I’m working on my résumé, trying to see how I can collapse my broad experience into a tasty nutshell for employers in this current competitive market. Doing so made me nostalgic for some of the jobs I have had in my distant past. Although I prefer constructing a big picture view, I have also had my share of ‘in the trenches’ work and have never been shy at getting my hands dirty when needed. One of the more physically demanding jobs I have had was when I was still in my early twenties. It was also a job where I worked for a boss who was perhaps one of the most honest men I have ever met.
For eighteen months I worked at the Best Farms Drive-Thru Feed Barn in Anderson, Indiana. Picture a warehouse structure, open at both ends. Skids of animal feed and water softener salt line either side of the barn. Vehicles drive in. We load the vehicles up with the required number of fifty pound bags of animal feed (or 80 pound bags of water softener salt). We take their money, make change, and they drive out. All day long. All year long. Hot in the summer. Freezing in the winter. You have not truly driven a fork truck until you’ve had to drive one up an ice-covered outdoor ramp.
We worked as a team. Boys being boys, we would try to outdo one another: I’ll take two bags of feed to the truck at one time; Well, then, I’ll take three bags; Well, then, I’ll... And somehow we made it through many a back-breaking day. We also sold hay and straw and would go with Gene Best out to his farm to load bales of both to bring back to the store. Hefting those dense SOBs is sure to give any city boy new found respect for farmer strength.
But the true strength of the Bests was their integrity. They loved their business and worked hard at it. They would go not only that extra mile, but add another one on top. They always kept a narrow profit margin, wanting the business to succeed but also wanting to ensure they were being fair to the customer. I looked them up to see how this “since 1989” Mom and Pop business was doing and discovered, much to my great sadness, they had been foreclosed on in 2008. Another victim of the current economic state.
In this current state of AIG bailouts and CEOs getting rewarded for bleeding funds from their companies, perhaps the Bests were simply too honest for their own good. Capitalism should not be a synonym for corruption, yet I see less and less entities taking more and more. I worry about not only finding a job, but finding a job with a company that is aware of its interdependence and wants to provide value not only to its customers but to its community at large. The bottom line is important, but how do we watch it without becoming blind?
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Philosophical Consideration of a Cat’s Mouth
Our cat, Christopher, sometimes bites. He bites when he is mad, when is playing, and when he is happy. Often there is no warning, much to my husband’s chagrin. Christopher will be purring contentedly on my husband’s lap, then suddenly chomp down on the hand that is petting him. Not done with malice, but it hurts regardless, leading to all kinds of familial commotion.
Sometimes, of course, I instigate such things. I mess with him, offering my own hand as a tempting target, then pulling it away so his mouth closes on empty air. He enjoys playing this game for a while, but then usually ends up biting a conciliatory object, which is more often than not a body part of my poor caught-in-the-crossfire husband.
Christopher recently placed a paw on my arm, wanting my attention. I was mulling over Merleau-Ponty and other progressive thinkers I read in the philosophy of mind course I took last spring. Our body is more than an instrument our mind uses to accomplish its goals. For the creation of the goals themselves come out of the way the body is constructed. We reach out into the world as our bodies allow. Towards such ends, our fingers seem key, as we not only grasp objects, but our individual digits differentiate so many things at once. At our fingertips is more than a trite phrase, but rather an expression of accessing the world and making it intelligible.
A cat’s paw, though it has five digits, doesn’t allow for human-like dexterity. It can swat things and flex and claw, but it doesn’t seem to allow for complex input by simply touching. It doesn’t glide its paw over objects to assess them. Christopher doesn’t seem to be aware of his paw beyond its either touching something or not. His mouth on the other hand…
His mouth seems to be one of his most important gateways to the world. Where we test things by touching them with our fingers, he bites them. Like with the touches of our fingers, his bites surely have a variety of meanings that the contact imparts to him. Such thoughts do not quell the pain caused by a mouth full of sharp feline teeth. But still, I can’t help but think about his expressive body reaching out into the universe and the wondrous, if painful, response of my own expressive body meeting him halfway.
Sometimes, of course, I instigate such things. I mess with him, offering my own hand as a tempting target, then pulling it away so his mouth closes on empty air. He enjoys playing this game for a while, but then usually ends up biting a conciliatory object, which is more often than not a body part of my poor caught-in-the-crossfire husband.
Christopher recently placed a paw on my arm, wanting my attention. I was mulling over Merleau-Ponty and other progressive thinkers I read in the philosophy of mind course I took last spring. Our body is more than an instrument our mind uses to accomplish its goals. For the creation of the goals themselves come out of the way the body is constructed. We reach out into the world as our bodies allow. Towards such ends, our fingers seem key, as we not only grasp objects, but our individual digits differentiate so many things at once. At our fingertips is more than a trite phrase, but rather an expression of accessing the world and making it intelligible.
A cat’s paw, though it has five digits, doesn’t allow for human-like dexterity. It can swat things and flex and claw, but it doesn’t seem to allow for complex input by simply touching. It doesn’t glide its paw over objects to assess them. Christopher doesn’t seem to be aware of his paw beyond its either touching something or not. His mouth on the other hand…
His mouth seems to be one of his most important gateways to the world. Where we test things by touching them with our fingers, he bites them. Like with the touches of our fingers, his bites surely have a variety of meanings that the contact imparts to him. Such thoughts do not quell the pain caused by a mouth full of sharp feline teeth. But still, I can’t help but think about his expressive body reaching out into the universe and the wondrous, if painful, response of my own expressive body meeting him halfway.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Shingles
Shades of Thomas Nagel, but there is something it is like to have a disease.
Earlier this month, I came down with shingles. It started up innocently enough, with a few splotches of red hanging out near my right knee and another group of bumps where the thigh meets the pelvis. It looked like acne (at my age!) and I planned on scheduling an appointment to see the dermatologist. But within a couple of days, more places started appearing. Rapidly. My husband and I decided that it couldn’t wait for ‘first available space’, so instead I went to the DIDC the next day and had the nurse practitioner check me out. She guessed what it was and confirmed that guess with my doctor. I left with a script for acyclovir (5 times a day, for shingles), doxycycline (twice a day, for infection because of shame-on-me scratching) and 800 mg ibuprofen (every 8 hours for pain). I stopped the progression and the skin is healing…
But I can’t help thinking how disease itself seems to offer both encouragement to physical reductivism, yet also an argument against such views. Indeed, the nurse described it in physical terms as herpes zoster. Apparently when you recover from chicken pox as a child, which I did, the virus doesn’t go away, it just sort of hangs out waiting for an excuse to cause the trouble known as shingles. Obviously, the physical facts are always present in such a manifestation and that is how we treat it. Yet knowing such physical details even at a very fine biological level does nothing towards imparting what having shingles feels like. Indeed, now that I am outside that ‘situated body’ it is hard enough for me to remember what it really felt like. I remember discomfort and itchiness and even limping. The limping is especially interesting because I didn’t realize how much my ‘lived body’ was compensating for this lost affordance until the nurse pointed it out. I did notice the lessening of quick mobility and was vexed at this. But now I tend to remember it in a more abstract, analytical fashion that belies what I ‘know’ I felt.
So we have something that can be described in purely physical terms to generate a treatment. Yet the experience of it appears to transcend that sort of description. Indeed, in a way the experience doesn’t even seem to exist outside the experience. Description of the disease isn’t exhausted by herpes zoster, but rather that is just a correlate to disease with a capital “D”, which is most noticeably marked by pain and the lost of affordances; an alteration of the body’s being in the world. Viewed from that angle, disease seems to exist just as much ‘out there’ as inside of us.
Earlier this month, I came down with shingles. It started up innocently enough, with a few splotches of red hanging out near my right knee and another group of bumps where the thigh meets the pelvis. It looked like acne (at my age!) and I planned on scheduling an appointment to see the dermatologist. But within a couple of days, more places started appearing. Rapidly. My husband and I decided that it couldn’t wait for ‘first available space’, so instead I went to the DIDC the next day and had the nurse practitioner check me out. She guessed what it was and confirmed that guess with my doctor. I left with a script for acyclovir (5 times a day, for shingles), doxycycline (twice a day, for infection because of shame-on-me scratching) and 800 mg ibuprofen (every 8 hours for pain). I stopped the progression and the skin is healing…
But I can’t help thinking how disease itself seems to offer both encouragement to physical reductivism, yet also an argument against such views. Indeed, the nurse described it in physical terms as herpes zoster. Apparently when you recover from chicken pox as a child, which I did, the virus doesn’t go away, it just sort of hangs out waiting for an excuse to cause the trouble known as shingles. Obviously, the physical facts are always present in such a manifestation and that is how we treat it. Yet knowing such physical details even at a very fine biological level does nothing towards imparting what having shingles feels like. Indeed, now that I am outside that ‘situated body’ it is hard enough for me to remember what it really felt like. I remember discomfort and itchiness and even limping. The limping is especially interesting because I didn’t realize how much my ‘lived body’ was compensating for this lost affordance until the nurse pointed it out. I did notice the lessening of quick mobility and was vexed at this. But now I tend to remember it in a more abstract, analytical fashion that belies what I ‘know’ I felt.
So we have something that can be described in purely physical terms to generate a treatment. Yet the experience of it appears to transcend that sort of description. Indeed, in a way the experience doesn’t even seem to exist outside the experience. Description of the disease isn’t exhausted by herpes zoster, but rather that is just a correlate to disease with a capital “D”, which is most noticeably marked by pain and the lost of affordances; an alteration of the body’s being in the world. Viewed from that angle, disease seems to exist just as much ‘out there’ as inside of us.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
WorkFoRcE
Aaron had his headphones on when the world began to end.
He sat in his cubicle working his way through email.
He tried to think of the best response to a request asking him to assist an item forwarded to him by a senior process analyst who had received a request for assistance on an issue brought up to him by a coworker who had received a request from a customer transferred to him by one of the several dozen customer service representatives that answered the one working number of the two toll-free numbers the company listed.
The customer apparently knew someone who had a friend who said her cousin was told by his wife that she had gotten a good deal once on something similar to what the customer wanted, and the deal was much better than what the customer currently was receiving. The customer wanted to know if they could do that.
Aaron found the email address for a staff process analyst and entered it in the To box.
Aaron typed:
Dear Joe,
Not sure about this.
What do you think?
Regards,
Aaron
Outlook automatically populated the space below his name, giving crucial details such as Aaron being a lead process analyst and the company’s slogan:
We Work So You Don’t Have To
Someone had sent an anonymous complaint to the employee suggestion mailbox complaining about the dangling preposition in their slogan, but by the time it got passed along to the branding department, there had been another major reorganization and the branding folks got let go.
The senior management team assumed marketing could take on that role; that there didn’t need to be a separate department for that function. Everyone who worked in marketing assumed it was someone else in marketing who had assumed those duties that branding did. After all, things were still branded, weren’t they?
Sometimes someone would comment that someone should go down to the former branding floor and see if there was anything important that had been left behind. But after some general talk and a meeting scheduled and rescheduled and finally canceled due to a change in job functions, it was more or less decided that someone was probably taking care of it already.
A funny noise came through his speaker that sounded a lot like an intercom. Aaron paused a moment. Some of the streamed electronic audio he listened to was experimental, so he decided the sound must just be part of the feed.
His next message was an updated meeting request to change next Wednesday’s afternoon meeting to Friday morning, unless the software design team needed to have the space for a review session regarding the project underway. In that case it would be rescheduled for next Monday, and a time would be given once the organizational training group had finally decided on a time for their Improving Productivity Seminar.
Aaron accepted.
It sounded like the grounds crew was mowing the yards again. At first he thought it was just more experimental electronics, but paying attention, he realized the noise was external.
Aaron grimaced and turned up the headphone volume.
He continued to answer his e-mail.
And he thought of the cheese and avocado sandwich waiting on him.
His phone rang. With a click of his mouse, he changed the audio from Music to Telephone.
“Constant, Inc. Aaron here… No, I haven’t gotten that report yet. You’ll need to talk to Bill… I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Bill about that. Or maybe Ed. Ed usually knows… Well, yeah, of course, I’ll call you when I find out… Okay, then… Have a great day.”
He clicked the audio back to Music. A meeting reminder popped up reminding him about cake being served in the Indigo conference room to celebrate Amy Gorgoth’s 30 years of service. Aaron took his headphones off and hung them on the side of his cubicle. He got up and took the elevator down to the thirteenth floor where the main conference rooms were. It took him a moment to find the right room, as now the conference rooms were all named after trees. The Spruce room looked like the correct one and had a cake on a table at any rate. There had been something written on it, but most of the slices had been cut and placed on individual plates, making it unclear what the message might have been.
It probably didn’t matter much, though, since Amy had been in Branding and was no longer around anyway. The cake must have been ordered by her assistant who was no longer around either.
Aaron took a plate holding a nicely frosted corner slice with a red plastic fork sticking out of it. He ate while watching all the other Constant Inc. employees do the same thing. He finished his cake and looked around for a trash can to put it in, but they had been removed as part of an effort to “go green”. He placed his now empty plate back onto the table, laying the fork on its side.
As he started to leave, Tom from real estate came over.
“Hey, Aaron.”
“Hey, Tom.”
“Do you have some time today to stop by my office and take a look at something?”
“Sure. How about this afternoon?”
“That would be great.”
“Okay, then.”
Aaron took the elevator back up to the forty-fourth floor and stopped by the break room on his way back to his cubicle. There were no cups on the counter, so Aaron opened up a new package he found in the storage cabinet. He pulled out the cups in bunches and ended up with three stacks in a nice row. He threw the left over plastic wrap away into a yellow waste can. Then he filled a cup with coffee, adding cream and sugar from cylindrical canisters. He thought of getting some chips from the vending machine, but decided it was too close to lunch.
He started to make his way back to his cubicle, but found he had finished his coffee before he had made it there. So he went back to the break room and filled another cup. This second time he made it all the way back to his desk and sat down. He set the cup next to a yellow legal pad that was at the moment blank.
He started to get back to work when he noticed there was an odd light coming in from a nearby window. He noticed it because it seemed to be flashing to the point of distraction. He frowned and got up, walking over to the window. He had to shade his eyes as some of the lights – it turned out not to be just one light – were too bright to look at directly.
There seemed to be some chaos on the streets below: wreckage and fire dominated the view along with people running about waving their arms. The glass that separated him kept most of the noise outside, but he thought he heard the occasional stray shout. Aaron sipped his coffee trying to think of what it might mean.
That is, whether or not there was something he should do.
Oh, yeah, he thought.
He walked back to his cubicle and sat down. He opened up Outlook and a blank e-mail. He looked in the directory and found Tom’s e-mail address.
He typed:
Hey, Tom,
Good to see you today.
Can I come by tomorrow instead?
I think I might take this afternoon off.
Aaron
He then shut down his computer and closed the lid to his laptop. He normally took it home with him, but decided to leave it in the docking station.
He sat in his cubicle working his way through email.
He tried to think of the best response to a request asking him to assist an item forwarded to him by a senior process analyst who had received a request for assistance on an issue brought up to him by a coworker who had received a request from a customer transferred to him by one of the several dozen customer service representatives that answered the one working number of the two toll-free numbers the company listed.
The customer apparently knew someone who had a friend who said her cousin was told by his wife that she had gotten a good deal once on something similar to what the customer wanted, and the deal was much better than what the customer currently was receiving. The customer wanted to know if they could do that.
Aaron found the email address for a staff process analyst and entered it in the To box.
Aaron typed:
Dear Joe,
Not sure about this.
What do you think?
Regards,
Aaron
Outlook automatically populated the space below his name, giving crucial details such as Aaron being a lead process analyst and the company’s slogan:
We Work So You Don’t Have To
Someone had sent an anonymous complaint to the employee suggestion mailbox complaining about the dangling preposition in their slogan, but by the time it got passed along to the branding department, there had been another major reorganization and the branding folks got let go.
The senior management team assumed marketing could take on that role; that there didn’t need to be a separate department for that function. Everyone who worked in marketing assumed it was someone else in marketing who had assumed those duties that branding did. After all, things were still branded, weren’t they?
Sometimes someone would comment that someone should go down to the former branding floor and see if there was anything important that had been left behind. But after some general talk and a meeting scheduled and rescheduled and finally canceled due to a change in job functions, it was more or less decided that someone was probably taking care of it already.
A funny noise came through his speaker that sounded a lot like an intercom. Aaron paused a moment. Some of the streamed electronic audio he listened to was experimental, so he decided the sound must just be part of the feed.
His next message was an updated meeting request to change next Wednesday’s afternoon meeting to Friday morning, unless the software design team needed to have the space for a review session regarding the project underway. In that case it would be rescheduled for next Monday, and a time would be given once the organizational training group had finally decided on a time for their Improving Productivity Seminar.
Aaron accepted.
It sounded like the grounds crew was mowing the yards again. At first he thought it was just more experimental electronics, but paying attention, he realized the noise was external.
Aaron grimaced and turned up the headphone volume.
He continued to answer his e-mail.
And he thought of the cheese and avocado sandwich waiting on him.
His phone rang. With a click of his mouse, he changed the audio from Music to Telephone.
“Constant, Inc. Aaron here… No, I haven’t gotten that report yet. You’ll need to talk to Bill… I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Bill about that. Or maybe Ed. Ed usually knows… Well, yeah, of course, I’ll call you when I find out… Okay, then… Have a great day.”
He clicked the audio back to Music. A meeting reminder popped up reminding him about cake being served in the Indigo conference room to celebrate Amy Gorgoth’s 30 years of service. Aaron took his headphones off and hung them on the side of his cubicle. He got up and took the elevator down to the thirteenth floor where the main conference rooms were. It took him a moment to find the right room, as now the conference rooms were all named after trees. The Spruce room looked like the correct one and had a cake on a table at any rate. There had been something written on it, but most of the slices had been cut and placed on individual plates, making it unclear what the message might have been.
It probably didn’t matter much, though, since Amy had been in Branding and was no longer around anyway. The cake must have been ordered by her assistant who was no longer around either.
Aaron took a plate holding a nicely frosted corner slice with a red plastic fork sticking out of it. He ate while watching all the other Constant Inc. employees do the same thing. He finished his cake and looked around for a trash can to put it in, but they had been removed as part of an effort to “go green”. He placed his now empty plate back onto the table, laying the fork on its side.
As he started to leave, Tom from real estate came over.
“Hey, Aaron.”
“Hey, Tom.”
“Do you have some time today to stop by my office and take a look at something?”
“Sure. How about this afternoon?”
“That would be great.”
“Okay, then.”
Aaron took the elevator back up to the forty-fourth floor and stopped by the break room on his way back to his cubicle. There were no cups on the counter, so Aaron opened up a new package he found in the storage cabinet. He pulled out the cups in bunches and ended up with three stacks in a nice row. He threw the left over plastic wrap away into a yellow waste can. Then he filled a cup with coffee, adding cream and sugar from cylindrical canisters. He thought of getting some chips from the vending machine, but decided it was too close to lunch.
He started to make his way back to his cubicle, but found he had finished his coffee before he had made it there. So he went back to the break room and filled another cup. This second time he made it all the way back to his desk and sat down. He set the cup next to a yellow legal pad that was at the moment blank.
He started to get back to work when he noticed there was an odd light coming in from a nearby window. He noticed it because it seemed to be flashing to the point of distraction. He frowned and got up, walking over to the window. He had to shade his eyes as some of the lights – it turned out not to be just one light – were too bright to look at directly.
There seemed to be some chaos on the streets below: wreckage and fire dominated the view along with people running about waving their arms. The glass that separated him kept most of the noise outside, but he thought he heard the occasional stray shout. Aaron sipped his coffee trying to think of what it might mean.
That is, whether or not there was something he should do.
Oh, yeah, he thought.
He walked back to his cubicle and sat down. He opened up Outlook and a blank e-mail. He looked in the directory and found Tom’s e-mail address.
He typed:
Hey, Tom,
Good to see you today.
Can I come by tomorrow instead?
I think I might take this afternoon off.
Aaron
He then shut down his computer and closed the lid to his laptop. He normally took it home with him, but decided to leave it in the docking station.
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