Hey gents -

...my comment regarding the vote not being homogenous across seniority demographics was to illustrate the point that (in my humble opinion) the 68% vs 32% point was not some type of "mandate" proving that the LOA was "favored" by a wide cross section of FEDEX pilots...rather, it was most likely passed via an even larger majority of pilots who wouldn't have to live it.

To answer BJs question with an example...

Suppose an ice cream producer surveyed 2,000,000 customers across the world and found that 68% of those surveyed preferred chocolate ice cream over vanilla ice cream.... and then further studied the data across age, income level, household location, etc.

This further analysis revealed relatively the same split (68% chocolate vs 32% vanilla) across all the different demographics. At that point, the producer could conclude their customers really do "generally prefer" chocolate to vanilla.

However, if the increased level of data analysis showed older folks preferred chocolate 90% to 10%, while younger folks preferred vanilla 80% to 20%....or higher income customers preferred chocolate 85%, while lower income customers preferred vanilla by 90%...or those living in middle of the country preferred chocalate 75%, while those living overseas prefered vanilla by 95%, then such a "sweeping conclusion" that their customers "generally prefer" chocalate really shouldn't be made.

...hey gotta run

...I'm off to see that "happieness" therapist you guys are all recommending!

...I'll meet you guys in the lobby!

 

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Or the Ice Cream store owner recommended chocolate, as vanilla was bad for your health.

If a customer tried to purchase vanilla he was invited back into the store room for a little fistacuff action.

All advertisements was directed at promoting chocolate.

Perhaps the store owner made more money on chocolate?

 

If you don't vote for the chocolate...They're going to give it all to the North Koreans.

 

It has been rumored the ice cream producer would not give out any "samples" before making them choose.

 

Ice cream / recliner aficionados beware (See # 19):


Grammar Rules for the Unenlightened; Or, How to Write Good


Original source unknown; variants of this list have been forwarded to me without attribution by several different individuals.

1. Don't use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice.
2. Don't use no double negatives. Don't never use no triple negatives.
3. No sentence fragments
4. Corollary: Complete sentences: important.
5. Stamp out and eliminate redundancy.
6. Avoid cliches like the plague.
7. All generalizations are bad.
8. Take care that your verb and subject is in agreement.
9. A preposition is a bad thing to end a sentence with.
10. Avoid those run-on sentences that just go on, and on, and on, they never stop, they just keep rambling, and you really wish the person would just shut up, but no, they just keep going, they're worse than the Energizer Bunny, they babble incessantly, and these sentences, they just never stop, they go on forever...if you get my drift...
11. You should never use the second person.
12. The passive voice should never be used.
13. Never go off on tangents, which are lines that intersect a curve at only one point and were discovered by Euclid, who lived in the sixth century, which was an era dominated by the Goths, who lived in what we now know as Poland...
14. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "I hate quotations."
15. Excessive use of exclamation points can be disastrous!!!!!
16. Don't use question marks inappropriately?
17. Don't obfuscate your theses with extraneous verbiage.
18. Never use that totally cool, radically groovy out-of-date slang.
19. Avoid tumbling off the cliff of triteness into the black abyss of overused metaphors.
20. Keep your ear to the grindstone, your nose to the ground, take the bull by the horns of a dilemma, and stop mixing your metaphors.
21. Avoid those abysmally horrible, outrageously repellent exaggerations.
22. Avoid any awful anachronistic aggravating antediluvian alliterations.
23. This sentence no verb.

 

Let us know when we have gone to far? (rule 16)

And the store owners don't plan on eating any Ice Cream themselves!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (rules 21 and 15)

 

Maybe a contest: one paragraph, all 23 rules broken.

(As an aside: "Guess" which one is "O"'s favorite?)

 

I just had a picture flash through my head...

It was a bunch of chimps typing on laptops with their big chimp grins and laughs.

No offense, of course.

Thank you. None taken.

 

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