There had been a lot of change going on where Sam worked. A few months ago he had come home grumbling and complaining that the efficiency expert had been in town and implemented a whole lot of new rules. These rules were meant to tighten up timelines of productivity so that the bottom line would look a little better.
Ah, Charles Eugene Bedaux lives on... sort of...
In Mt. Auburn Cemetery, inspired by Paris' Pere Lachaise Cemetery, he rests now. The Egyptian Revival Gateway, on Elm Avenue, has Ecclesiastes 12:7 inscribed on it and the irony is that... the preceding verses of Ecclesiastes are all about... "In old age, your body no longer serves you so well.
Muscles slacken, grip weakens, joints stiffen.
The shades are pulled down on the world.
You can't come and go at will. Things grind to a halt.
The hum of the household fades away.
You are wakened now by bird-song.
Hikes to the mountains are a thing of the past.
Even a stroll down the road has its terrors.
Your hair turns apple-blossom white,
Adorning a fragile and impotent matchstick body. (The Message)
I have a suspicion that the scientific management, also called Taylorism probably didn't account for the above problems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management- 'Early decades: making jobs unpleasant...'
Reading the outcome of the experiment in Watertown... the Senate banned these methods until a more reasonable alternative was sent back into the factories to test again.
It is now 2012 and we are still dealing with efficiency experts and their methods... and yes, it is still making employees hostile to management... just ask Sam.
I suppose it would be ever so much more helpful if the ones making the scientific rules were first to try to adhere to them... be the test pilots, so to speak.
In a little experiment of my own, I try to make things, instead of just buying them and I have found that it opens up a brand new or is that new brand of empiricism. The experience becomes rationalism as I work. Idealism fades away. Historicism becomes personal.
Your experience is the evidence.
Working on making the flowers (above), I found I had to find the best way to make them... faster... if I was to try to sell them and earn a meager living... which I have yet to experiment with.
The first one took half an hour to make. At minimum wage (in Canada), I would have to ask $6 for one flower (just wages and material), without tabulating overhead costs such as a 'studio' and the cost of running it, and the cost of shipping, advertising, et cetera, etc., etc.
Any takers?
...or should I just work faster?
Check out the 'I love Lucy' show entitled 'Efficiency Expert!'
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