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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1997-10-15, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15,1997. PAGE 5. Arthur Black The paperwork got him Had coffee the other day with a friend of mine. An ex-cop. He'd been on the force for eight or 10 years, then suddenly last spring he'd resigned. And now it seemed like he might want to talk about it. ' I wasn't sure just how to approach the subject. There was a rumour going around that my friend had suffered a nervous breakdown. But why? Did the constant stress of facing down crazed crackheads and homicidal psychopaths finally get to him? Was it the unrelenting threat of injury and death? The strain of dealing with the human race at its violent, booze- and dope-fueled worst? Is that what got to him, I asked, as gently as I could. His hand shook slightly as he hoisted the mug to his lips. "No," he said softly. "It was the paperwork." My friend estimated that he spent three- quarters of each working day making notes, sending memos, filling in forms and typing out reports. "I wasn't a policeman," he said. "I was an International Scene By Raymond Canon Ugly Americans still active I have been following the dispute on the west coast concerning how much sockeye salmon should be caught by the Americans and how much by the Canadians. When tempers rose to the breaking point, you may recall that some of the Canadian fishermen in the Prince Rupert area managed to mount a blockade against an American ferry; they were successful in holding it there for three days, an accomplishment which, needless to say, raised the ire of the Americans. I thought I would see what the newscasts south of the border had to say about it all. I was not disappointed; they had quite a bit of comment on the matter. One of the recurring themes was that Americans would never do the same to the Canadians. Oh really! Let me refresh their memories. For openers there is that infamous Helms- Burton Act, which says that because the United States doe not like what is going on in Cuba, any foreign company doing business with that country can be subject to fines and other punishment. One of the latter is that any Canadian company who also does business in the United States do not like what is going on in Cuba, any foreign company doing business with that country can be subject to fines and other punishment. One of the latter is that any Canadian company who \ office clerk who happened to carry a gun." It wasn't the pressure of holding down one of the world's most dangerous jobs that got to him. It was the mind-numbing boredom of shuffling paper all day long. My pal is not alone. A business consultant by the name of Dianna Booher conducted a survey of 2,000 businesses last year. A few of her conclusions: • White-collar office workers spend 60 percent of their time checking, filing and retrieving printed information. • Of all the documents that are printed, copied and distributed by North American business every day, 75 to 80 percent are never referred to again. For every dollar spent thinking up documents, it costs up to $80 to print, copy, distribute, file and eventually destroy them. But that's old news, because this is the age of the computer, right? Paper shuffling is obsolete in the Brave New Electronic World of the internet and e-mail. Wrong. A study from San Jos6 State University concludes that computers have not replaced old technology, they've merely jumped on its back, adding to the burden. Office workers don't just answer the regular mail anymore. They also have to respond to inter-office mail, voice mail, teleconferencing, e-mail, faxes, pagers, even Post-It notes. Remember how e-mail was supposed to revolutionize our postal habits also does business in the United States can be prevented from sending its executives across the border to visit its operations in the U.S. The fact that the U.S. does business with communist China, which has a far worse human rights record than does Cuba, is totally lost on Sen. Helms and his like­ minded colleagues. Not only are we up in arms about the idiotic legislation, so are the Europeans. The potato farmers of Maine don't like the competition from the Atlantic provinces one little bit. They resent the fact that we have better potatoes than they do, are doing a better job of marketing them and, what is worse, have made great inroads into the American market. To show their anger, they dumped loads of potatoes, illegally of course, on every border crossing point between New Brunswick and Maine. I wonder if those TV commentators anxious to blacken our reputation even know about that or did they choose to ignore it. Even with the free trade agreement in place, we can't be too successful in exporting to the U.S. or else we run into trouble. Witness the experience of our high grade wheat producers who ran into blockades when they tried to ship their wheat to the U.S. The U.S. buyers were delighted to gel our wheat; there was after all a shortage of it in their pasta production but the American farmers got the idea that it might hurt their production later on and hence their efforts to restrict entry of the Canadian wheal. by weaning us of our paper habit? Maybe it would if we trusted it, but we don't. Sixty per cent of all e-mail is still copied onto paper. The supreme irony of all those great new space-age 'time-saving communication devices' is that using them consumes more, not less of our time. Seventy per cent of the people interviewed by San Jos6 researchers complain that they are 'overwhelmed' in their personal and professional lives just sending and receiving messages. Some of us are fighting back. A few office workers ease their burden by deliberately allowing the batteries on their pagers and cell phones to run down. Other people just leave the dust cover on their home computer monitors. I heard of one CEO in California who returned to his desk after vacation to find more than 2,000 e-mail messages waiting for him. His solution? The 'delete' button. He vaporized the whole works. "I figure if they were really important messages, the senders would get back to me," he explained. And my friend — the ex-cop? Sold his computer. Turned in his cell phone. Applied for an unlisted telephone number and landed a job in the hardware department of the local Canadian Tire. Goes fishing on his days off. And he smiles. A lot. 'Way more than he did as a cop. Our lumber industry has also run into similar problems in the past when the demand for our products in the U.S. got to a point where it was unacceptable to American logging companies, for somewhat the same reason as the above mentioned wheat exports. Again the end users were quite happy to get as much Canadian wood production as they could lay their hands on, but the logging industry had to interfere. By now I think that you get the point. For the U.S., free trade far too often means only free trade which is beneficial to the Americans. This is not to suggest that the Canadians are entirely without fault. However, when we do react, it is usually after prolonged efforts, albeit unsuccessful ones, to set the matter straight. One has only to recall the former Fisheries Minister, Brian Tobin, and his cod war with the Spaniards, a move that annoyed a lot of people. But it at least focused people's minds on the problem and led to a solution. The blockade of the Alaska ferry is a case in point. The concept of the ugly American is, it seems, still with us. A Final Thought The success that turns your head, usually leaves you facing the wrong direction. Some disagree When it comes to their children's lives and their interests every parent should be aware. Every parent should be wary. But there's a difference between cautionary and reactionary, particularly if it imposes an opinion on others . The parents who last week spoke up against the R.L Stine books available in the school libraiy, have to be commended for knowing what their children are reading and for wanting to protect them. However, as a parent and a book lover, while I empathised with their concern, I do not agree. As I said a few weeks ago I believe there is no singular thing you can do to send your kids on the road of academic success than to instill in them a desire to read. And presented with the challenge of one who would rather do anything but, I have used thrillers by Dean Koontz and Stephen King to inspire him. Disgusting, terrifying, replete with psychotics and madness, they aren't Steinbeck, but they are words, imagination, creativity and concentration. How many of the parents concerned about the Stine books read to their young children the wonderful fairytales of Aesop, Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson? Delightful stories for children, of trolls that eat people, of beasts and giants, sorcerers and witches. The magic of Snow White with the evil stepmother who wants the heart of her beautiful step-daughter cut out and returned to her. The stereotypes of Cinderella, where beauty is good and ugly is evil; where beauty wins and evil, to our delight, loses. Right or wrong, I have never censored my children's reading. My eldest son as a young adolescent escaped into the fantasy world of Dungeons and Dragons, to the alarm of just about everyone I knew. He was an avid explorer of the nether regions created by Stephen King. He is today, a teacher. My daughters have enjoyed everything from the insipid Sweet Valley books to the scary words of Stine, Christopher Pike and Koontz. They also read Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott and the Brontes. I have talked to them about some of their choices to find out what it is that interests them and yes, to voice my disapproval in some cases. I do not recall them ever saying that it was the violence or the negative messages that attracted them. Usually, it was just for entertainment, and lei’s face it, sometimes, it's just fun to be scared a little bit. If they found it too offensive, it quite frankly lost its appeal. But to take any of it seriously? Generally they found the images depicted as surreal, too fantastical for anything beyond comic book imagination. Nothing as realistic as those projected night after night on the news, where very real people push very real strangers in front of subway trains. Where very real teens kill their newborn baby, then dance at the prom. Children must be taught right from wrong. They must be taught to discern between the real and the unreal. But, I also feel strongly that there are some choices they should be allowed to make and that if that choice puts their nose in a book all the better. To the parents who disagree, then by all means, censor your kids' reading. I just don't think it's right to censor anyone else's. Some don't see it the same way.