Shop Truths, Phrases, Tales; and Outright Lies

[C-Bag]

I circle this thread like a cat on a hot tin roof. These stories are reflections of my PTSD ( being exposed to bad management, horrible unsafe and dangerous conditions ) of my history of working. It points directly why I tended towards one man shops(just me and the boss) and was never happy or able to hang with family businesses, dealerships and working for large corporations. The more people involved (especially middle management/lead men/family members ) the more the setup to not really do the job at hand and be thwarted at every turn.

These seem to be universal experiences but why oh why does it seem to also be the universal notion that we need more businessmen in leadership positions throughout every level of our lives?

I go through periods where I pay attention and feel like the guy strapped to the couch with his eyes clamped open with the chaos and sheer stupidity of the human condition pouring in, unable to fix or do anything about it. I have to kick the portal closed ,pick myself up off the floor and retreat into doing and making where I can bring creativity to bear and actually solve a problem. The news diet and accomplishing creatively is the only thing that gets my feet on the ground again and focused on the present. And the realization the most soul sucking part for me of my time in the wage slave trenches was being forced to do substandard work because of time limits and or cost.

Everybody knows the "why is there always time to do it over, but never to do it right the first time?" We tried to put that up on the walls with other stupid stuff management put up but it somehow always disappeared.

The truth is when I look back very few of my bosses were creative, that's what I was there for. But having not that great of self esteem I let them nit pick me and actually feel bad about it. Even though when they wanted something done perfect, I was the guy they went to. But I wasn't able to see that at the time, only the little niggling doubts they planted with criticism.

One of the many benefits of working at home is I listen to audio books as I go about more menial tasks. Everything from sci-fi to self help, history, biographies and everything in between. Keeps the old noggin' engaged while my hands are on auto pilot. One of my more interesting one recently was A First Rate Madness: Uncovering The Link Between Leadership and Mental Illness".

Contrary to what you might think, this is about great generals and presidents, NOT guys like Who, d1,d2 and my old nemeses. It shows how there are all shades of supposed mental illness and how the creative mind is more prone to varying kinds and levels of what if taken to extreme seen as mental illness. But in mild forms of like OCD, etc can make somebody compulsively meticulous or be able to come up with solutions a "normal" person could never even comprehend. Because their minds are more agile, less one track, where a normal person( a term called a homoclite) does not have the capacity for. While the book is fascinating to me showing some of the underlying problems the great figures like Sherman, Grant, Ghandi, FDR, JFK etc, went through with their physical and mental illnesses, the equally enlightening is the dissection of the homoclite mind. I'll be honest it reveals more about my old bosses as they were mostly homoclite.

In a nutshell, the homoclite is THE best when in normal stable times where his opposite is not. But under crisis the opposite is true. The homoclite in a crisis situation tends to be the proverbial deer in the headlights, more likely to double down than to find a creative solution. Sound familiar? jes sayin'