An excerpt from the terrific new blog Varifrank:
Once while watching TV and seeing a Dodge Ram pickup commercial, my brother-in-law began to opine about the obvious fuel inefficiency of Dodge pickups and what a fool anyone would be to buy one. He offered that anyone who didn’t buy a Honda was an idiot, as only Hondas could get decent gas mileage, and thus were the only cars “good for the environment”. I then reminded him of something he knew, that I owned a Dodge pickup and that he had parked right next to it in the driveway. After he acknowledged that I then told him something he didn’t want to hear.
“My Dakota is more efficient than you Honda”, I said.
He laughed back and said to me in mid guffaw that there was no way that could possibly be true. The poor bastard didn’t know he was being set up.
“When was the last time you bought gas?” I asked him. He said he bought gas on a weekly basis, and a tank of gas is 12 gallons. I told him I had not bought gas in 8 weeks, and my tank held 18 gallons and as a result, it was clear that My V-8, 5 speed manual transmission Dodge Dakota was more efficient than was his Honda. .
You see, My Brother-in-law used his Honda to go to work. His work was 40 miles from home and it took him 90 minutes and two bridge crossings to get from where he lived to where he worked.
He traveled all that way to sit in a standard office cubicle farm, where he would have a networked company PC and telephone. He worked with no one at that office, as most of his contacts were actually other companies and other employees around the globe. His management team was actually in London.
My manager is based on the east coast. His manager is in another state. The Vice President of our division is not an American. Our customer base is globally and in every country except North Korea, Libya and Iran. I work at home. My commute is exactly 14 steps down my stairs into my office. I rarely drive a car for work, unless I’m going to the airport for a trip out of town, which is becoming more and more rare as remote access technology advances with the times.
Am I Efficient? You bet your a**, and I don’t need a Honda or a big expensive public transportation system to be that way.
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