Rick may dump this post; read fast. Even if electric companies are compliant and fuel gets delivered, how long can electric companies function without money? Read this report from Karla Corcoran, Inspector General of the U.S. Postal Service, before Rep. Horn's y2k Committee, Feb. 23. www.house.gov/reform/gmit/hearings/testimony/990223kc.htm

My conclusion is there will be no mail. That means you will get no electric bill (or any other kind.) Great, you say. No, without money the electric companies can't pay for fuel and other vital services and can't pay their employees. Will fuel companies provide free fuel? Will employees work for free?

This is another dot that can't be conected. We are not going to have electricity.

Marcella

-- Anonymous, March 01, 1999

Answers

Nah, I won't dump it, Marcella. It has the word "electric" in it. ;-)

-- Anonymous, March 01, 1999

Marcella,

To answer your question: will employees work for free? Yes, I believe they will work for free, at least for a time.

I work for an electric utility and I would work for free if necessary to keep power flowing. After all, we all have families and homes that need electricity. What am I going to do, quit and get another job during a crisis like Y2K? If my employer can't pay me, neither will others.

In my view, most essential people (electric utility workers, medical people, fire, police, etc.) will work for free for a while just to keep their communities and families safe.

-- Anonymous, March 01, 1999

Marcella,

Yes the situation with the Post Office is severe. However, I can assure your that if a utility can print a bill it will be delivered either by the post office or by a subcontracting firm. It costs very little to have bills delivered. There will also be locations set up where you can go to pay your bill.

Local deliveries of all kinds will be done without much trouble provided there is electricity and the bills can be created. Even if the bills cannot printed they might resort to giving you a bill that was an average from 1999.

Historically employees will work for little or no wages. Once layoffs start many will fear losing their jobs and will tolerate loss of pay or delay of pay just in order to keep one's job.

You concluded that there will be no mail. In an emergency the government can use other government employees and troops to help deliver the mail. Mail might get slowed down and and this might create very severe problems but the mail, especially local mail, will not stop. Remember, the worse it gets the more unemployed people will available to work and solve problems.

-- Anonymous, March 01, 1999

At least the federal government get's first cut at fuel... Or do they? If they do, then the mail vehicles should continue to function. Then the bills would go out, and then power companies would be paid.

-- Anonymous, March 01, 1999

I did forget the pony express. Wonder if we have horses spread conveniently around the country? I should have said there will be no mail delivered by the Postal Service and their volume can't be delivered by others. Reasons being:

1. Second paragraph, last sentence of the Inspector General's Report, "Both the private sector and Government may rely on the Postal Service as a contingency if their systems fail on January 1, 2000." That means even more mail in the system.

2. Remember the UPS strike? Other carriers were inundated by former UPS business. The amount of mail the Postal Service processes could not be handled by other services, too much of it. If an electric company pays a carrier to deliver their bills, how does the customers get the money to the company? They can't put the check in the mail. They might be able to deliver it to a central location but what is central to one would not be central for another. Don't think this would work at all in a country setting.

Someone has sent me an e-mail saying the government will have first shot at fuel so the mail trucks will run. The Inspector General does not even mention fuel for trucks in her report. The mail will never get that far.

I will have to think some more about this mail problem. Mail delivery is a troublesome dot. If you want to talk about mail delivery in general, send me a personal e-mail. Rick's patience may give out any minute.

-- Anonymous, March 01, 1999

I think both Ted and Steve have made valid points, but even with their ideas about how deliveries could/would still be made and work continue, we come back to Marcella's "Connect the dots" logic. In a scenario where postal deliveries are greatly slowed or interrupted, and financial matters intrude, there are extrapolations to Ted and Steve's ideas also. Workers would work and deliveries would be made, *if* there are no violent civil disturbances because of delays in the receipt of government checks and which might cause safety issues. And utilities/businesses will continue to operate even with delays in payments *if*, when the checks from individuals and corporate customers do arrive, they can all be properly processed through the various banks involved, without any further problems.

The printing and delivery of bills is only a part of the interconnected whole which must all function to enable the financial cycle to go full circle. The page is full of dots, and we aren't going to know which ones will be able to be connected in which ways until 2000 arrives -- or if the picture the connected dots make will be a scene we are used to, or something more on the order of a Picasso portrait.

Delays in what we consider "normal" now, even if workarounds are implemented, could also negatively impact an individual's life. Calm preparations which will help a family get through any disruptions/delays, is still the practical thing to do in my opinion.

Has anyone else ever had their paychecks interrupted by a computer glitch? Several years ago, when my husband was in the military, his bi-monthly direct deposit never arrived. It was later determined that all the records for individuals with the last names A to C (of the group he was attached to) were accidentally deleted (human error) from the data base. The situation caused tremendous problems for a great many people, especially those who had already sent checks out based on the confidence that those direct deposits always arrived on time - without checking to see if they actually did or not.

This is not the only computer banking/data base problem we have experienced over the years, either. It only has to happen to you once before you learn not to take any system for granted.

Check out a recent article about ComEd's apology to customers at:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/splash/article/0,1051,SAV-9902260226,00.html

Here's the first two paragraphs: "Commonwealth Edison apologized Thursday for the problems thousands of its 3.4 million customers have been experiencing in recent months because of bugs in its new customer information system.

The state's largest utility took out large ads in major Northern Illinois newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, expressing regret "for any inconvenience, concern and frustration the billing problems may have caused you."

These thousands of customers experienced frustrating problems for months -- when everything else was functioning well. What is the frustration tolerance limit among large groups of people if delays and problems happen on a larger scale? I hope that's one area of sociology that we won't have to add data to in 2000, but I wouldn't bet that it won't be.

-- Anonymous, March 01, 1999