Jerry's Marginalia — Mr. Jerry's Unsolicited Advice
There is something beautiful about spending your entire working life being told not to waste time, only to eventually discover that a corporation can waste two weeks of yours without so much as breaking stride.
Employees call that downtime.
Management calls it pending.
Payroll calls it nothing at all.
I call it B U L L S H I T.
The lesson, children, is simple:
Learn the procedure.
Follow the procedure.
Own your mistakes.
Be predictable.
Be reliable.
Be boring.
And when the workplace inevitably produces a situation not covered by the poster hanging in the break room, remember the most important piece of Lean Manufacturing wisdom they somehow forgot to laminate:
You cannot optimize somebody else's nonsense.
Sometimes the machine is broken.
Sometimes the process is broken.
And sometimes you are standing there with a clipboard, three supervisors, seventeen policies, and absolutely no fucking idea which one of them is currently considered correct.
At that point?
Document what happened.
Own whatever belongs to you.
Leave the rest on the factory floor.
Because accountability without reciprocity isn't accountability.
It's just another fucking acronym waiting to happen.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a tree to climb.
Jerry. Tree. Rifle.
— Jerry “The Ankle-Biter” Silverhand
- Senior Vice President of Peppercorn Purina & Hostile Margin Notes