National Grid President Catching Flack for Taking Vacation as Irene Hit Massachusetts

Boston Herald - As Hurricane Irene thundered toward the East Coast last Thursday, the president of National Grid in Massachusetts was jetting off to Hawaii, where she stayed for four days even as the utility’s workers were ordered to cancel their vacations, a move that has prompted union jibes about hypocrisy. Company president Marcy Reed didn’t return to the storm-battered state until Tuesday afternoon. Yesterday, she insisted her tropical island getaway to celebrate her 25th wedding anniversary had nothing to do with the tens of thousands of customers who still remain in the dark — down from a storm high of half a million households that were left without power. “The fact that I was out of the state for five days had nothing to do with our storm restoration practices,” Reed told the Herald last night.

I don't really understand this, do people really expect Marcy Reed, President of National Grid, to be climbing up telephone polls during the middle of a hurricane? She's the president, she doesn't do that shit.  Her job is to delegate, and delegate she did. It's not like she's in the office every day overseeing some magical button that'll turn your power on and off, you guys know that.

People understand the role of executives, right? Get paid a shit ton of money, don't get your hands dirty, make tough decisions about who to lay off and who not to, ship a certain amount of your company's work to India every 6 months or so, and deny any direct involvement or knowledge for anything that goes wrong with your company even though you're supposedly the head. As long as Marcy is keeping up with those tasks then I'd say she's doing her job rather effectively.

I mean I didn't see President Obama or Gov. Patrick riding out Hurricane Irene on the Vineyard despite both being there during the week before hand, they weren't stocking up on water and hotdogs at Stop & Shop, and they certainly weren't in the car next to me waiting in the stand by line for hours at the Steamship Authority.  No, they both took flights off the Island the night before, they wanted to get the hell out of there, and no one gave them shit for running away.  If Marcy Reed had done anything else but get away for the week while Irene swept through town she would have faced the ridicule and mockery of her peer executives everywhere she went, would have been looked at like a commoner, or worse, an entry level employee.