IMPRESSIVE: We’re impressed by this story out of Michigan: Apparently a man by the name of Barnett Jones was just outed as holding two relatively senior full-time jobs simultaneously. He was working as an administrator of public safety for Flint and he was head of secuurity for the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. Total annual salary for both roles: $273,750.
The question you’re undoubtedly wondering is, was he doing a legitimately good job in both positions, or was he just mailing it in and/or cynically exploiting the system? When asked, Jones replied, “There are some days I go to both, some days I go to one. Sometimes I leave out at 8, 9, 10 o’clock at night, Saturdays. I’m a workaholic.” Detroit Water Department Director Sue McCormick said, “He was out patrolling with us on Angel’s Night, he’s made midnight visits to the Port Huron facility to meet with his security officers there… I’ve seen no lack of his on-duty performance to the job.” Flint City Administrator Michael Brown said, “He did a great job for us.”
Of course any or all of these statements could be self-serving, so who knows what the truth is. If he actually is doing a good job, why not let him continue? Is there a excess of dedicated, competent, workaholic public servants that needs to be trimmed off?
STARWOOD LAWSUIT: Thanks to Loyalty Lobby, we have some juicy details on Starwood Hotels’ lawsuit against two luxury hotels. Starwood filed suit against Le Parker Meridien New York and Parker Palm Springs for faking accounting records and visits in order to scam money from Starwood. For those of you who don’t know, Starwood doesn’t own all the hotels operating under its brand, thus the potential incentives for cheating. Here’s LL’s summary of Starwood’s side of the story:
The reimbursement rate from Starwood for award nights is dependent of the occupancy rate of the night. When the occupancy rate is below 95%, the hotel gets a set monetary reimbursement that is relatively low.
When the occupancy rate is 95% or higher, the property receives the ADR (average daily rate) for the consumed award rooms. In case of Le Parker Meridien, the reimbursement under the ADR is $200 or more higher than the base reimbursement.
The hotel had falsified records, when it was close to the 95% occupancy rate, in order to get the higher ADR reimbursement rate from SPG.
The suit alleges that both properties had made reservations under fictitious names and faked their check ins to the hotel to get the higher occupancy rate.
The New York property had done this mainly by booking FAM (free travel agent familiarization trips) trips. According to the law suit, they had booked hundreds of of these trips to manipulate the occupancy rate. They had also checked in guests, who had reservations for the night, but never showed up.
It seems that when hotel hits the 95% occupancy rate, they need to produce a ADR document for the Starwood and fax it to the SPG’s office in Ontario (Canada) for processing purposes.
Apparently, there was quite a few employees aware of this falsifications as they had to carry it through by producing these documents. According to the law suit, they were instructed not to discuss it over the email.
Kind of makes you wonder what other kinds of shenanigans are going on behind the scenes, yes? (H/T: View From The Wing)
20 FREE REAMS OF PAPER: Do you need 10,000 sheets of paper? You do? Well, be sure to stop at OfficeMax no later than tomorrow, as you can get two free cases of paper (total value: $88) there. It’s “free” in the sense that your rebate is in the form of OfficeMax credit, but still, not bad, especially if you actually happen to need 10,000 sheets of paper. Full details are in the Slickdeals thread.
SPEAKING OF PAPER PRODUCTS, HERE’S SOMEBODY ELSE WHO THINKS OUTSIDE THE BOX: “Rules say I can’t bring beer into the office, but they don’t say anything about making beer in the office.” — Kevin Malone, The Office
Happy Friday!
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