Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

A part of or a separate activity is the punishment assessment. What is the result of not following the rules?

Years ago, I supervised a person who always asked the question, “And what happens to me if I don’t do this?”

He wasn’t avoiding work; he was assessing rules and regulations to learn if they were real or merely just something else someone else said in an effort to push themselves on others. This is like the mythical TPS Report from the movie Office Space. Turn in your TPS Report or else. Or else what?

What happens to me if I don’t follow this rule? This can be a good question for those involved in ensuring that systems adhere to standards and regulations. If you don’t do this, bad things will happen to your system. Well, maybe not. Maybe our system is such that these guidelines don’t apply. That is our judgement.

Well, in most cases, most problems would have been prevented if folks did A. B. C. etc. Well, we are different. We have never done A. B. C. etc. and don’t have problems.

Besides, will we all be fired? Will we all go to jail? There are other ominous questions. If the answer is, “I won’t like you if you don’t follow my rules,” Well, I can live with that and many folks cannot live with that.