Middle Management

Corporate management notices that the monthly output from the Troy plant has been slowly but steadily dropping. The workers must be slacking off. They send in a new plant manager to shake things up and whip those losers into shape.

The new plant manager arrives and looks things over. Everything seems to be fine. The books are in order; the shop floor is clean and spotless. After a few days of careful observation, however, he begins noticing something odd. On certain occasions, he sees one worker or another suddenly walking around in circles for no apparent reason. Then just as suddenly, the worker resumes doing what he was doing. It’s a small, little thing, and it only happens occasionally, but he takes note of it and begins to think about how much productivity is lost every time a worker does that. Over time, it might add up to something.

One day, while on the shop floor, he sees a worker emerging from the locker room without his hard hat. The company’s safety rules explicitly state that everyone must wear hard hats on the shop floor, no exceptions. He yells at the worker.

“Sorry sir, I forgot,” the worker says and runs back into the locker room to get his hard hat.

The next day, he sees another assembly line worker without a hard hat. He approaches the worker’s line manager. “Why is that man down there not wearing his hard hat?”

“He probably forgot. That’s ok, sir. I know it’s in the rulebook, but we don’t really need them here on this particular line. It’s not dangerous in this spot. Besides, it gets hot in the afternoon, and it gets uncomfortable, and it can slow us down. You guys at corporate who make up these rules don’t know what it’s like on the line.”

“I may be from corporate, but I….”

A sudden scream of angry metal gears gnashing their teeth interrupts him as a steel rod breaks loose from the assembly line conveyer belt machinery on a production line near the far end of the plant floor. It gracefully twirls like a high school girl’s baton as it flies up twenty feet in a lazy arc. It pauses momentarily at the top of the arc and then begins its descent. It lands on the unprotected worker’s head, emitting a bell-like chime. The worker collapses into a heap on the floor, unconscious.

The plant manager and the line manager walk to the unconscious worker and stand over him.

The plant manager bends over, picks up the steel rod and examines it.

“That’s all right sir,” the line manager says. “He’ll come to in a few minutes and will be back at work straight away. It’s just a part of working down here on the line. Happens all the time.”

“May I see your hard hat for a moment?” the plant manager asks.

“Something wrong sir?” the line manager asks taking off his hat and handing to the plant manager.

“I just want to check something,” the plant manager says, looking the hat over. Then he drops the hat on the floor. He raises the steel rod high in the air and brings it down hard. As it connects with the line manager’s head, it emits a bell-like chime. The line manager crumples up and falls into a heap to the floor.

Looking over the unconscious line manager, the plant manager says, “I may be from corporate, but I started on the line.”

Two days later, the plant manager walks into the worker’s locker room. On the wall above the doorway that leads to the shop floor, hangs that famous Farrah Fawcett poster from the 1970’s. It was always one of his favorites. It’s the one with Farrah’s right nipple, poking through the red bathing suit. He doesn’t think the poster is in compliance with modern workplace harassment rules, so he reaches up and takes it down. He hasn’t had a date with Farrah since he was sixteen, so he’ll enjoy it later back at the hotel. As the poster tears away from the wall, a big white sign with big red letters is revealed. It says, “Don’t forget your hard hat!”

Several months later at corporate, the executive team is inspecting the production reports.

“The numbers from the Troy plant are up this month, way up,” one of them says. “Isn’t that the one with all the slackers?”

“Yes it was,” another one says. “We sent Jenkins there to straighten it out.”

“It looks like he’s really kicking ass.”

“Oh, he is, indeed he is. Not too bright, but he sure knows to whip those dregs into shape.”