imported_Sasha
Senior member
Recently, there was a news bit on CNN's website about Wal-Mart trying to lobby the appropriate people to increase OTR (over the road) drver driving allowances from whatever it is now (eight or ten hours I think) to being able to drive tractor trailers for up to 16-hours per day.
I have a friend that use to OTR and got out of the profession. Part of it was that everyone (drivers) were cooking their books on their driving log to make up for lost time in bad traffic. So, even though they recorded X hours of daily driving time they were in fact driving X+Y and Y was several more hours that the X-allowed daily driving time.
In fact, this hit home when he was working a lot of at one point entered a twilight-zone of state and hit a guard-rail and that made him re-think his willingness to continue the profession on what he was making as a result. Good for him, good for us (so we don't die at the hands of him sleeping at the wheel), but not necessarily good for his employer at the time.
Now, with Wal-Mart wanting to push the daily allowance up to 16-hours/day I have to stop and wonder exactly what WM is willing to take on in terms of liability. I cannot imagine 16-hour/days over time cannot cause some deaths on the highway that are seen, statstically, as an increase in incidents because of this. And all for the sake of WM pricing.
Between this and some of the early business practices at Microsoft I have to re-think which one I considered more evil than the other, and with this bit of news I think Wal-Mart just displaced Microsoft as the most evil company on the planet. Furthermore, I consider all of their stockholders equally evil and must now review all my 401K funds to insure that none of them take part in this Evil-doing for which I cannot possably be benefiting from.
So, which do you think is more evil?
I have a friend that use to OTR and got out of the profession. Part of it was that everyone (drivers) were cooking their books on their driving log to make up for lost time in bad traffic. So, even though they recorded X hours of daily driving time they were in fact driving X+Y and Y was several more hours that the X-allowed daily driving time.
In fact, this hit home when he was working a lot of at one point entered a twilight-zone of state and hit a guard-rail and that made him re-think his willingness to continue the profession on what he was making as a result. Good for him, good for us (so we don't die at the hands of him sleeping at the wheel), but not necessarily good for his employer at the time.
Now, with Wal-Mart wanting to push the daily allowance up to 16-hours/day I have to stop and wonder exactly what WM is willing to take on in terms of liability. I cannot imagine 16-hour/days over time cannot cause some deaths on the highway that are seen, statstically, as an increase in incidents because of this. And all for the sake of WM pricing.
Between this and some of the early business practices at Microsoft I have to re-think which one I considered more evil than the other, and with this bit of news I think Wal-Mart just displaced Microsoft as the most evil company on the planet. Furthermore, I consider all of their stockholders equally evil and must now review all my 401K funds to insure that none of them take part in this Evil-doing for which I cannot possably be benefiting from.
So, which do you think is more evil?
