[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by btimbit

The problem is purely bureaucratic, and something I saw all the time back when I worked for the city. In these cases the drivers know what they're doing is a waste of time, the foreman knows what they're doing is a waste of time, but they are not allowed to move on to the next phase of routes until some engineer or tech, who doesn't really understand the conditions because they're working in an office or from home, declares that they can move on to the next step/set of routes. So they just keep driving in circles or hiding somewhere until they get word that they're allowed to continue doing their job. Otherwise they get in trouble.

Was always one of my biggest complaints about the city, they don't treat their foreman like actual foreman that are allowed to run a job and make decisions. They're just more of a coordinator role, a middle man between the worker bees and more senior management.

In the last ten years we've seen the City become more and more corporate, and inefficiencies like that are one of the results. I never worked for roads, or whatever they just changed their name too, but it's the same everywhere. In the age of liability, nobody can do anything until they have a work order, service request, or planned program overseen by a 'technician' of some sort. Try to go above and beyond, start clearing secondary routes before you're told too and end up cracking a sidewalk, or hit a car or something? Now you're screwed because you weren't supposed to be there.

Another thing is in some departments workers are not allowed to leave their zone. So zone 7 might be pretty much cleared, but across memorial it's still a mess, those guys can't just go start working on that, you just have to wait until the zone 2 guys can get there.

The annoying thing is we've seen how much the city can get done when you throw red tape out the window. Just look at the 2013 flood and immediate aftermath, for example

Don't try to make sense of it, just watch in astonishment at how dumb the whole thing is. Then sit and wonder how bad the other companies must be when you realize this is still cheaper and no worse quality-wise than the provincial roads in the city limits that private contractors do.

Sorry, that really turned into quite the ramble. Still having my coffee. #### me I don't miss that world one bit.

Not a ramble. The insight is appreciated.