There are estimates that each year during the NCAA Basketball Tournament millions of hours of worker time is “wasted” by watching the games during work, checking scores, running gambling pools and other distractions. However research by the same firm has concluded that in some years, the “losses” are almost miniscule (a few hundred million dollars) while in other years the losses amount to several billion.
Thanks to WC the economist and the physicist, I learned two concepts today.
When I was an expert productivity specialist, one principle was, don’t work harder, just more often. Think of the damage of keeping millions from work for a month.
Indeed Sandy did huge damage keeping people from work, and repairing all the literal and figurative broken windows will be something lost.