The “It’s Finally Fall” Schmoozefest is 6 to 8 p.m., Oct. 26 at Rue-Bar, 318 N. Elm St. in downtown Greensboro. For those who sign in and wear a name tag, there will be free beer, wine and snacks while they last.
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Imagine for a moment you are trying to help a millennial who has been living in his parents’ basement since he graduated from college five years ago and has never worked. You ask him how his job hunt is going and he tells you that he heard Cone Health was looking for a new CEO, so he has applied for the job and is now waiting to hear if he got it.
You ask, just to make certain, and find out that, no, he doesn’t have any background in medicine, administration or business. His degree is in sociology and his only job since college has been part-time, working for a caterer who is one of his mother’s friends.
So you ask why he thinks he can start right at the top of one of the largest employers in Greensboro in a field that takes considerable expertise. He tells you that applying for the job was a good experience and he did a very neat job with the application. He filled in all the blanks and is pretty certain he will be considered because he is young, bright and they might want someone to take over who has no preconceived ideas about how a major medical facility should be run.
That’s pretty much what we have with Greensboro applying for the new Amazon headquarters. Is it possible that the kid playing video games in his parents’ basement will become the CEO of Cone Health? Yes, it is possible.
Is it possible that Greensboro will be chosen as the new headquarters for Amazon? Yes, it is possible.
But the likelihood of both is about the same.
If the young man really wants a job, he should be spending his time applying for jobs for which he has some qualifications.
Greensboro should be spending its time going after companies where it has better than a 0.00001 percent chance of success. Time is a limited commodity. The time that Greensboro has spent applying for the Amazon headquarters is spent and that time can’t be retrieved and spent on a useful endeavor.
How many companies bringing 200, 400 or 1,000 jobs have come to Greensboro in the past couple of years? Not many.
As long as Greensboro is obsessed with going after the Boeings and Amazons of the world, we aren’t going to get the companies that might come here. Greensboro should be looking at replacing the jobs lost when the White Oak plant closes down in December, not wasting time going after 50,000 jobs that the city couldn’t begin to handle.
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This may only be funny to reporters, but a New York Times reporter is complaining that a source in the Clinton campaign lied to him about who paid for the infamous Trump dossier.
It’s incredible that any reporter could make it to The New York Times without knowing that people involved in politics lie. It’s simply a fact.
I learned it the hard way about 30 years ago. I was a reporter in Henderson, North Carolina, and I asked my best source and, up until then, someone I considered a friend a question about a scandal in the Sheriff’s Department. He told me unequivocally that the rumor wasn’t true. He said it was all made up for political purposes. A radio station broke the story later in the week, and I played catch-up. But I learned a valuable lesson when dealing with political sources – trust but verify.
Maybe The New York Times should hire me as a consultant.
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City Council candidates are starting to have some fun at forums. After you’ve been through 10 or so, you have to do something to make it through being asked the same questions one more time without losing your mind. At one forum this week City Councilmember Yvonne Johnson started talking about the patience that was needed when another councilmember went on and on, saying the same thing repeatedly at a meeting.
Then City Councilmember Marikay Abuzuiater jumped on the bandwagon, talking about how tedious it was when a councilmember would try to micromanage city staff from the dais.
Neither mentioned their fellow councilmember by name, but it was clear to anyone who has attended a recent City Council meeting they were both talking about District 1 City Councilmember Sharon Hightower.
At the same forum, when candidates were asked to talk about something that would never be discussed at a City Council meeting, Councilmember Mike Barber said legalizing marijuana. He said the city didn’t have the power to do it, but that good arguments could be made for it.
In other words, the forums are starting to get silly.
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The Muse and I went west this weekend, joining all the leafers and wooly worm enthusiasts in the North Carolina mountains, and it made me glad I live in Greensboro and not Winston-Salem.
Going out we took Business 40 and the traffic was so backed up we decided to come back I-40, where we hit two miles of stop-and-go traffic. Smart drivers went down the shoulder and took an exit. We’re not that smart.
But the trip reminded me once again that there is simply no good way from Greensboro to get west of Winston Salem, and now Business 40 is being closed while the North Carolina Department of Transportation works on I-40. It does make me wonder if at NCDOT the left hand even knows where the right hand is, much less what it is doing.
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Speaking of going west, we spent a couple of days in Newland and had great meals at Fabio’s Restaurant. We were with a big crowd of family so there were usually people coming and going during our meals, but nothing seemed to faze the crew at Fabio’s. The food was great and the service was superb.
