Boy oh boy. If rigid corporate CEOs could see a chapter like this one. This is a fine example of other things I've argued for years, primarily the idea that the best method is always in the realm of compromise--often the very center of the two extremes--not on the edges where one idea is "evil" and the other "good."
While it might be a stretch to suggest these rules apply across the board to everything--as this chapter seems to imply--the ideas it presents and the comparisons it makes conjure up a ton of little nuggets of info I've learned over the years, especially in the examples it presents. For instance, the idea of the "edge of chaos" is actually a primary principle in the view of evolution. The idea is that you can track which species became extinct and which didn't by how they adapted. If they adapted too little, remaining rigid in their ways, they died off. If they adapted too easily or too often, slipping into the realm of "chaos," they died off as well. It was the species that managed to live on the edge of chaos that managed to continue surviving for the longest period of time. (NOTE: This might not be an aspect of the theory of evolution per se. It is more in line with chaos theory applied to evolution.) The comparison between solids, liquids, and gases is almost perfect. Gases are too chaotic, solids are too rigid, but liquids are just the right mixture of both (though to be fair, the victims of Hurricane Katrina might have some more harsh words for liquid than the rest of us. BA DUM TISH).
It is also true that Carbon makes up the vast majority of living things, and the probable cause for this is its versatility in combining various elements. In a way, this is a reflection of the adjacent possible, as most innovation consists of combining old things in new ways. How appropriate then that the atom capable of the greatest number of combinations with the lowest energy input is the source of life and arguably the source of innovation itself. The more old things you can combine into a single entity, generally the more innovative the result will be.
Reading this chapter makes me think of the only job I've ever held and the experiences I had in it. When I was working as a courtesy clerk at Albertsons, I started off in what felt more like a liqiud network, but gradually it became more solid until I couldn't take it anymore and quit. To be fair, I'm far from what you'd call "adaptable," so in a sense, I was just as "solid" as the corporate rules were, but I think most people would agree with me that a company like Albertsons runs itself very rigidly. Part of the reason I got to have a more "liquid" setup was because I was the closer. I had a long list of tasks that had to be completed, and there were generally rules for doing them, but nobody was really looking over my shoulder giving me orders. I was kind of free to try changing the order I did things, the ways I did them, and what I chose to prioritize. About 2/3 of the stuff I did worked, and the other third got lukewarm reactions and sometimes ridicule. Most of the time, there were genuinely good reasons to ridicule my methods, and that was frustrating. However, if I do say so myself, I think I was able to find some interesting ways to do my job that most others wouldn't have.
For example, there was often a problem dealing with go backs. They were all put in a cart for me to push around the store so I could reshelve them. However, I would sometimes come back and find that another cart of go backs had shown up. This bothered me for two reasons: 1) it made me feel like I had accomplished nothing when I brought back my cart empty, and 2) it meant that the cashiers had to run to the cart bay and get a new one to put go backs in whenever I took the original one. So I began carrying the go backs by hand, which was not as efficient as the cart might have been, but prevented my job from burdening the cashiers. Unfortunately, this solution was pretty much the opposite of practical, and I got in trouble for it a lot. Then a solution was proposed to me: go get a new cart from the bay before I start doing go backs and effectively replace the one I take. This seemed like a great compromise. This method gave way to another method when I realized that most of the time the new go back care was just getting snatched up by people who needed it: I started putting the go backs into a smaller handheld basket to carry around.
Other aspects of my job changed in a similar fashion, though none of them were what I would call "appreciated" by my employer, and I'm pretty sure that's because it was a more solid than fluid environment. I tried doing various jobs at different times, starting them sooner or sometimes later. I came up with shortcuts that I thought could make things easier, though to be fair some of these weren't exactly appropriate for a customer oriented grocery store like Albertsons. (I'd often find places to temporarily store things instead of putting them away because I would get called away quite often and it just wasn't efficient--or sometimes practical, in my opinion--to go out of my way to put things away. Too often, when I took the longer route, I'd end up getting called away again and have to waste more time putting away something I just spent a few minutes getting out for the third time.) In fact, I actually came up with some ideas that I thought would be useful and original, and none of them were adopted for one reason or another.
The most significant example I can think of is that the bottle area--like it is at most stores--was kind of frustrating to deal with because the machines were so crappy. Half the time they wouldn't take bottles from products we carried and we had to hand count them. Since Albertsons was strict about only giving money for products that we carried in the store, there would be an awful lot of time spent trying to figure out whether we carried something or not. So I suggested to the store manager that he put together a large poster listing everything we carried and posted it in the bottle area. This would make it easier for both the customer and the courtesy clerk to figure out what we could accept and couldn't. I was told this was a good idea, but what we carried changed so much that it wouldn't adequately reflect what we could accept anyway. In retrospect, this seems like a real cheap excuse, as the same argument could be made in favor of making a poster like that, but apparently the inadequacy of the bottle machines was considered a better measure than anything we could create to make the job easier.
Eventually, because of my own stubborness and the stubborness of the basic corporate structure of Albertsons, I wasn't able to continue working there anymore. (That's when I went back to college, where I could put my talents to more creative use. Coincidence? :) ) They wanted me to just do what I was told, and I couldn't. I had to be able to think bigger and work more freely. Not that there's no downside to this; honestly, it can be just as frustrating as living under rigid rules. But it makes better use of my ideas and talents. In the long run, I believe it will pay off better to have a more free-thinking job than the rigid one I held for three and a half years.
I am loving this textbook Mr. Hedges. It almost saddens me that we have no new reading over this weekend. (Almost. I have a lot of catching up to do in my other classes.) I just hope that I can find ways to be innovative enough with this project that it turns out okay. Because doing things differently is very important to me. I don't like to be derivative at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment