The whole
series now resides here. (original summary)Over the following seven issues, another installment appeared on each front page.
I fashioned the series using Jeannie McLendon's Seven A-s, an outline intended to help individuals, families, and groups work through catastrophic change: Awareness, Acceptance, Authorship, Articulation, Application, Activism, and Altruism. (I added in an eighth A, Adventure, later, to explain what I'd learned and where I think I'm going next.)
The series has received overwhelming response, including an upcoming mention in Laura Rowley's Yahoo! Finance Column. This column receives 42 million unique hits per week.
When I say the series has received overwhelming response, I do not mean 'overwhelmingly positive response,' but simply overwhelming. Bi-polar overwhelming, very positive along with some excruciatingly negative.
Musta worked.
I could ruin your experience of simply reading the columns by explaining them, but I guess I won't (this time)! Instead, I'll just list 'em in order and wait for your contribution to the pile of bi-polar feedback.
Part two,
Acceptance: The Panhandler’s Paradox, where I bum for change
in Vienna and end up changing myself.
Part three, Authorship: My Own Self-Help Book, where I learn enough
to be cynical but choose not to become cynical.
Part four, Articulation: Finding My Voice Again, where I channel my
tough-skinned, tight-lipped ancestors.
Part five, Application: Working Anyway, where the cost of idleness
outweighs the price of work.
Part six, Activism: Can You Hear Me Now?, where I explain how my
business managed to make over four billion dollars more than
General Motors.
Part seven, Altruism: Greater Gifts, (Amy likes this one best),
where I start chipping my new self from solid stone.
And the final installment, Adventure: Neighborly Naked, where I
rediscover the transformative power of tighty whiteys.
I will comment further on the experience in a later post.
One of my first survival jobs found me working day shift in what I called The Asparagus Factory. I suppose this was a perfectly normal industrial venue, but aside from experience watching Industry On Parade, a TV program that showed conveyor belts and assembly lines in action, I'd never actually set foot inside a factory.
The first context marker I noticed? NOISE! I was issued a pair of ear plugs along with my hair net and green hard hat, but even so, stepping into that machinery-filled warehouse blew the breath out of me. Conveyor belts whining, lift truck motors mumbling, a hundred poorly synchronized electric motors squealing, the place was simply deafening.
Of course, working in such turmoil just has to be unsettling. Imagine what it must do to productivity, with mechanical arrhythmia not so subtly influencing every action. So, the thoughtful folks at the Bird's Eye Division of General Foods had installed speakers everywhere, from which blared at decibels above the overwhelming mechanical noise, ... wait for it ... John Phillip Sousa marches! Yes, the Stars and Freaking Stripes Forever! Really ... forever!
I was the lead hand dancer on the sorting line. The basic job of the sorters involved arranging freshly blanched and trimmed asparagus into little paperboard boxes, which would then be sent on for flavoring and flash freezing. Sounds simple. The asparagus was loaded steaming from the blancher onto the conveyor a floor above the sorting line, from huge bins, by guys in blue hard hats. Big Mean Guys.
The BMGs mostly hung around smoking and joking outside the Authorized Parties Only door, returning at their seeming leisure to buzz around in their lift trucks and complicate my life.
As lead hand dancer, I tried (and usually failed) to pre-arrange the stalks to ease the down-line sorting. I was very, very good at this, but never quite good enough because the BMGs reveled in dumping multiple bins, throwing in everything from steamed bits of wood to blanched snakes and rodents. So I would receive, down the long inexorable line, Mount Everest-sized clogs of carelessly braided veg while the BMGs smirked and shuffled off to smoke.
The supervisors, middle-aged drill sergeant females with 30+ years experience in this Hell, marched around keeping cadence, barking "Get those white butts! Get those white butts!" as reminder to sort the tough stalks into the cull line.
And so, from this month or so of experience came for me the first hint of a universal truth about work. There are always Big Mean Guys. It behooves ya to keep at least one eye on them. Keep an eye on the BIG mean guys.
Since, I have experienced nothing to persuade me that the BIG mean guys are not always lurking. Whether in the form of the ne'er do well relative of the owner or the veteran ideologue, BMGs complicate everyone elses' existence. They will not be eliminated from even the most carefully crafted process.
Most unsettling have been the times when I've caught myself in the BMG role. I admit that I've pulled rank and inflicted unnecessary complications. We probably all have. I carry the question about how much I might have contributed to the existence of the BMGs. They were of a class, the blue hard hats, that rendered me, a mere green hat, speechless. I might have stepped up to their sniggering circle and conspired with them to make my life easier, but chose to seethe as victim instead.
I'm learning to keep one eye on the BIG mean guys, and the other eye on my own response to their presence. I know I won't always find the foolhardiness to comment on the curiosities, but I sometimes remember that I could.
Oh, and GET THOSE WHITE BUTTS!!!!!!!
So far, I've noted that One Does Not Drive Results, gotten myself into some trouble claiming that The Gods Are Always In Charge (controversy surrounding my use of the divine capital Gods), reminded myself that There Are No Marginal Players, reflected that No One Is Apathetic Except When Pursuing Someone Else's Goals, and finally, that Relationships Trump Everything.
Today's installment is about Telling Compelling Stories.
One of my more exciting survival jobs back when I was a songwriter had little on the surface of it to do with writing songs. Early shift pot washer in the steaming basement of a world class restaurant, my job entailed cleaning up after sloppy chefs from the bottom of the intricate social pecking order. Probably no better place than the bottom to see what's really going on up top.
I declared myself The Pot Wizard, and wizard I most certainly was. I thanked people for dumping fresh messes beside my steaming sinks. I delighted in the appreciations I received when a chef found his favorite pot perfectly cleaned. I enthusiastically helped the freight guy when deliveries overwhelmed him, shot endless breeze with Andelino, the Filipino salad chef, and became the sweetheart of the wait staff because I was never too busy to help.
But mostly, the job involved telling compelling stories. Reframing the mess into more compelling forms. Transforming shit into Shine-ola. Fantasy endlessly forming compelling reality.
This lesson I strive to remember. Whatever the job, the real job involves telling compelling stories. We are each writing our story. Part mystery. Part cookbook. Part epic novel. Should we forget this fundamental fact, we are left with nothing to interest the grand children, our neighbors, and, curiously, ourselves.
We live in our stories. That we work within them, is not always so obvious. Tell compelling stories to create a compelling work life.
