No Mixed Feelings
I've been granted a wish I've been harboring for a while. One of my co-workers is moving on to bigger, better things. This means a great deal to me. For starters, they've been miserable for years, as far as I can tell. Watching someone stick it out when they're miserable is a serious drag on the soul. I was almost reaching the point of grabbing them by the lapels and shouting, "Get the hell off top dead center and RUN, damn you!" (Obscure single-cylinder steam engine reference here.) Luckily they got off TDC without any lapel grabbing or screaming.
I'm glad for a more selfish reason, too. This person has been utter hell to work with. It's funny, I was re-reading one of the earlier sections of The Machinist's Bedside Reader (a wonderful book by Guy Lautard that I still turn to for inspiration). The section entitled "Standards of Workmanship" is well worth a read, even if you are not a machinist and have no interest in becoming one. Some of the information I agree with, some doesn't apply universally. But the gist of that section is that you should always look to improve your own standards. In this way you move from creating functional parts to creating beautiful artwork that functions. I've striven to do just that since the day I first stuck an endmill in a collet. In some ways I've striven to do that in every aspect of my life. I haven't always succeeded, but it's been a goal.
Having a co-worker who has no standards of workmanship and makes no effort to improve what little is there is a major major drag. It is something I cannot understand. Practically everyone else I know does have standards of workmanship, and they do try to improve. The other machinists, systems administrators, programmers, woodworkers, photographers, all of them take pride in their work and know how to compare their work to that of others. It is by doing this that we raise the bar on our own standards. It is amazing to me to see a person who can't be bothered to do good work. Even more, they're not interested in even trying.
Unfortunately this not only impacts their own work, it has a huge impact on everyone around them as well. Lest anyone get the wrong idea about the mathematics of this, I'll elaborate: Having someone on a work crew with no standards and no pride (unless you count self-delusional pride) is worse than being one hand short. If you were one hand short, everyone else could pitch in that extra amount to make up for the lack. But that's not how things work out.
Any work this person does, someone else must re-do. Anything they "fix" because they know what's "right" can mean hours to days of down-time because of system failure. What's worse, the failure always comes as an emergency because they cannot be made to see that anything is wrong with what they've done. So they never tell anyone when they screw something up. They don't even agree that what they did was wrong, even when you point out that the failure was a direct result of their actions.
Far from being one hand short, you wind up with a work crew that's stalled in fire fighting mode, unable to catch up because of all the extra work being dumped on them. Morale plummets, motivation plummets, and things generally go to pot.
So I am very curious to see what hapens next. I also found out we'll have an opportunity to fill the position once it opens. So in addition to having this person leave, we also get the chance to pick and choose and maybe wind up with a replacement who's hard working, motivated, has standards of workmanship, and takes strides to improve them.
We shall see...
-- Pencil
I'm glad for a more selfish reason, too. This person has been utter hell to work with. It's funny, I was re-reading one of the earlier sections of The Machinist's Bedside Reader (a wonderful book by Guy Lautard that I still turn to for inspiration). The section entitled "Standards of Workmanship" is well worth a read, even if you are not a machinist and have no interest in becoming one. Some of the information I agree with, some doesn't apply universally. But the gist of that section is that you should always look to improve your own standards. In this way you move from creating functional parts to creating beautiful artwork that functions. I've striven to do just that since the day I first stuck an endmill in a collet. In some ways I've striven to do that in every aspect of my life. I haven't always succeeded, but it's been a goal.
Having a co-worker who has no standards of workmanship and makes no effort to improve what little is there is a major major drag. It is something I cannot understand. Practically everyone else I know does have standards of workmanship, and they do try to improve. The other machinists, systems administrators, programmers, woodworkers, photographers, all of them take pride in their work and know how to compare their work to that of others. It is by doing this that we raise the bar on our own standards. It is amazing to me to see a person who can't be bothered to do good work. Even more, they're not interested in even trying.
Unfortunately this not only impacts their own work, it has a huge impact on everyone around them as well. Lest anyone get the wrong idea about the mathematics of this, I'll elaborate: Having someone on a work crew with no standards and no pride (unless you count self-delusional pride) is worse than being one hand short. If you were one hand short, everyone else could pitch in that extra amount to make up for the lack. But that's not how things work out.
Any work this person does, someone else must re-do. Anything they "fix" because they know what's "right" can mean hours to days of down-time because of system failure. What's worse, the failure always comes as an emergency because they cannot be made to see that anything is wrong with what they've done. So they never tell anyone when they screw something up. They don't even agree that what they did was wrong, even when you point out that the failure was a direct result of their actions.
Far from being one hand short, you wind up with a work crew that's stalled in fire fighting mode, unable to catch up because of all the extra work being dumped on them. Morale plummets, motivation plummets, and things generally go to pot.
So I am very curious to see what hapens next. I also found out we'll have an opportunity to fill the position once it opens. So in addition to having this person leave, we also get the chance to pick and choose and maybe wind up with a replacement who's hard working, motivated, has standards of workmanship, and takes strides to improve them.
We shall see...
-- Pencil
posted by pencil at 4:26 PM
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