I worked for a catering company that organized its staffing in a modified form of parecon. It was based in Ithaca, NY. but it wasn't ideology but necessity that brought us to this form of organization. Later, it was not necessity any longer, but the realization that it was much better to work this way: we worked together better, we were most cost efficient, there were fewer antagonisms, the turnover rate was low because people didn't get bored.
When you have to sweep and mop, be a pastry chef, wash dishes, do food production management, wait on tables, drive the catering truck, balance the books,etc. etc., you get a much better sense of how the whole business operates. You work together far more efficiently. The business tends to thrive for a variety of reasons, including the fact that people _like_ working this way for the most part. It has advantages that are hard to describe. And, believe me, this wasn't about some hippy dippy crunchola ideology where it was "cool" to work at the place, like it was "cool" to work at the Mooseword or any number of other restaurants in the area that fancied themselves of the Ben and Jerry's mindset. feh.
We didn't all monopolize the "more respectable" jobs, nor did we shuffle of the "less respectable" jobs only on certain classes of people. The chef, trained at the CIA, and quite snooty when he first arrived, waited tables. He enjoyed this because he could ogle tits and ass among our clientele. :) He'd wait tables once a week or so. Another chef preferred to do the dishes for a spell every night. A sous chef, something of an underling in our set up, did the books and ordered food, while the food production manager cleaned vans or delivered luncheons to Cornell campus. I alternatd, depending on the season, between pastry chef (spring/summer wedding season and holiday season), delivery personnel/driver, food production manager during the height of the summer/fall catering season, event manager, and waitress/dishwasher/janitor during the slow season and I needed the extra work.
When we had really big events, the executives--including the CEO/owner (who happened to have a home right near Robert Park of Park Outdoor Advertising fame)--all rolled up their sleeves and slogged through the most filthy food/dish mess, washing dishes in catering conditions. This isn't fun. You don't have a dish machine, you are on site with whatever the site happens to have, which could be some nasty old crusty sink in the chemistry lab. Or you get to scrape the food, slip and slide around the floor carrying garbage bags of food waste, and pack the filthy dishes and bring them back to the production site and wash them there. Oh, and they'd all get to ride back to the production site, sitting in the truck with all the filthy food, dishes, and flies. :)
When you're a cook but also do the books, you are less likely to be wasteful in your work habits. No need to tie work habits to rewards and punishments, you naturally understand what it costs to run the business because you've done the books. Similarly, you're a less messy cook or waitress if you also have to sweep, mop, do dishes.
Seems to me that there would be a general principle and then there'd be specific applications of the principle at individual work sites. Sure, we can dicker over all this now, in the abstract, but it has to be applied in a specific setting. It seems to me that it's be a simple matter of a collective decision--one that is open for revision--as to what tasks are rote-type and which are coordinator class-type jobs. From there, there'd be a roster of jobs: you could divide them up as rote/coordinate or whatever you want to call it and even have subcategories within those two divisions of "fun" rote jobs. E.g., my catering mate, Jake, loved to drive the van. I don't know why, because he spent most of his time drooling over co-eds and we nearly got in car accidents more times than I care to remember... You'd think he'd want to ride while I drove.
I liked to deliver stuff with him: i liked getting the workout of lugging heavy stuff up and down the ivy covered halls at Cornell or into the beautiful homes of Ithaca's elite.
Both of those jobs would, for most people, be considered rote and not part of the coordinating tasks of the firm. So? Remember, it's most people and the decision was arrived at democratically and, not only that, I would assume that the categorizations could be reworked under a participatory-democratic framework.
Kelley