Re: Business cultures

On Tue, 11 Feb 2025 20:32:00 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:

On 2025-02-11, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

Really? I thought it was only appropriate for sweden, but there you
go.

 
On Tue, 11 Feb 2025 12:03:31 +0100, D wrote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvang,_California
>
Okay, so its Danish. Close enough.

 
Yup, 40 minutes drive from my house in Santa Barbara.

My brother lived in Lompoc so that was one of his standard places to take
visitors. 

Do they still do that? I remember the movie depictions of the
"three-martini lunches" in the 1960s. Or the depiction of Charlie Wilson
(R-TX) in "Charlie Wilson's War". But I never lived it. Except ...

I don't know. That was the machine tool industry. It wasn't the case for
other industries I've worked in, certainly not public safety. We used to
have an annual users get-together that floated around to areas near one or
the other of the clients. Our sister company were doing a show in Las
Vegas, so we held it there one year. Attendance was sparse with many of
our clients saying no way were their departments signing off on a trip to
Las Vegas. We held it at our shop a couple of times and the real interest
was a trip to Yellowstone, not a strip club. The Park police at
Yellowstone were a client so it was a good excuse to 'see their dispatch
center' along with the bison, geysers, and so forth.

We had a work culture where our lunch room had a fridge with cold beer,
and a tick-off sheet to mark what you took, and we'd settle at the end
of the month. And if you worked late, you charged your beers to the
company. No one argued about your travel expenses. "If I ever have to
question your expense report, that will be your last day here. If I
can't trust you, I can't have you around." I've never seen that in
America.

My surprise was when I went to set up equipment at Pratt & Whitney in
Hartford. The assigned me a minder to make sure I didn't go snooping. When
dinner time rolled around he said we had two choices. We could go to the
management cafeteria where the pretty secretaries were or we could go to
the workers cafeteria where we could get two beers with our meal. He was
relieved when I chose the beer.