The Slave Driver

I like to work. I'm a workaholic. I'm obsessive compulsive about aspects of it. I'm anal retentive about aspects of it. maybe I'm just an asshole about it in general. This is a part what makes me a good operations manager. The other part is that you have to kind of float above the operations and see the data and the nodes of human / data interaction, and see if you can get those nodes to settle. kind of like rearranging the rocks in a river. I have very good zen fishermen ( analysts ) and a lot of river ( data ). I get more data all the time, but I don’t get any more fishermen. I have to make sure that the nets they use are the very best at catching specific kinds of fish, in a specific way that zen fisherpeople are comfortable with working. So when someone hands me an old television instead of a rock, it screws up the whole zen vibe, the fisherpeople get all out of whack, and the fish we're looking for get away and get into our clients fisheries and generally all hell breaks loose.

Normally, I'll accept a brick instead of a rock, because I can probably make it work, and eventually get all the edges rounded off. and normally, I'll just hand the old television back and say that it's not a rock, and therefore kind of a problem and would you guys in development please try harder not to put trash in my river. Lately, though, because I've been very focused on my life off the river, I have been even more diligent on the river. I have not been accepting rocks under a certain size, or that smell funny, or that look somewhat difficult to work with. I'm supposed to do that to some degree anyway, but lately I've been a complete rock Nazi, and it's wearing on the engineering dept. I mean, they're hiding when they see me coming. Not taking my calls. Wont put their Tupperware next to mine. "For a good Time call " in the shell station bathroom. not yet mad enough to key my car, but that's just because we're all adults and they know they've been giving me televisions because televisions are cheap and easy and rocks are not. Ironically enough, my boss, who's in a conning tower watching my rock and zen fisherperson direction, and his boss, who's on a beach somewhere drinking maitais and schmoozing clients, just told me in that meeting that I should inform them of the rejection ratios on my rocks in order to help them understand WTF engineering is doing. In other words, reject what you will, just tell us about it so we can correct it at the quarry, thus saving engineering some face, and they wont have to look so depressed every time I rant about the fact that fish are getting by and we're all going to fucking starve because it's all their fault.

heh. I don’t know where that came from.