Between Pain and Money
Wherein is made time...
Between Pain and Money
As a kid, I write about times we live through now (transition from matic mediators to automediators). I'm sure you did, too. That feeling of wanting to find something you saw online once? When we have it that first time, an aquifer forms that develops taste for quality mnemonic and metaphoric information sorting.
People report making emergency plans in their heads for anxieties, to compartmentalize them. (Essentially building a little fairie home for the anxiety.) My child days were spent writing, mapping trends of sorting algorithms by the bends I see them take. My "farie homes."
The 5-figures it costs business to hire someone was something I learned at my first job. At fourteen, I work 30-hour weeks. I was young enough to be fascinated with every facet. In a cubby, behind industrial water heaters to the left from the kitchen (through the wall to their left are the bathrooms), I steal glances of managers gazing into a computer as though they're Ahab.
Be my Ahab - as an exec, it is your pain nuerons which ultimately have the exec function. That's what I (as everyone Ahab is not) built the exec role for. I know information is moving kind of fast in this post, but I ride motorcycles. Let yourself see this post as one and you should be able to make this sharp left here, so that we can talk about a place in the american serengeti called Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump.
Much the was a daily pain point on every exec's mind is every time they want to let an employee go, the 5-figure signal flashes. A daily pain point on every buffalo's mind is every time they see a tribe of humans, the hunter-figure signal flashes. To neither exec nor buffalo, this signal does not seem expensive. The exec should suck it up. Respect the signal. The buffalo should suck it up. Respect the signal. A flashing light has always said "automate me" or suffer chronic pain to nervous systems.
The name is apt. Buffalo are steered by a tribe to a cliff. The tribe then spook buffalo, who run off that cliff. This is time-honored.
Today, time "is money". Money is plastic time. Buying food is a money-honored tradition. A nervous system of a healthy exec functioning as intended let's us break money down into food. If the bufallo start charging the tribes of humans, can humans still steer bufallo over the cliff? If the execs start charging the tribes of workers, can workers still steer execs over hiring tech?
Why it's helpful: conversation is being fixed on the nervous system of an exec. If the exec was a twin-stick controller, they would be thrown at the wall or through the screen by now; they are not being steered. Giving execs head zaps in the form of how expensive it is to replace a worker no longer serves. They're moving ahead.
Workers are travelling in step, believing they can still steer exec nervous system, workers ask the librarian to help them get a scrapper running that will apply to jobs and perform interviews for the worker. Hiring stops being so costly a signal and groups steer individuals nervous systems in other ways.
This is just chronic pain finding its level. The waste heat gets off-shored until it can't and people retreat into smaller and smaller alcoves until they are a manager behind a water heater hunched over a screen by the bathrooms (but on a submarine).
Neighbors requesting your help hire you to stop corporate hire campaigns and library responses from off-shoring their waste heat. Your task: write down what might happen if you were to go to work for the next 30 days; then write down what might happen if you were to live as a community in the nearest national park for the 30 days.
Circle all you want to happen. Put x's all you do not want to happen. You have boundaries. You feel, alive. Cries of existential dread aside, what might that say?