It is a pretty safe bet that people wish my business was the sort of thing that made it all better, but it isn’t that sort of thing … or at least not on the surface of things.
Yesterday another worker compared the work we do to assembly line work and I see his point. All the cases we get have specific things that have to be done and it becomes very much an assembly line mentality. We even say the same things over and over again in documents, meetings, every contact in one case is handled the same as in any other.
The droning machine that we are building isn’t a device, but humanity.
It is easy to fall into the idea that the world is a bad place and nothing ever gets better if all you see is bad.
The whole of the world lies, cheats, steals, takes the easy way, they don’t do what that need to do and on an on.
It never gets better and it never ends.
But it does sometimes get better and it does sometimes end but we just don’t see that part of it.
I’m sure that there are studies that burn out of factory works on assembly lines is higher and the front end of assembly than at the back end.
At the front end it is all the same it never slows down it is just do this and do that but what you do doesn’t make the whole but as you move along in the line it gets better and better … the person who does that last task gets to enjoy the satisfaction of making a product every single time it gets done.
Ask that worker, what did you do today I built 5000 widgets or what ever
Ask that first worker the same thing, nothing important, same shit different day, or something along those lines.
But that person did as much as the last person just at a different stage.
We don’t see the good things happen all that often it’s bad all the time 24/7/365 bad news, on top of worse news, covered in garbage.
But things do change Real life Super Hero Guy works with a kid who was part of the bad news a few years ago… that worker who ever it was who dealt with the same kid a few years ago only knows that kid from then, bad things happening for no reason but this kid is doing better there are still bumps but it’s better
Things change and the widgets we build with the same tools don’t turn into the same end product we just don’t see those people again.
We do see the recalls hey this wasn’t done right the last time it needs to be done over which ads to the bleak picture that people are just bad.
One of those assembly companies has ads now building themselves as good guys but how they are doing it is connected the makers of the products they build that get put into other things …for the builders it’s all well did that but they didn’t see the work they did do any real thing just gets shipped away and you make more. These workers get to see the product and product users in the ads
And at first I thought well that’s dumb why wouldn’t you see what you did or understand how it fit into the end product, but largely you don’t always see how your effort is connected to the next step.
I wrote a thing on interconnectedness back some time ago about how some ditch diggers 40 or 50 are as much responsible for my morning coffee as the bean growers and pickers without them the water in my house wouldn’t be there for me to put in the machine that makes the coffee and the those workers and the cup maker and hundreds of people all for a single moment of ah… now that is good coffee.
I’m sure that wasn’t the circuit board workers thought when he put that together for the coffer maker, you know invisible don is really going to enjoy coffee from this machine of 2 to 3 years before the product breaks and he has to buy the next coffee maker I make for him or the ditch diggers thought, or the potter, glazer, electrical and all the other workers.
My point is while it may not be such a nice picture from you point of view, even the Mona Lisa is just a blob of black or brown up close but take a few steps out and you see that each of the brush strokes builds on another and another and stepping back further the picture because clearer and look at it long enough what may initially seem like a melancholy lady is perhaps smiling a little bit, or you can be envious of her because she can see what Leonardo was doing and it is her secret which you can never know.
Taking the steps back or taking the time to see the bigger idea that is the work and there is a happy ending there some where but it might not be in your life time. Just like light that leaves the sun now won’t get here for another eight minutes and light that we see in the stars was sent when the dinosaurs were on the earth
We may not know what mark we make on the world but we all do in some way change the echo of humanity in some way.
Well, that’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow most likely
Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday
Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.
Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.
Ciao,
PS 3 Gamer Tag: invisible don
PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015
No comments:
Post a Comment