GPS Tracking Busts Bad Employee

Aren’t supervisors supposed to be aquatinted with what’s going on in management?

GPS Busts City Official

Chicago’s superintendent of sewers took a break from his workday and hit the links, but his whereabouts were traced through a cell phone, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. Winston Cole has been placed on administrative leave with pay after he was tracked to a suburban golf course when he was supposed to be on the clock at the Water Management Department’s South District headquarters. When GPS-equipped cell phones were distributed to city employees and tracking devices were installed on city trucks, the stated goal was to increase employee productivity. Sounds like it’s working.

I could go on for days on this one. One of my first clients was county government. They bought a few vehicle units for a test and proof of concept. They installed them With the Knowledge of the Employees (something I always recommend) on the county-owned cars of several supervisors. What do you think happened the very first week of operation? Yep! One of the supervisory officials (who, remember, knew this was on the car) went to a golf course for an afternoon — while on the taxpayer’s’ clock! Amazing.

Another client was in the alcoholic beverage distribution industry. Obviously, they are even more interested in the prevention of drunk driving and substance abuse of employees than many other industries.

I sent a letter to the company president offering to make presentation to him on the advantages his company could realize by using GPS tracking for his company vehicles and he took my up on an offer to track one or more of his trucks as a trial. He took me up on the offer.

The vehicle he chose was a pickup that was assigned to one of his key supervisors. In this case he didn’t inform the employee and we installed the unit in a covert manner. In fairness, the president did hold a meeting the same week we installed the test unit to emphasize the company policies on drinking and driving and proper use of company vehicles. Should have been a clue, no?

Well the first week’s data showed that the night of the day of the safety meeting the ‘tracked’ supervisor went to a bar after work and traveled to three other bars where he spent his time … perhaps drinking only soft drinks? … until 4 am and then apparently took a nap in the bar parking lot (the bar he was at closed at 4 am) and then reported to work at 6 am the following day. All those hours at various bars, tow hours maximum of sleep and then back to work on busy streets in a company vehicle! Just how stupid was this guy?

You should not assume the worst about your employees. The vast majority are hardworking, dedicated and truthful. But the number of ‘bad apples’ out there certainly has amazed me … GPS Tracking is one of the better, faster, cheaper ways to separate the whet from the chaff.

Still incompetent after all these years ..

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051026/OPINION/510260394/1030

Comparing county vehicle fleet sizes meaningless
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 10/26/05
BY THOMAS J. POWERS
Once again, the Press has published an article under the banner of "news" that was critical of Monmouth County. This newspaper's latest muckraking of the county's vehicle fleet carried no news, only the goal of furthering its own political agenda. ("Driving ahead: Monmouth's fleet now leads state," Oct. 16.) County staff members have spent several weeks engaged in an ongoing dialogue with your reporter, and the fleet information was fully explained.
Early this year, reporters from this newspaper requested a list of vehicles approved for commutation. Soon afterward, those same reporters asked for a vehicle inventory. We queried our database for "fleet vehicles" and supplied them with that list. However, due to the way our database was constructed and categorized, that search resulted in some categories of vehicles being omitted. We have since streamlined the database to avoid this confusion. At no time were any vehicles unaccounted for. To imply otherwise is irresponsible.

Mr. Powers, to imply that you know what you do not know is irresponsible as well.  To imply that a problem was fixed when indeed it has not been is irresponsible also,
I posted a few days ago about the incompetent management of Monmouth County’s fleet.  Powers is one of the county commissioners, elected to serve the people and watch out for this kind of scandalous mismanagement.  
Read his article carefully.  It’s nothing but a string of excuses and obfuscations.  “At no time were any vehicles unaccounted for  ...”  Well hello, Mr. Powers, you queried your system for a count of vehcuiles and some vehicles were not accounted for.  The fact that after the newspaper took you to task you fumbled around and found errors in the system (who paid for that system and who trained county personnel in its use, by the way?  County the number of vehicles you own isn’t exactly rocket science..). Anyway, the fact that you manually found the vehicles in question after not being able to find them the first time via your official accounting system tells me that yes, indeed, vehicles were unaccounted for.  To my mind I still have no confidence that you have found all the vehicles yet.

Again I implore my readers to get on the backs of those who manage your government fleets and force them to be accountable.  Passing off bogus information and then back-pedaling and revising the info when a newspaper reporter proves he or she knows more than the responsible officials is not acceptable performance.  You can talk about how many people in the world love the smell, but rotten cheese still stinks no matter what kind of face you try to put on it.