Word: punctuality
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...France's Rhone Valley, some 15,000 vehicles on auto routes to the Riviera were snowbound in drifts as high as 10 ft. Some motorists were trapped for 72 hours in their cars, and two babies were born in the autos before their mothers could be rescued. Normally punctual French trains were canceled or delayed for up to six hours by frozen switches, and by the efforts of engineers who stopped to pick up stranded motorists in the open countryside. The sub-zero cold caused power shortages in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, and East Berlin streets were blacked...
MODERN BUREAUCRACIES, like modern factories, require workers who can be counted on to behave in certain ways. The bureaucrat must respect authority, be compulsively punctual, and conform easily to various standards of dress, speech and behavior. The bureaucrat's subservience to his superiors must be combined with an intense competitiveness in his relations with his peers. And most importantly, the bureaucrat must be motivated primarily by his desire for a reward (money, status, prestige) which is external to the work process itself. Like the industrial worker, the bureaucrat is useless to his masters unless he is economically "rational". This means...
...morning was muggy in Saigon, and normally punctual Education Minister Dr. Le Minh Tri was late leaving his villa for the ministry. When a red light halted the minister's Toyota four blocks from the office, Tri, his chauffeur and his bodyguard were more intent on the signal than on the motorbike that drew up alongside them. None was quick enough when one of the bike's two riders tossed a paper bag into the car; as the bike sped away, a hand grenade in the bag exploded. The chauffeur died instantly in the car's flaming...
Shaking Up Courts. At the end of 1962, the women began a "court watcher" program. Some 3,000 women have sat in on more than 70,000 cases, filled out reports on the defendant, the charge, the plea, the verdict, the proceedings. Was the judge punctual? Were the attorneys prepared with their cases, or did they ask for a continuance? Was the arresting officer present to testify? Some attorneys disapproved, but court efficiency increased. "It's the only honest evaluation we get," says Judge William T. Sharp. "It shakes everybody up and makes us analyze our decisions...
Master Nagger. Although he married at 39, and lived with his wife for 15 years, Bennett was neither a happy husband nor a good one. Compulsively punctual, always suffering torments from a variety of ailments from neuralgia to colic, he begrudged every moment spent away from his work. He was a master nagger; once, when his wife moved the piano in the living room by a few inches, he wrote her a four-page letter of reprimand...