The Good Wife

     Businesses are hiring contract labor because they've put a high a cost on employees.  Business Majors have taken over and put too high a price on employee's activities in the workplace and taken no consideration for good management/employee relationships.  I remember when UPS Logistics came in to BellSouth and sold them a time management study.  Groups of UPS people with stopwatches rode with employees and timed everything done during the day.  All the time was crunched in a numbers machine and out popped a whip to beat employees over the head with.  AT&T kept the plan, so every job we do now has an associated completion time and if we go over the allotted time we are unsatisfactory, below expectations, etc.

     Now, if I worked in an manufacturing plant where my activities were the same all day, that would be somewhat understandable.  I don't!  I work in outside telephone maintenance where every job is different.  Every house is different, every business is different, every landscape the wires go over or under is different!
Noise can affect a copper wire in a myriad of ways and in different locations.  Telling me how long it will take to correct before I arrive is asinine!  You just can't price out each job because each job is different!  But management knows that and it's really just a whip to keep us working fast and furious so we don't get run off.  But, we're going to get run off anyway.  That allotment of time for activities means money and business wants to keep it all.

     What if your doctor was on a time management allotment.  Do you want to be run through the operating room because he only has ten minutes to take out your "whatever"?  A "hurry up" mentality only lessons quality and puts stress where it doesn't need to be.  Plus, you just can't put value on everything a person does because you'll end up missing something!

     I took this a step further in my thinking and the following is a fictional illustration...What if marriage was in trouble because men were hiring "contract wives"?  Some college kid priced out what a wife costs and said it was too much, gave her a pink slip and decided to "contract out" that work.  Maybe he reasoned she took 50% of the income and by hiring different people to perform each "wifely duty" he would come out ahead.

     Let's say the idea caught on and it started happening all over the country.  What would happen?  Disaster is an understatement.  I'd guess the complete breakup of the family unit and marriage as an institution.  Sickness and disease would multiply and the guys who did it would end up miserable, wishing they had a good wife again!

     I ran a few numbers myself and the cost gets very high - very quick...
Private cook....$28,000
Housekeeper...$18,000
Child care worker...$18,000
Financial manager/consultant... $12,000
Teacher (for kids)...   $40,000
Best friend and everything else... priceless!

     A good wife is hard to find, the Bible says her value is "far more than rubies" Prov. 31:10  Good employees are also of incalculable worth!