Salt Of The Earth

If you have ever worked in an office, no doubt you have gone to one of those "production seminars" designed to inspire everyone to work more efficiently. (These are especially annoying when the place you are working wants you to think of what you are doing as a career and you just think of it as a job.) These things typically follow the same pattern: some 'expert' is brought in for a couple of hours and they basically give a PowerPoint presentation filled with slogans such as "Work Smarter, Not Harder" and "Try Your Best and You'll Be Your Best." They last way too long, but at the end of the day at least they get you away from your desk for a couple of hours and give the writers of "The Office" the majority of their material. I have sat through a couple of these at my various former places of employment, so several of these slogans are burned into my subconscious. The one which has been on my mind for the last couple of days is the classic, "Be Proactive, Not Reactive." The premise behind this is that if you can take care of many aspects of a problem as soon as possible, than it won't actually become a problem. Well, someone needs to remind the State of Massachusetts that when it comes to certain problems, being proactive can also be a waste of time and money.

You see, we were in line for some snow this weekend but, as it has happened all winter, Massachusetts dodged the snow bullet. Of course, while we all thought that might happen no one could have known it for sure, so we all went out and checked off the usual snow prep - making sure the shovels are near the door, there is gas for the snowblower and so on. While I am a firm believer that doing this kind of stuff is the best way to prevent snow from ever falling, I can at least remain comforted with the knowledge that the preparations aren't totally useless, because they don't lose me any money. The shovels will get used at some point and even if I don't need any gas for the snowblower this season I can eventually use it in the lawnmower, because it is not like gas goes bad in a week. Well, apparently no one told the state about the premise of not wasting money on pre-storm preparations because as I was driving by an MBTA lot I saw that the entire parking lot was covered in salt. There was so much of the snow-melting mix on the ground that it had turned the ground white, making it look as though it had already snowed. This was beyond being prepared, this was overkill.

I am willing to grant you that the state has to be concerned about making sure that the parking lots for its trains are cleared in time for any morning commuters. God knows all it will take is one slip and fall before a local news station starts a six-part investigatory series about how the State is dropping the ball on it's MBTA maintenance. I'll also concede that they have a lot of ground to cover, so going a a little heavier with the stuff on the first pass saves time with not having to come back around as often. However, when you are dumping pounds of salt on top of the pounds of salt which remain from the last time it was supposed to snow and didn't, perhaps that is a sign you could best use this time towards another activity. Especially since by Friday night it had become apparent that we were not getting the half a foot originally feared. If the rest of us could find that out you have to figure the guys in charge could turn on their TVs and learn it just as easily. I know they are probably worried that the one time they assume the forecast was wrong will be the one time it turns out the storm got stronger than anticipated, but even the worst weathermen are pretty good about telling you what is going to happen in the next 12 hours.

They had to know how stupid this was as they were doing it. But perhaps I should be happy that the guys who do the salting are so enthusiastic and thorough about their line of work. They haven't had many opportunities to show what they can do this season, so when they finally got their chance, maybe they simply want to make the most of it? (Sadly, I think the reality is that they get paid by the State based off of how much salt they drop.) But I think the main reason this bothered me so much is that it just seems like such a waste. First off, it's not like you can go back, vacuum this stuff up and use it when it finally does snow. Most of it will wash away with the next heavy rain we get, so it is like pouring money down the drain (and not that I want to go all "Captain Planet" on you, but all those salt and chemicals draining into the sewers can't be a good thing). So, how about next time we all take a step back, realize that we just got lucky with a light winter and dial back the snow prep? I mean, that will obviously result in a blizzard no one saw coming but at least we'd all get a snow day out of it.