Like Noonan, Like Parker, Like RINO

   By Donna Cole


 In her latest Washington Post op-ed, Kathleen Parker proves again what I have long said of her, "She is a Peggy Noonan Republican." That would be the former Reagan speech writer and current somewhat liberal for a conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan. Parker's column is on the new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and the outrage over her decision to end telecommuting (working from home) by telling workers they have to come into the office and do what they get a paycheck for at the place that signs those paychecks. The people most upset, and thus most vocal, about this are work at home moms.


 Brought forth by various, mostly liberal, pundits and commentators have been the requisite citing of studies that say workers are just as productive at home as they are in an office (I think Mayer differs). They say when moms are at home with their young kids they are happier which makes them better workers and it allows them to save money on child care. We have the testimonials by successful work at home moms presented by the media. There is even talk of silly things like not clogging up the highways with traffic from driving to work or fewer cars spewing those nasty Earth warming carbon gasses. 


 The work at home defenders think Mayer is somehow saying workers who telecommute are not as productive as workers in the office (she is without exactly saying it) and may set a precedent that leads other businesses to end telecommuting. The critics say Mayer was not being fair to work at home moms because she in fact brings her own baby to work, which she keeps in a nursery she had built beside her office (with her own money). The critics say this makes her a hypocrite.


 Mayer is not a hypocrite, she is the boss and the critics are not. As to not being fair, tough, grow up. Having her own nursery is a job perk the CEO gets, those perks are not extended to a janitor, or a manager, or even a company VP, and that is just the way it is. No company's middle manager gets to fly on the corporate jet either. With regard to setting some kind of precedent, Mayer was hired to save sinking Yahoo from going under, and as CEO she is doing what she thinks is best to make the company successful again. What any other business does is their own decision, for some businesses telecommuting allows them to expand their employee base far beyond their physical location and for those that may be necessary to get the type of employees they need. Mayer obviously feels otherwise and believes most Yahoo employees live within a reasonable physical (car, bus, bicycle, mule, whatever) commuting distance of the company campus in Sunnyvale, California. Those who don't, need to move or quit.


 In her column, Parker for the most part gets it right, she basically supports Mayer's decision and talks tough, at one point saying, "Hire a babysitter and get to work. Business is business, after all, and nothing is less sensitive than the bottom line." That is the good part, then we get to the last paragraph, and knowing Parker's method of operation I saw this one coming from five paragraphs away. Trying to strike a balance between the work at home moms and the business she writes;

 "Why not build a state-of-the-art day-care center at Yahoo for all those employees who, though their minds may be present, will have left their hearts at home? Mayer, who obviously sees the benefit to her own child, could send a long-overdue message to corporate America: Having children nearby makes workers less stressed and more productive. Call it “The Bassinet-Bottom-Line Initiative.”

 Eureka! Problem solved. Yahoo, a company that is losing cash hand over fist, should offer work place child care, that way little Jimmy and Sally will be right by Mommy to kiss any boo boo they may get on the playground. And you know there will be a playground with swings and slides, and that "state of the art" playground will have to have insurance. Of course, there will have to be child care providers, and they will have to be paid, and insured. I can keep going on, and make a really long list, but I think you can see how far this can go.


 Another thing you can count on is that the workers will not want to pay for this child care out of pocket, or at least have it subsidized by the company, which amounts to a pay raise either way. What about the employees who don't have kids? Shouldn't they get an equal raise? You could just tell those workers to go suck eggs, but Parker's whole idea of the day care is to make some workers who are unhappy they actually have to come into the office happy. Now you have created another group of unhappy workers who feel ripped off. Mayer might as well just let the workers stay at home than take on building a day care facility with all it would entail and the problems it would cause.


  I can hear the howls coming. Why this idea of providing day care is a very sensible solution the howlers will say. No, it isn't. While I know some businesses do this, I think it is a mistake to do it. It creates too many distractions, conflicts and a host of other unnecessary problems that shouldn't be in the work place to begin with. That is not to even mention the cost. The fact is that a place of business is just that, a place where work is done and business takes place. The purpose of Mayer bringing the workers back to the work place is because the company is about to go belly up and this is part of her plan to save it.


 As CEO this is Mayer's command decision and if the workers don't like it, take a walk. Be a stay at home mom, or find some job that you can work from home for. The boss didn't make the baby. When the parents made the choice to have a baby, they took on the responsibility of paying for that baby which includes diapers and guess what? Day care if they both work. It's not the company's responsibility to provide day care or create an office situation where Mommy is leaving her desk every 45 minutes and running down to the day care to check on little Sally, or breast feeding her baby for 20 minutes while on the clock.


 The entire purpose of having the employees come in the office is to up productivity, to get the 40 hours worth of work Yahoo pays for out of their workers. It is to get them away from family, and that mindset, and in a professional environment mentally focused on work. Having a day care on the Yahoo campus totally defeats this idea. As I said before, if they are going to have a day care on campus Mayer could just save the money and let the employees keep working from home.


 This all leads me to my problem with Parker and why I call her a "Peggy Noonan Republican." She talks conservative talk until she gets to the "feel good" part, and she has a lot of feel good parts in her columns, then like a liberal she wants to feel good by making herself, and thus everyone else, happy. Parker didn't even think about things like I listed above, the costs and liabilities the company would take on, or the chaos it could cause in the work place. I am sure if some liberal came up with a law that all employers must provide day care, Noonan and Parker would fall over each other trying to be the first one to write an op-ed on why Republicans should support that law. I can write their columns in one sentence. It's for the children.


 It is this same thought process that so blinded those like Peggy Noonan they were conned by the soaring yet phony rhetoric of Barrack Obama in 2008, and then to vote for the hollow shell he created for them to project on whatever feel good fantasies they could dream up. Just because it feels good doesn't mean you should always do it.