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On The (Phone) Line

June 3rd, 2004 — 12:00am

Some star­tling num­bers about call cen­ter employ­ment, from the newslet­ter Knowledge@Wharton:
“an esti­mated 3% of the U.S. work­force [is] employed in call cen­ters“
That’s a greater share of the total than for all farm pay­rolls and agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion across the U.S.
“Call cen­ters… typ­i­cally expe­ri­ence a 30% annual turnover in employ­ees.“
Not as high as some meat pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties, but get­ting there…
“In some cases the mean dura­tion of employ­ment is 17 days.“
Which I believe at one point was the expected life­time of a freshly deployed infantry­man for the Soviet Army on the East­ern Front dur­ing WWII…

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When You Can’t Find The WC, Build Your Own…

May 26th, 2004 — 12:00am

Instructions from the Doctors Without Borders field manual
“The simple pit latrine is one of the simplest and cheapest means of disposing of human wastes. If well designed and built, correctly sited and well maintained, it contributes significantly to the prevention of feco-orally transmitted diseases.”
I’m not sure how you’re supposed to download and print these from the Web if you’re in a location without plumbing, but then again I suppose that’s what satelltie phones are for…

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