Working It Out by Charlos Gary for August 03, 2021

Sounds like a good idea. I’ll do it.

Now’s your chance to climb the corporate latter.

You want me to fix the light bulb?

So you don’t think it can change (on its own).

Which part of that is the most important part?

… that you want me to “fix the light bulb”?

… or that you want me to “climb up this unsafe ladder”?

If you don’t do it, you’re “insubordinate”…

Worked for a crumby company for a while, and got to talking with a coworker at lunch… asked him how he’d remained an employee for so long? (He’d been there five years, while hardly anyone else had been there over two years.) He said he found out that he’d been hired because he was small – the owner had a contract where he needed to pull wires through a false ceiling that was over a gymnasium – the owner didn’t want to rent a lift nor pay for protective coverings for the gym floor, so he expected the small guy to climb through the false ceiling pulling the wires along behind him. Of course, that was totally unsafe – especially that the fall would be at least twenty feet…

When the small guy refused, the owner fired him. Small guy filed a complaint with the State Labor Board, and the result was the owner had to do the job safely and also had to rehire small guy… now the owner is afraid to fire him…

If he can “fix” a light bulb, he’s a better man than I am, Gunga Din.