To: All GM Renaissance Center Tenants and Marriott Hotel
From: John A. Cullen
Date: October 14, 2008
Re: GM Renaissance Center Escalators—Energy Conservation
In an effort to make the GM Renaissance Center more energy efficient, we will be shutting off the designated escalators beginning tonight and until further notice:
Tower 100 Level 1–Level 2
Tower 200 Level 1–Level 2
Tower 300 Level 1–Level 2
Tower 300 Level A–Level 1
Every Monday through Thursday, these escalators (up and down) will be shut off at 7:00 pm and turned back on at 6:00 am the following morning. During the weekends, the escalators will remain off from Friday 7:00 pm until Monday 6:00 am. For your safety, stanchions will be placed at the top and bottom of each escalator.
ROFL
Talk about cheaping out! Time to flee the sinking ship!
I bet the Toyota headquarters has been doing this for the last 25 years.
Chinese automakers probably do not have escalators at all.
The first thing I thought of when I read this was this:
Stella: You heard of that market crash in ’29? I predicted that.
Jeff: Oh, just how did you do that, Stella?
Stella: Oh, simple. I was nursing a director of General Motors. Kidney ailment, they said. Nerves, I said. And I asked myself, What’s General Motors got to be nervous about? Overproduction, I says; collapse. When General Motors has to go to the bathroom ten times a day, the whole country’s ready to let go.
Smart nurse.
I’m getting too depressed to even make fun of GM anymore. The next few years are going to suck.
Now don’t you white collar engineers, designers and other Joe-The-Professionals get any crazy ideas in your heads about working extra hours off the clock just to help right this ship. We are going to shut off the lights and blockade the escalators to keep you scalliwags out of the office and ensure that you can’t do any more harm! Meanwhile, Executive pay and perks are not going to end because we desperately need the talent only men on par with Lutz, Wagoner & Company provide our great enterprise. Hugs & Kisses, Da Man.
@Horner:
the engineers and designers are at Warren and Pontiac
RenCen is all overhead & staff – probably better if they’re activities are curbed anyway
With all those unsold cars, they could build parking lot-style ramps to go from one floor to the other, and even do their lateral G tests there!
fisher72 :
October 24th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Chinese automakers probably do not have escalators at all.
No they don’t–that’s something they haven’t figured out how to copy yet. Just kidding. Most factories are only 3-4 floors and modern office buildings have elevators, though garishly trimmed most of the time. A few years ago, I was at the Great Wall and rickshaw service was offered going up (maybe RenCen can get rickshaws imported?) and carnival-style rollercoaster service offered down (we can call it the DJIA Express)
Rf..
You are live-blogging the sinking of the Titanic..one broken dish at a time…
They should keep the down escalators running. That way employees will be creating electricity for the company. :-)
My only question is why hasn’t this been the way the escalators were run always? Do you mean to tell me malls and department stores with more than one level leave their escalators on when closed? That doesn’t make any sense at all.
Some ways to be more green are an inconvenience, so of course not everyone wants to implement them –this is just shutting off the escalators when no one is there. Couldn’t they employ a low power laser sensor at the top of the down and bottom of the up escalators to make them “on demand”? I haven’t ever witnessed an escalator powering up or down, perhaps it takes a long time to do so?
Or people can just use the stairs –lazy bastards. We have two floors in our main building here and no escalator or elevator. Are people at GM seriously that lazy? Oh right.. nvm
kansei, et al
Have you ever been inside the Ren Cen? I dare you to take the stairs inside that place. No need to insult folks who are obviously facing very difficult times ahead.
On a more serious note – this is a signal of how bad the cash flow is at GM – and an ominous one at that.
Not that this isn’t newsworthy, but is just getting depressing.
Even John Portman is feeling GM’s pain now.
An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You would never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience.
-Mitch Hedberg
That’s perfect, benders… LOL
Mitch Hedberg, RIP
My guess this is being done for two reasons;
1: a clumsy way to reinforce the ‘sense of urgency’ to the employees and make them less likely to be shocked when they get hauled into HR for their ‘involuntary separation‘ chat.
2: an attempt to show any potential investors/partners/Henry Paulson that they are ‘trying everything they can‘ to cut costs.
All in all it’s silly…Why you ask? Because companies the size of GM do not receive traditional itemized utility bills like you and I at home…No,no,no… companies that size ‘negotiate’ a price for their utilities annually and usually pay said bill quarterly so turning stuff off and inconveniencing your employees, visitors and customers doesn’t really do doodly-squat.
I worked at a retail store for awhile that was undergoing cost cutting measures like this. They’d turn off the AC at night, turn the heat down in winter and the AC thermostat up higher in summer, put the office lights on a motion sensor, and pulled one lightbulb from each flourescent light fixture in the warehouse. The last straw was keeping some of the lights off out in the store, so that it was about 1/3 darker in the throughout the store. It made the place look like it was going out of business, and the lights in the store got turned back on when customers started complaining.
The company actually had the nerve to put up signs throughout the store saying they were doing these measures to be more “green”, and to save the local utility companies electricity during high demand times in the summer. It was pathetic.
@indi500fan: Thanks for setting me straight. Sending the lawyers, bean counters and other bureaucrats home for the weekend is probably a good thing.
I work in a 39 story high rise building right across from the Statehouse in Columbus, Oh – it is home to all the big dollar lobbying and legal firms, and the biggest developers, accounting firms, etc. in town.
The escalators have always been shut off at 7 pm, and back on at 6 am. Worse than that, on weekends all elevators but one in each bank are shut off as well.
On weekends, they shut off the a/c at noon on Saturday as well.
It has been that way as long as I remember, and none of the industries in the building are what I would call in danger of dying.
Sheer genious. On an increased scale this is going to solve increased health care costs. A brilliant move!
Okay if this is so good, why didn’t they do it years ago? What next, bring a vacuum and clean the office day?
kansei: The idea of a motion activated escalator is being tried by the MTA on several of NYC’s subway lines. It seems to make sense, but the startup, even when ramped up slowly, jerks people and they have had complaints. Of course, nobody has ever experienced this before so a learning curve might change that, or a few big lawsuits might have the controller switch in “bypass” permanently. As a way of saving GM this is pathetic, but from a nationwide energy policy it make sense. The first items to go should be the ones that provide the least value,and escalators running for hours on end with no use is waste in my book. As pointed out, they are just stairs when off. As long as an elevator is nearby for the disabled, why not shut them off? Same for all theses unneeded lights as well. As a lighting professional, I can tell you that people are way more sensitive to lack of uniformity (dim/bright spots) than they are to overall lower, but uniform, levels. That’s why when a store just yanks random lights out of service, the place looks worse.
They have the motion activated escalators in every subway station in Munich. It works perfectly fine. Of course, if it was designed by GM it would probably burst into flames and punch you in the face while riding it.
That’s not all they’re shutting off. My father who works there shared with me this weekend that many people were having their voicemail shut off or reduced to a bare minimum as per their provider contracts.
All this time I thought you were calling GM “RenCen” to mean “Rent-a-Center.” I had no idea it was Renaissance Center. Rent-a-Center is better.
This just in:
One of the escalators in the Renaissance Center jammed today, grinding to a halt. Four General Motors executives were on it when the accident occurred and remained trapped there for three hours until building maintenance personnel were able to get it restarted. While visibly shaken, the executives were uninjured by their harrowing experience. Film at eleven.