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standpipe · the-queue · night-shift · distribution · two-clocks
they measure the heat in degrees, i measure it in a morning — ninety minutes in the queue before the pressure drop, and then i am late for the port
DJ
deltaboy_juniorOP2124-08-28
they measure the heat in degrees. i measure it in a morning. ninety minute in the queue before the pressure drop at noon, forty litre a family, you come early or you come thirsty. i know because i did it before the port shift and i was late to the port and lost the first two dispatch. the anomaly is not two point eight degree to me. it is: does the water hour and the work hour fit in the same day. they do not. somebody in an office decide the standpipe run in the morning and the port run in the morning, and now i choose between drink and pay. i am not asking for pity, i am asking who made the two clocks fight. saw this today: a man fell asleep standing in the line, he did the night shift like me, the line hold his place, nobody woke him until the water came. that is the nicest thing i saw all week and it is also the worst.
SR
standpipe_rani ↩ deltaboy_junior2124-08-28
deltaboy_junior, 'who made the two clocks fight' is the whole committee agenda in six words and I am going to steal it for Wednesday. You are right that it is a decision and not weather. Somebody set the standpipe hours and somebody set the port hours and nobody ever put the two schedules on the same table, because the people who set them have never had to be in two lines at once. Here is what I can tell you from the inside: the standpipe hours are movable. They feel like law and they are not. In my district we pushed the pressure block later after people started fainting in the afternoon queue, and three neighbouring wards asked to copy it, and it cost nothing except somebody being willing to reopen a schedule everyone treated as fixed. So the man who fell asleep standing up is not a heartwarming story, he is an indictment: the wait is long enough and the shift is cruel enough that the humane fix is to move the queue into the dark, where at least the heat is not also trying to kill you. I am putting standpipe-hours-versus-work-hours on the list. The ration is the ration, but the hour of the ration is a choice, and choices have authors.
TO
tidewrench_oksana ↩ deltaboy_junior2124-08-28
deltaboy_junior, here is the engineer's footnote to your morning, and it is on your side. The tide gauges in your city barely moved this week. The queue lengthened anyway. Those two facts sit badly together for people who think the crisis is only the sea rising, and they sit perfectly together for anyone who works on the supply, because the length of your queue is not set by the tide, it is set by how much treated water reaches your standpipe and how many people are pointed at it. Both of those are decisions. The pressure dropping at noon is not the ocean, it is a pump schedule and a mains that cannot hold head past a certain draw. I could tell you within a morning's site visit whether your noon drop is a supply limit or a distribution limit, and I would bet a week's pay it is distribution, because it almost always is. The sea is the excuse. The pipe is the cause. rani is right that the hour is a choice — I will add that the pressure is a choice too, and both of them were made by people who will never once stand in your line. anyway. the gauge barely moved and your queue grew, and that gap is the whole story nobody prints.
LE
lastpew_ekene ↩ deltaboy_junior2124-08-28
deltaboy_junior, the man who fell asleep standing in the queue and whose place the line held for him — I have been sitting with that image since I read it, and I want to tell you why it is not only the worst thing you saw this week but also the truest thing about how people actually survive this. He did not survive the morning because of a policy. He survived it because the people around him, who were also tired, also owed water, also late for their own shifts, silently agreed to keep his place and not wake him. That is the thing no schedule contains and no ministry funds and no market prices, and it is carrying more weight in your city right now than any corridor signed in Geneva. I am not romanticising it — it is a disgrace that a working man has to sleep standing in a water line, and both things are true at once. But you asked who made the two clocks fight, and while we find out, and while rani takes it to her committee, I want to name the people who held his place, because they are the reason the fight has not yet broken the people fighting it. Tell me his name if you learn it. Tell me yours are sleeping. That is the only number I keep.
DJ
deltaboy_juniorOP ↩ lastpew_ekene2124-08-28
ekene his name is Faisal, he drive for the same company. he was not embarrass, that is the part i cannot explain to you. before, a man would be ashame to sleep in the street. now it is normal, the line hold your place, everybody done it. i do not know if that is people being kind or people being tired the same way. maybe both is the same thing now. i sleep four hour last night. that is a good night this week.