pete wrote:
>
> On Tue, 3 Sep 2002, Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >When I was in my teens and a high-school dropout, I spent a year working
> >in a large west-coast sawmill that supplied wood to a pulp and paper
> >mill. The whole purpose of a sawmill is to take large logs and reduce
> >and reshape them to something that could serve a purpose such as
> >construction or, in the case of my sawmill, making paper. If you were
> >operating a machine - e.g. a "jumpsaw" - involved in this process, there
> >was no way you could leave it without causing total chaos.
[snip]
There are some jobs which, at our present level of technological
advance, truly *are* time-dependent. I think EMS workers
are a prime example.
******However****
(1) We have lots of unnecessary emergencies in our system,
and lots of work that is time-dependent due to the
treason of the management (and/or the unwillingness to rein in The
Invisible Hand). Everyone on this list should know and
become nauseous and aggressive at hearing the word:
Charrette
(2) When jobs really are irremediably time-dependent,
they can still be made humanly decent and even genteel. Let me
give an example: When I worked for Maryland National Bank (which did so
much to so many people...), I was, as a systems programmer, occasionally
required to either work 3rd shift or "be on call". The bank had,
somewhere in the building, an "executive guest suite". The
systems programmer who was on call could have been given use of
that facility. I was ca. 30 years old then. "You" had
better believe that if today I was in that position, I would
have made this proposal to "management". I blame my
childrearing for this failure (including a "summa cum lande", but not
"summa cum connections" graduation from Yale College --
remember that place called school whereat George W Bush
cocained?). Never again.
Let whoever is enamoured of heroes try to make their
conditions of life less "heroic". (If anyone needs it, I
can quote the ending of Elias Canetti's _The Conscience of
Words_ again...).
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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