I was watching a local news channel last night, and there was a story about the taxi cab shortage in Calgary.

The reason this is a huge concern is because of the holidays, which means more drinking, and without cabs, more drink and driving. It’s a fact, drinking and driving does go up during the holidays.

So with more drinking and driving, shouldn’t there be more check stops? Nope! At least according to the Calgary Police; during the news story on the taxi cab shortage they had a spokesperson from the Calgary Police stating that it’s not their job to baby sit the population, and that they will not increase check stops.

Okay, I agree, you don’t need to baby sit the population. But your job is certainly to protect the public! It’s not just about protecting the people who get behind the wheel drunk; it’s more about protecting the other innocent motorists and pedestrians who get murdered by drunk drivers everyday across Canada.

Ever since moving out to Calgary, I’ve only ran into one check stop. When I lived in Penticton BC, we would run into dozens of check stops each month. I hear about so many more drunk driving stories here in Calgary, than I did in BC. When I moved to Alberta and attended high school, neither the teachers nor anyone else from the school ever talked about drinking and driving, not even once. In BC, I couldn’t go for a month of schooling without hearing about drinking and driving and its implications.

If I’ve only ran into one check stop, I bet you there are plenty of Calgarians who have never ran into one. So, what stops them from getting behind the wheel drunk? Common knowledge that drinking and driving is bad? I fear that a lot of people don’t know the seriousness of drinking and driving, as they don’t seem to be teaching it enough in school in Alberta. Also even if a person does know drinking and driving is dangerous, but they can’t get a taxi cab until 45 minutes later, and they know that the chances of running into a check stop is very low, they might make a bad judgement call and get behind the wheel drunk.

So it is the Calgary Police’s job to protect me and other citizens. By not implementing more check stops, they are failing to do this. It is also the job of our educational system to teach about the seriousness of drinking and driving, by not making it mandatory in the curriculum for Grade 11 and Grade 12 students (Those are the years I went to school in Alberta, there probably is more years that they don’t teach it.), the government and educational system is failing us.

The cab shortage is also a problem. But a shortage of cabs is not a crime, drinking and driving is, and there is no excuse for it. The police should do their job and deter drinking and driving in every way possible, and take the people who continue to drink and drive off the streets.

Nothing really surprises me anymore.

“Wal-Mart was only helping police and not endangering employees when it asked them to search for a possible bomb at one of the chain’s stores, a company spokesman said Tuesday.

The manager of the St-Jean-sur-Richelieu outlet was alerted to a bomb threat last Thursday, said Yanik Deschenes, who confirmed that 40 sales clerks were asked to help find the device.”

This completely ruins Wal-Mart’s defense. First of all you “asked” your employees to do something dangerous while being in a position of authority. These employees are already exploited enough, and they certainly do not want to lose their jobs so they will usually listen to what their boss says – after all they are the ones who give them their pay cheques (Figuratively). I know I’d be a little bit intimidated if my boss “asked” me to do something like this. All the employees were probably too scared to speak up.

I know from experience. I use to work at Zellers. Now at Zellers they have a system called “Code 9″ which I always found very interesting. On my first day at Zellers I was told what “Code 9″ meant. It meant that all male employees would have to leave there job stations and run to the location that was announced. So for example if “Code 9, Main Entrance” was announced over the intercom, I as a male employee, was supposed to run out to the main entrance. I was told this was to help loss prevention catch shop lifters. And I would have to chase after these shop lifters. Now I knew full well this was not legal and really doubted that this was official policy. I asked other employees if they were told this. They said yes and also shared that they had been involved in “Code 9’s” before and they confirmed that it was real. They said they did it because it was their job to do it. Well it sure wasn’t my job! I knew I wasn’t being paid $7/hour to put my life in danger.

Of course when I looked up “Code 9″ in any of the procedure manuals, all it would say is “Loss Prevention Assistance Needed.” Very vague, huh? So if anything were to happen, Zellers could just say it wasn’t there policy and the employee was acting on his/her own. All the employees would have is a “he/she said” type of case; they’d have to get a lot of witnesses to the verbal instruction. And even then, it’s hard to organize anything like this with the high staff turn around at these type of work places.

Another verbal instruction I received while working at Zellers was that during a fire alarm, I was to empty all the money from the cash register into my cash bag and then go to customer service to drop it into the safe. Of course this wasn’t written anywhere either.

So I’m quite sure that Wal-Mart does not have any policy written about assisting during bomb threats. So it was all verbal instructions. I’m also quite certain that the police would not be asking citizens to look for bombs (If so, that’s a completely different rant.) So I wonder how much of this asking for assistance to find the bomb was really demanding assistance to find the bomb?

And one more rant about this article:

“We will never put in jeopardy the security of our employees.” - You already do by paying them a wage well below the poverty line.