ridiculous that the impression is that the amount of work someone is assigned should take exactly the amount of time that employee works - miraculous. People are literally tied to a 40 hour a week job that could be done in 15 hours a week. Sure there are exceptions but that is largely the case. People always claim to be "busy", busy googling your own name does not constitute 100% of a workers capacity.

Since its the day before vacation I started thinking about how unproductive I was being and noticed that it killed time to refill my coffee. I thought it would be interesting to see how much productivity is lost in a given year because of my drinking coffee.

During the average work day I fill my coffee cup between four and five times. Each trip takes about 45 seconds and I actually make the coffee about two times per week, which takes about 4 minutes.

So 4 times per day x 45 seconds x 5 days a week = 15 minutes per week to pour coffee
Two times per week brewing coffee x 4 minutes = 8 Minutes per week to make coffee

So far 23 minutes per week.

What happens when you drink a pot of coffee in the morning? Bathroom break! I'd say in a given day I got to the bathroom 3 times per day because of all the coffee. At 2.5 minutes per trip (its down the hall) that is conservatively 7.5 minutes per day.

7.5 minutes per day times five days a week 37.5 minutes per week of secondary affects of the coffee.

So 23 minutes for coffee making and pouring and 37 minutes for those secondary affects we have 60 minutes per week.

We'll remove vacation time and say 60 minutes times 50 weeks per year for the annual total of 3,000 minutes or 50 hours. My work week is 37.5 hours which means 1.33 work weeks (conservatively) are used up directly because of my coffee consumption. In our "budget" the average cost for a staff hour is 40 dollars (we're frugal) that is just personal costs not indirect or other.

So 40 dollars times 50 hours is $2,000 per year in lost productivity. I'm not the only one who drinks coffee either.

I'm an administrative nightmare!

My cup is empty, time to refill.

Merry Freakin' Christmas

Ann Arbor is a very, how can I put this...liberal town. Even though I grew up here I never really noticed it like I do now. It might not be as bad as some people say but sometimes the political correctness seems a bit over the top.

I don't know when this happened, perhaps I only really notice it now because a friend of mine pointed it out, but nobody says Merry Christmas anymore. Why is everyone afraid to tell ME Merry Christmas? I can understand saying Happy Holidays on a news broadcast but when did Merry Christmas become taboo? If someone said Happy Kwanza to me I wouldn't be offended. Happy Chanukah?- Hey to you too, put on your yamaka and celebrate Chanukah- good for you. I'll stop my rant before I begin to babel but it's like this country is losing its identity because we are afraid that others will get their hurt feelings. Let's be proud of our history and traditions. Part of that is tolerance and acceptance of non-majority religions but that doesn't mean giving up your own identity.

So please, can I get a Merry Christmas?

Les Wasn't More or The Road to Rich's

Despite the near foot of snow and the fridged temperatures in Ann Arbor there is certainly a sense of relief circling the town about it's newest employee, Rich Rodriguez. After Michigan's head football coach Lloyd Carr announced his retirement in November the area has been a buzz with speculation which first climaxed the morning of the SEC football championship game between Louisiana State and Tennessee. Kirk Herbstriet reported that LSU's Les Miles had agreed to become the next coach at Michigan. This was confirmation of rumors that had run rampant for weeks. It seemed the logical fit, he was a "Michigan Man" with great ties to Ann Arbor and this was his dream job. Everyone KNEW he was going to Michigan. The problem was, Herbstriet's source was wrong and Les Miles signed a new lucrative contract to stay at LSU.

I was no exception to the Miles love fest. The guy seemed like the perfect fit. Miles and Ann Arbor were like two giant bodies with gravity accelerating them at each other faster than the media could keep up with (or slower than they could create it-hmmm).

After the love affair with Miles died down some (it never completely did) Michigan was in talks with Greg Schiano, the coach of Rutgers, the Scarlett Knights, College football's Cinderella team of 2006. Schiano said "I've decided to remove my name from consideration". And Wolverine nation let out a collective sigh of "Would've been nice", and then silently thought: were still getting Miles!

And just as Ann Arbor's nerves were tensing up, fearing nobody wanted to come to Michigan Rich Rodriguez was announced as the next coach of Michigan Football.

The improbable, up and coming coach from West Virginia breathes a breath of fresh air to wolverine.

It became apparent that changes were needed for the Michigan football program. Those changes were needed once Lloyd Carr decided to retire, up until that point he was doing just fine in my book.

So now instead of pure speculation I am excited about the ACTUAL new coach. He's almost everything I'd hoped for in a new coach. My two biggest concerns were that the next coach was young and that he planned on staying at Michigan for a long time. We'll see about the latter but he did mention in his press conference that he'd be at Michigan until about the time his son would be the top QB prospect in 2017, thats good to hear.

I'm nervous about the growing pains but excited about a "new" Michigan football program.

Matt Groening, I owe you one

I've watched The Simpsons regularly since it came out about 18 years ago. I didn't know what the Tracy Ullman show was, but I probably would have watched it there too, but, I was eight! I have the first eight seasons on DVD (I'm falling behind) and I throw one of them in two or three times a week. It's also on every night at 11 on the new CW channel (what does CW stand for?). What I'm getting at is that it really is a comfort for me. Since I've been watching it since I was in 4th grade and am so familiar with all the episodes, just hearing the theme song has a way of relaxing me.

I ended up having a particularly difficult day at work today. Trapped, puppet, pawn, peon, are the words that come to mind to describe the way I feel and the way I am treated. I usually try to calm down on the drive home and often Mitch Albom does the trick but today I was listening to Bill Simonson on the ticket 1050 WTKA talking about George Mitchell's steroid probe in baseball. Not the most relaxing thing. So by the time I got home I was still stressed. I played a few Guitar Hero songs and had a lunchable but was still felling down. So at about 7:30 I popped in season 7 of The Simpsons, hit play all and have been relaxed ever sense.

So to Matt Groening, thanks for the pick me up and I'm sorry about the copyright infringement.

To go or not to go: My ten year high school reunion

I think I'm reaching one of those first milestones of old age. And by that I don't mean OMG I can't believe I'm 22. Well, I guess it may seem that way for some. Anyways, the emails and messages are beginning to flow in about my ten year high school reunion.

I'm helping with what I can, submitting emails of people I know and at least staying in the loop. The truth is though, I don't even want to go.

What makes this experience a little different is the advent of social networking sites between graduation and today, specifically myspace and facebook. When I joined each one of those, the thing I liked to do was search for old friends and acquaintances from high school whom I'd lost touch with (which was about 98%). One of the things that struck me was how many people I don't remember, and by that I mean I've never heard of the person.

Here's what happens to me though when I find someone through those networking site that I DO remember well from high school. I'll go on their page, see where they went to school and what is going on with them. A part of me wants to reach out and reminisce about the good ol' days but the other part of me is worried that they'll think "wow, this loser can't let high school go".

Normally I don't concern myself with what people think (ok that was a lie) but isn't the point of a high school reunion REALLY to try to prove how much more successful you are then others and to see how unsuccessful others are?

Of course there will inevitably the people that run up to you and remember more things about you in high school then you do, then another person will come up and expect you to introduce the person of which you can't remember their name. I've got a few outs in that situation, a violent coughing fit, cell phone call, waiting for the person to introduce themselves and then apologize and pretend you didn't even realize you hadn't done the introducing. Of course, none of those make you feel comfortable about it.

And of course there will be the awkwardness when you find a group of ten people and you realize you didn't talk to 3/4 of them in high school, so why should you now?



Conversely, I suppose meeting up with everyone and talking about those good ol' days would be good, after all it was a pretty important 4 years we spent together.

I've got 9 months to think about it. Should I go?