I've spent the last three days in full-day meetings. About what? Automating the job I've been doing as well as teaching others to do for the last twelve years. The goal is to take the "human element" out of the equation. I'm normally all for such things, as I find most humans extremely loud, smelly, and annoying. The problem here is that they're going to use government technology to try and rid the trained human part out of the equation. The large part of the problem isn't the people at work, but the morons who are filling out the forms and don't bother to read the instructions. They write in what they think it should be, instead of reading the instructions and writing in the correct information. Now a whole new system has to be designed to make it as simple a process as possible for the ignorant masses. Yet another example of dubming down a process to accomodate the lowest common denominator.

To paraphrase Jerf: what the hell happened to Darwinism? Survival of the fittest is supposed to be beneficial to a species. What happens to a species when the fittest do their job so well that they suddenly allow the unfit to thrive? It's now survival of the whiners, the annoying, the incompetent, illiterate, uneducated... Those who cry "foul" when they can't do something. It's suddenly "unfair" because they didn't do something as well as the person next to him/her/it. I realize I didn't get an instruction manual, but I really don't recall ever reading anywhere that life is supposed to be fair and vanilla for everyone. The playing field is not supposed to be level. If the people designing airplanes are the same people who are flipping your burgers, then that's a scary freakin' world. (It wouldn't be one filled with hamburger-powered airplanes, either. Planes would be dropping out of the sky because the spatu-props fell off.) Learning that someone is better than you at something is called "life", and we all have to deal with it. Whining about it should get you ridiculed, nothing more.

I guess when I get to design the world, things will be different. Hamburger-powered airplanes for everyone! (Except the cows. That'd be weird.)

I spend my time fixing things so that stupid people can't screw them up. I make barriers of anti-stupidness to keep you safe. And you don't know it. It's not even my real job, but I do it anyway. I blame my parents for my insane work ethic. It's seemingly out of fashion these days, and tends to confuse people. Of course, breathing tends to confuse most people, so it isn't much of a stretch.

My job consists of me telling the same people the same things over and over. I have not yet figured out why these people don't remember anything I tell them. They remember how to get to work. They remember to get dressed before coming to work. They certainly remember to eat. Even if they don't write down what I tell them (and they don't), at least some of what I tell them should be sticking somewhere in the nooks and crannies of their tiny little minds. It's not like I pass along answers to multi-tiered quantum physics equations. I pass along pointers to what is, in essence, data entry. There are about a dozen or two people among 300 who can actually function well in the job. The others are too frightened by the demon that is technology to be effective. Or they're too scared they may have to actually develop a work ethic, so they scurry off and huddle in complaining groups.

The scariest part is that every one of them believes that he or she isn't being paid enough. Isn't being paid enough to do little or nothing. Poorly. When you point that out to them, they get offended and do even less. If you take the other tack and praise them for doing nothing, they get all proud of their nothingness and do even less.

Any wonder why I want another job?

This is where I ramble. I ramble a lot, and usually with a vocabulary that made my family hate to play word games with me. My imaginary friend liked to play word games with me, though. Of course, he only spoke Etruscan and didn't have opposable thumbs, but that didn't make him any less of a mutant hellbeast in my eyes. Despite the fact that he was invisible. (He may still be for all I know. The tinnitus prevents me from hearing him like I used to. Damnable high-pitched whistling! Doesn't keep the demons out, just helps them to hide better.)

Did I mention I ramble?