Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

I write an oft-repeated tale of factory with two occupants and one control mechanism.

There are these urban myths. People tell a story over and over. It sounds pretty good, plausible, it could happen. Then I hear someone else in a completely different time and place tell the same story about a slighty different situation. And that is the urban myth.

Here is one:

There is this factory, a big, super-efficient humming along all day 24/7 365 factory. There are two occupants in the factory: a man and a dog. There is one control mechanism in the factory: a big red button. If you press the big red button, the factory stops humming along. It will take days to restart the factory. The man has one purpose: feed the dog. The dog has one purpose: prevent the man from pressing the big red button.

I never said the story was cute or funny, so if you didn’t grin or anything that is okay.

As with most urban myths, there are a few things we can learn from this one. Here are a few:

It is simple to stop a group of people that is working well. Just one well-meaning person arrives and does something, like pressing a big red button, and the group plunges into chaos.

It is simple to prevent someone from disrupting a group of people that is working well.

We usually don’t like to put a protection person between a group of people that is working well and anyone who might arrive and disrupt them.

I could continue with lessons, but three is enough for one day.