So today, for the third consecutive week I encountered a huge hard-hated assembly of Kinsley contractors working on behalf on Columbia Gas on North Main Street in Jacobus, directly in front of a Peoples' Bank branch.

Their subcontracted traffic control folks--four of them--kept traffic at reasonable one-direction-at-a-time flow through the "square" of Jacobus.

BUT....their vehicles...plus the Kinsley vehicles...hogged almost every parking space in the bank's parking lot.

I could tolerate the inconvenience if there were just a hint of transparency on the websites of Jacobus Borough, PennDOT, or Columbia Gas. 

But instead there is a total veil of secrecy regarding the project's scope and estimated duration.

Why?

Is this some great national security secret?

In the meantime, I counted at least four Flagger Farce workers (probarbly about $15.00/hour) plus at least four yellow hardhats (non supervisory, at least $25.00/hr) and four white hardhats (supervisory,  at least $30.00) standing around at tent shaded 10 x 8 ' gas hole.

That's a ≥$260.00 hour gas hole!

I still check in about once a month or so.

Yours is the first legitimate message in many months.   Most times the messages are spam from eastern Europe "need to contact Administrator...it is important".

Thanks for you input....and your contributions on some of the other topic boards as well.

This has been a very strange year (duh!) and part of the strangeness has been the near demise of this forum. 

We went all through the impeachment and COVID acute crisis with almost no activity until mid summer.

Again, thank!
 

+1

Totally agree....these are the "unintended consequences" of politicians capitulating to howling mobs.

BTW your post is the FIRST substantive, non-trolling post ALL YEAR. 

June 30 was going to be my deadline for contacting the other Adminstrator and recommending we close the account...now I'm going to push that off another six months. 

Keep posting!





 

As the title suggests, the hometown press has morphed into a coast-to-coast monster.

Bigger is not better....especially when it comes to "customer service.".

Oh, there is service alright--of the type that the stud bull delivers to a cow.

When I moved to my present address nearly three decades ago the friendly delivery route supervisor (who I could speak with in person on the phone) personally helped locate a stake with two tubes:  A yellow one for the Daily Record and a red one for the York Dispatch.   The tubes were placed about 10 feet off the road, along the side of my very long lane.   Most of the time the papers were delivered into the tubes.   Occasionally, if they were just thrown onto the driveway a call to 717-764-5663 would solve the problem.

When the Dispatch began morning distribution I could no longer justify the expense of two morning newspapers.  I stuck with the YDR; but noticed a drop in customer service responsiveness.   Instead of speaking with a live operator there was an automated system which worked pretty well--enter your phone number, enter other numerals on prompts....missed papers were quickly dealt with.

Then somewhere along the line...at either the MediaOne absorbtion or Gannett...the keypad automated system was replaced by one which only recoginized voice commands.   And they had to be precise.  "Which newspaper are you calling about, the York Daily Record or the York Dispatch".   If you didn't include the definite article THE York Daily Record and just said "York Daily Record" or "Daily Record" the system would kick you back to the beginning or disconnect.

Now, if I had been the programmer, or the VP, I would have either added to the instruction:  "Be sure to state the full name of the newspaper, including the definite article THE"--OR--arranged the system to respond to several variation and abbreviations of the names.  But customer service--other than in the bovine sense--was clearly not the goal.

About a year a