Same As It Ever Was

Scott Adams’ “Dilbert” was only funny in a that’s-not-me way.  It seems contrived.  No place could be that bad.

Then I got a job at Barnes & Noble, and Dilbert was all kinds of Mensa hysterical. I thought it was just a comic: I had no idea it was a mirror image of corporate America.

Taking that cue from a world I visited and knowing too well the world of food service, where I’ve hung my hat for many years, idiocy at the top seems likely to be an affliction of all business.

Kitchens have their own levels of hierarchy. The plebes know nothing. Plebes who know they know nothing are slightly ahead of those who don’t know they know nothing.

That’s not important to me

The middle is irrelevant to my plight. The real issue are the staff who’ve been around long enough to have seen a changing of the chef at least once. These staff, front and back of the house, exhibit an interesting affliction which can be called “that’s-how-we’ve-always-done-it”-itis.

Staff afflicted with this condition exhibit proportionally high symptoms as the number of kitchen leadership changes have happened. So, a kitchen with only one change of leadership has a staff only slightly infected where a kitchen with 3 or 4 leadership changes has a staff which uses the Nuremburg defense as the reason for the behavior: that’s how we were taught. That is the metastasized form of the affliction.

What did you say?

THWADI (That’s how we’ve always done it) can be at least treated if not completely eradicated. Treatment requires intervention at the moment of the bone-headed act, say, putting sausage under the cheese of the pizza so it doesn’t burn.

But, why does the pizza burn? Well, we have the fan set to HI and the temperature at 500 degrees. It always burns.

Why not turn the fan to low and lower the temperature?

But, that’s how I was taught. That’s how we’ve always done it.

[Jackie Lawless moment here: Bang your head!]

The contaigon

If the infected cook has even a shred of intelligence-IF-a demonstration as to the merits of doing the smart, thoughtful thing can clear the clouds. But, it is, sadly, a cure for that specific act only. Expecting the now modestly smarter cook to ponder the next THWADI issue and affect a solution is asking too much.

The good news is that with repeated demonstrations, coddling, hand holding-so to speak-and positive reinforcement, that cook can be at least inoculated.

The bad news is such programs fail where tangible, high time preference behaviors cannot be used. Take, for instance, politics.

Pat Paulsen, call your office

I was raised to love Reagan by a Republican father figure who was a realtor even through the Carter years and the 1980s. In our neck of northern Michigan, no one bought nothing. Remember all the white generic packages of everything? We bought generic beer. It was that bad. Yes, the beer and the economy.

I was an R because my step-dad was an R. Nearly everyone follows that path and it is not, on the whole, a bad model. Except both parties suck. Following as you were taught is, in many ways, a good thing.

How do we fix that old car, dad. Like this, son.

Wisdom from the ages is handed down generation to generation and can be quite necessary for those needing to know it.

But politics is a wicked beast. The very same people who willingly helped bring in the crops are as evil as Pol Pot when it’s discovered they voted for the other party.

Idiocy.

The inoculation remains the same: illustrate the errors of the thought process and show a better way.

But, THWADI!

[Jackie Lawless moment]

I’ve broken out of the R and D mess quite on my own, that is, without a medicine man at my side. I had some help via podcasts and they helped bunches. But, I took my own action, a kind of human action, if you will. I read about ways to think of things outside of the THWADI and I discovered there was a lot more I didn’t know than I did know.

Libertarianism is a fickle beast. There are left and right libertarians, thin and thick libertarians, anarchists and paleos.

At the risk of speaking for all, the basics are basic and easy: Don’t hurt people and don’t take their stuff.

It is a stretch to imaging the war-mongering D or R would cotton to that.

What makes libertarianism such a challenge is the very many rabbit holes down which one may travel. Foreign policy, economics, history, politics, and all the tunnels from there.

I cannot tell you what is the right way for you to think. I can tell you about the sausage on a pizza. A) It needs to be on top for the meat to brown, and 2) browned sausage may be about the best thing ever.

You may start your own journey to cure THWADI.

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