Word: vines
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...birds and monkeys. Army ants bivouac and hang from tree limbs in living nests, with their pupae asleep in the center. Sometimes the trees become food; they can be devoured by strangler figs, which grow from seeds dropped by birds, then rise and surround a tree like a parasitic vine, swallow it whole and take its place...
...variation on this theme: "Mr. Jones, wouldn't you agree that your despicable conduct, which has outraged decent Americans everywhere, has stained our Constitution, dishonored the brave men who fell at Valley Forge, dismayed our allies, comforted our enemies and caused our great agricultural produce to wither on the vine?" This restraint is curious. First, it is contrary to human nature--or, at least, my human nature. Second, those few witnesses who stand up to congressional bullying more often than not emerge as victors. During the Watergate hearings of 1973, Pat Buchanan put the Democrats back on their heels...
Johnson took her chance and ran with it. She woke up at 5 a.m. and spent two hours on buses, dragging the kids to day care and then getting to training classes. For nine months now, she has been an operator at Sprint's calling center at 18th and Vine, and she's a star. She sits at a computer with a headset on, placing calls and billing calling cards. She handles 600 calls a day, at an average of 38 seconds a call. Already, she has racked up four "good customer-contact reports" from satisfied callers...
Johnson is part of a small but impressive welfare-to-work program Sprint began last October in one of Kansas City's poorest neighborhoods. Sprint's 18th-and-Vine call center employs 48 operators, half of whom were on public assistance. The center is meeting its performance standards, and its 77% retention rate is more than twice as good as Sprint's call center in the Kansas City suburbs. That's a big deal in an industry where every employee departure can mean $6,000 to $15,000 in lost training and productivity. Sprint is thinking about upping the 18th...
...Hazel Barkley, 18th-and-Vine's operations manager, is a believer. She tells her welfare-to-work employees they can rise as far as they set their mind to. (Sprint reimburses tuition for skill-boosting classes.) And she lets them know she herself started by working the phones. Yvette Johnson has already picked out a computer-spreadsheet class she wants to take during her daily noon-to-2 p.m. break, and she's aiming for management. "There's a lot of things we can do here," she says. "One thing I know, I won't be on welfare again...