Spent a good portion of yesterday
un-buggering a chip conveyor on a geriatric machine.
Consequently I ended my day feeling like Spiny Norman. I managed to soak a lot of the little slivers out, but this morning I’m still picking crap out of my hands and arms. There was a sizable rust spot in the bottom of the tub this morning.
I caught a great deal of flack for doing this rather unpleseant job myself, rather than delegating it to someone else, but I never send a man to do a job i won’t do myself. That kind of behavior is the exclusive property of assholes, and while I’m an asshole without question, I’ll never be that kind.
Amen. It’s just good leadership, as well. If you don’t demonstrate on a fairly regular basis that no task in the organization is beneath you, you will find in short order that no task is being done well.
Like randy said. I once had a colonel demonstrate to me the proper way to scrape crud out of a urinal. More than one lesson learned that day.
Og, when someone asks me what kind of a-hole I am, I just say “The very best kind.”
When I worked in metalworking environments, I used to spend Sunday mornings during the sermon picking the chip out of my fingers, cuz they turned black and easier to find by then.
Remember more then one “field day”, where all the senior enlisted were right there scrubbing along side the troops. How can you lead if they don’t appreciate that you are able to follow (or have followed). When it was of importance, we were also the last to leave, having sent the junior folks home first.
Of course, now that you’ve proven you would do it, you can delegate the crap out of it next time.
Amen! I feel the same way!
As the project manager on a $100m job, the big boss wasen’t thrilled to see me operating an excavator showing how I wanted the material removed.
When he tried to yell up at me I motioned the laborer to move him out of the way.
He just shook his head, went back to the airport, back to NY and I got an email about job descriptions.
I replied that as ‘supervision’ we are mentors. No reply.
I replied that as ’supervision’ we are mentors. No reply.
Of course you got no reply skip. The Dilbert Principle is in play at the very top of many things.
Your big boss probably has no sense of doing anything like you were doing. There’s a good chance he was secretly jealous — hence the reprimand. You actually know HOW to get things done. In the near future, when the crumbling comes, he’ll be lost at sea and he’d like it were everyone in the same boat (the ultimate aim of public schools).
In the corporation I work for, it is quite common to see area and even location managers filling in as necessary to get the job done. I saw an area manager stocking in seasonal this morning, and I have seen the location manager driving the floor scrubber around.
And our competitors wonder why they’re losing!