Work

A hired reader reads to cigar makers hard at work in Cuban cigar factory, ca. 1900-1910.

Trying to get some painting done at John's house and I realized everybody likes to paint but hardly anybody does it because all the prep work and clean up are a real pain, which got me to thinking about work in general.

One of the big motivations for automation is that it eliminates drudgery, but that is just a fantasy they tell us to disguise the real reason which is to cut costs.

There are several aspects of working that can affect how you feel about your job. There are the people you work with, how physically demanding it is, whether it makes any sense and, or course, how much you get paid. Good pay can compensate for a multitude of petty aggravations. Pleasant co-workers can likewise compensate for low pay.

There have always been armies of workers doing repetitive tasks. That's how you get things done. You break down a complex procedure into a series of simple tasks. Each task can be quickly taught to a single person. Get everyone trained on their appointed task and the whole organization can start producing useful goods.

People (women, mostly) were weaving cloth by hand for thousands of years before the introduction of automatic looms. Because they worked in close proximity to each other, and because they had been doing this work for so long it only required a small portion of their brain, they could converse with the other women working nearby, which might explain why women seem to talk more than men.

We had a housekeeper a while back who did great work. I came across her a couple of times while she was working and she was talking up a storm. On her cellphone. With earbuds. I wouldn't be surprised if she turned on her cell phone when she she started work and let it run all day long.

Cigar rolling is big business in Cuba. There would be dozens of people sitting at benches rolling cigers. Then there would be one person appointed to be the reader. He would sit in a tall chair and read the newspaper to the people who were working. From the pictures I've seen, it looks like it was mostly men. Funny, that.

My problems with work stemmed from two problems: low pay and boredom. As long as I was learning something, any amount of pay was fine, but once I had learned enough about the job, then pay became an issue, which usually meant finding another job. I think that might be why I gravitated to computers. I had learned all I wanted to about mechanical machinery, but computers offered endless complexity.