IN THIS ISSUE

Reveille Home

Great Summer Reading

BBRC Foundation Committee Sets Schedule

Fellowship Committee Sets Picnic

O’Brien Warms To His Work

Medina Days 2000 On The Horizon

Friday Potpourri

Web Fun

Vol. 13, No. 3, July 17, 2000

 Web Fun

It may be hard to believe, but 100 years ago today  … The average life expectancy in the United States was 47. Only 14 % of the homes in the United States had a bathtub. Only 8 % of the homes had a telephone. A three minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11. There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S., and only 144 miles of paved roads. The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph. Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents, California was only the twenty-first most populous state in the Union. The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower. The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents an hour. The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year. A competent accountant could expect to earn $2,000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year. More than 95 % of all births in the United States took place at home. Ninety percent of all U.S. physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as ”substandard.” Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee cost fifteen cents a pound. Most women only washed their hair once a month and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo. Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering the country for any reason, either as travelers or immigrants. The five leading causes of death in the U.S. were: 1. Pneumonia and Influenza 2. Tuberculosis, 3. Diarrhea, 4. Heart disease, 5. Stroke. The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska hadn’t been admitted to the Union yet. Drive-by shootings –- in which teenage boys galloped down the street on horses and started randomly shooting at houses, carriages, or anything else that caught their fancy – were an ongoing problem in Denver and other cities in the West. The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was thirty. The remote desert community was inhabited by only a handful of ranchers and their families. Plutonium, insulin, and antibiotics hadn’t been discovered yet. Scotch tape, crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn’t been invented. There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. One in ten U.S. adults couldn’'t read or write. Only 6% of all Americans had graduated from high school. Coca-Cola contained cocaine instead of caffeine. Punch card data processing had recently been developed, and early predecessors of the modern computer were used for the first time by the government to help compile the 1900 census. Eighteen percent of households in the United States had at least one full-time servant or domestic. There were about 230 reported murders in the U.S. annually. Contributed by Brian Heimbigner Creative Job Placement Take the prospective employees you are trying to place and put them in a room with only a table and two chairs. Leave them alone for two hours, without any instruction. At the end of that time, go back and see what they’re doing. If they have taken the table apart, put them in engineering. If they are counting the butts in the ashtray, assign them to finance. If they ask why they had to wait two hours, credits and collections is their place. If they are waving their arms and talking loudly, send them to consulting. If they are talking to the chairs, personnel is a good spot for them. If they are wearing green sunglasses and need a haircut, information systems is their niche. If they mention what a good price you got for the table and chairs, put them in purchasing. If they mention that hardwood furniture does not come from rain forests, public relations would suit them well. If they are sleeping, they are management material. If they are writing up the experience, send them to the technical documents team. If they don’t even look up when you enter the room, assign them to security. If they try to tell you it’s not as bad as it looks, send them to marketing. And, if they have left early, put them in sales.