Michael R. Barrick

I remember reading some time ago (sorry, I don't remember the source) that the average office worker only actually works four hours a day and spends the other half of their time fooling around, looking busy, and generally fucking the dog. Based on my experiences in the pulp mill I used to think that was because office workers were lazy in the same sort of way as blue collar workers. But that isn't that case. It's about motivation. There is just no good reason to run around here and get a million things done. Nothing happens quickly so why act quickly. This is mind numbing in a very real sense of the word. I can see why employees of governments and large companies turn into such plodding idiots... they end up dragged down by the rest. It's the same basic problem that affect Marxism in practice. Sure "From each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs" sounds like a good idea, but where is the incentive to be one of the fountainheads when the schleps take it all away? Sure, you can work out of love for the work, but what if the work is joyless? What if the procedures, the delays, the red tape and nonsense strip all the fun out of it? Then what reason to do anything at all execept stay out of trouble by saying something that takes five minutes will take three hours just so you can avoid jumping through more hoops. I've just discovered today that none of the stuff I have worked on is going to see the light of day until July 20th. That means it's now two weeks until I get any useful monetary reward and two months before anything I've done sees the light of day. How motivating is that? Not very, lemmie tell ya...