Chapter 2

I wrote a poem this morning that I wanted to share with you. Have you ever had a day where no matter what you do someone has to shoot you down?

I am at work today and in our weekly meeting, we are asked to present new ideas that may help the company. I stand up and present my idea for improving interdepartmental communication, because frankly, it stinks. I present a well thought out, cheap, and feasible plan to increase such communication.

Only to be told that it is not a priority right now. I'm sorry, what? Since when is it not important to communicate within a company. Do you think that it is smart that sales is selling things that R&D hasn't even delivered yet? Oh, you tell me that is the job of sales. Oh really? To disappoint our customers by not being able to do what we promised? No one sees my point of view.

No one cares that programming is 2 months behind on the work promised by the sales team. No one cares that the budget was cut and we cannot hire more programmers. No one seems to want to run a company; they only seem to want to put out fires. As head of Operations, I have to deal with the complete lack of communication more than any other department. My team cleans up the messes and handles the brunt force of group stupidity.

After the meeting, I was quite upset with the reaction to my suggestion. I sat down and wrote this poem about dealing with these people. I know; get a different job, its easy to say, but really, why can't I try to fix where I am as opposed to letting some other schmuck come in and have to deal with it. Well, I was proud of myself because I did not let myself get down with the massive failure that was my suggestion, and that is a start.

Here is my poem; it's about close-minded people.

Five Hole Save
By James

Ideas,
like a five story high
pendulum, sway from
axon to dendrite, leaping
the synaptic gap,
looking for a foothold.
Like a solo mountain climber,
hoping to take root and
flourish, like a bonsai on
a jagged mountainside,

but, it just seems that,
something always jumps
in the way and blocks the
synaptic gap, like a
goalie slamming shut
the five hole on an
uncontested breakaway;
and the ideas slam
head on into it and then fly
through the windshield, leaving
an awful mess of what they
once were.

and there must be
something in the air,
or the water, or the
television that is slamming
the door to the minds of
the people I meet...
and I am
sick of
all of
it.

After I wrote this, I sat there at my desk and I wondered how many other people are out there sitting at their desks pissed off because their boss is a jerk off. The thought made me laugh. Can you imagine how much more productive every company would be if they didn't piss off their workers? Bosses trying to be hard asses to get their results end up alienating the people who are really getting the results. Sure, it will work for a while, but sooner or later the staff will not stand for it anymore. Eventually they are going to leave, and it costs a lot more to train new employees, more than it does to keep the ones who already know the job.

Does that make any sense?

I watch my friends jump from job to job, chasing the deals, and the benefits. It has become so unfriendly, and so anti-human. It is as though they have removed the humanity from working and tried to turn it into simply results. The bottom-line dammit! That is what we need to accomplish. Come hell or high water, we are going to make our numbers this quarter. It's a broken record.

The funniest part of all of it is that the managers are collecting these hefty commissions while the workers are killing themselves to get maybe an 8% yearly raise. The bonus that the manager got is more than the cumulative 8% for all of his employees' raises for the year. The CEO is being paid the same amount as the entire production floor, and he is an idiot. It makes you wonder sometimes.

I hear about the decline in American production and I think that it is obvious to any manager working in any plant or company what is really going on. Perhaps it was always about greed. Perhaps people are not able to rise above this pettiness and desire to have more than the next guy. I'm happy to have food on my table and people who love me, for all my faults, but these people do not seem like they will be happy until they own everything, even my soul, and perhaps yours as well.