Alright, so the name isn't as cool as some of the others. Sure, I could have been a lot more creative, but that takes time, and I'm sure I could be doing something much more important. Either way, I have something else to rant about today.
My daughter and I have become avid watchers of a television show where two guys travel to some remote jungle and find a tribe of native people and then spend months living with them learning they're ways and living as one of them. It's fascinating. How they live, they're culture, traditions etc. etc etc. I'm literally amazed each and every week how these people live. It's like going back in time thousands of years. Weapons made from bamboo, no electricity, no running water or plumbing. No conveniences of the modern world what so ever. While it's not the life that I would choose, there is something incredibly attractive and fascinating about it all.
Why? Could it be the remote pristine jungles and locations that these people live in or maybe the simplicity of it all. When you look back at world history. Humans have had the ability and capacity for thousands of years to build and construct amazing things. The Acropolis in Ancient Greece was built in 447 B.C., the Pyramids in Egypt were not only built 2500 years B.C. (4500 years ago), they were done with AMAZING mathematical and astrological accuracy. Yet even today, there are humans on this planet that live in absolute exclusion from any form of technology or advancement of any kind. Living the most basic form of life humans can have. And yet, completely happy with everything they have. One of the men staying with this tribe even said that living there with them was complete paradise. So this brings me to my next question....
With all that we have today, and all of our modern conveniences has any of it made our lives better? Does having that cell phone make us any happier? The cars? Airplanes? Computers? Has any of the things we have in our modern lives made us any happier? I think modern plumbing is the only thing I'm really grateful for, but when I think about how this tribe exists, being happy and content with absolutely nothing I can't help but think that we are actually more miserable people for having it.
What do you think?
Monday, March 2, 2009
Trying to cheapen me.
I'm tired of talking about me. Since we all know there are no changes, lets change the subject.
Today is the first working day of the month of March. For me, being a production supervisor, I take things month by month. I look at my production crews work load, make sure it's level and that I'm staffed adequately. I also make sure that they have everything they need from our other departments and our vendors to insure that everything will go out on time. Our goal is to have 100% on time delivery every month. Now this sounds like it should be easy enough to achieve, but believe me, in the 3 years that I've been with this company, I've only achieved 100% on time once. And that was for January of 2009. It was such an accomplishment that the company bought pizza for the entire shop. They even upped the ante and said that if we could do it again we'd earn pizza and wings! Needless to say, that was enough motivation for my crew to do everything possible to ensure we did it again.
Thursday February 26th comes around. It's our last production day of the month. So far at this point, we are still 100% on time. All of my crews informed me that everything was good for that day, so I went with that. I head off to my daily 9am meeting to brag that we will be receiving our pizza and wings because there is nothing that will be holding us back from our second consecutive month of perfection. WOOhooo!!!
By 2pm, my mood had changed. I found an order from a customer that was never confirmed by our customer service department and therefor never put into production. This was going to kill us. On the last day, in the last minute, we were shot down. Unable to produce the missing order in time, we were going to go from 100% to 99.5 for the month and lose out on our pizza and wings. The crew was heartbroken. They'd worked so hard to make it happen and were all so disappointed. I felt terrible ( though proud that these people were actually able to work as a team). We didn't make it, we'll just have to try again harder next month. Or so I thought.
The General manager had other ideas. He informed me today that he was still going to buy pizza for our effort. This left me in bit of a quandary. All of the employees wanted pizza yet we didn't achieve our goal, and we were being rewarded anyway. This just wasn't going to work. I told the GM that I wasn't going to accept his pizza. I don't want pity pizza. I want to be rewared for accomplishing what we set out to do. When we meet our objectives, we'll accept the reward. The GM of course tried to push for the pizza which I just couldn't accept. Needless to say, I'm not the most popular guy in the shop today. And of course all of my employees know that I turned down they're pizza. Hopefully I can teach them that it's more important to have morals, than pizza.
Today is the first working day of the month of March. For me, being a production supervisor, I take things month by month. I look at my production crews work load, make sure it's level and that I'm staffed adequately. I also make sure that they have everything they need from our other departments and our vendors to insure that everything will go out on time. Our goal is to have 100% on time delivery every month. Now this sounds like it should be easy enough to achieve, but believe me, in the 3 years that I've been with this company, I've only achieved 100% on time once. And that was for January of 2009. It was such an accomplishment that the company bought pizza for the entire shop. They even upped the ante and said that if we could do it again we'd earn pizza and wings! Needless to say, that was enough motivation for my crew to do everything possible to ensure we did it again.
Thursday February 26th comes around. It's our last production day of the month. So far at this point, we are still 100% on time. All of my crews informed me that everything was good for that day, so I went with that. I head off to my daily 9am meeting to brag that we will be receiving our pizza and wings because there is nothing that will be holding us back from our second consecutive month of perfection. WOOhooo!!!
By 2pm, my mood had changed. I found an order from a customer that was never confirmed by our customer service department and therefor never put into production. This was going to kill us. On the last day, in the last minute, we were shot down. Unable to produce the missing order in time, we were going to go from 100% to 99.5 for the month and lose out on our pizza and wings. The crew was heartbroken. They'd worked so hard to make it happen and were all so disappointed. I felt terrible ( though proud that these people were actually able to work as a team). We didn't make it, we'll just have to try again harder next month. Or so I thought.
The General manager had other ideas. He informed me today that he was still going to buy pizza for our effort. This left me in bit of a quandary. All of the employees wanted pizza yet we didn't achieve our goal, and we were being rewarded anyway. This just wasn't going to work. I told the GM that I wasn't going to accept his pizza. I don't want pity pizza. I want to be rewared for accomplishing what we set out to do. When we meet our objectives, we'll accept the reward. The GM of course tried to push for the pizza which I just couldn't accept. Needless to say, I'm not the most popular guy in the shop today. And of course all of my employees know that I turned down they're pizza. Hopefully I can teach them that it's more important to have morals, than pizza.
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