I guess I don't understand how this is an instance of, as you write, "common folks" who have done "wrong".
Here, read this and weep. Don't you think _this_ is the extremely typical attitude of management -- they just don't have the balls to come right out and say it. This guy does because he knows he has the power and it isn't the first time he placed an ad like that. www.inkworkswell.com/wanted.html
If the system, as you say, is rewarding "dull comformity and outright stupidity" while also punishing "creativity and independent thinking," then how are people at fault.
I'm no more interested in making up excuses than you are. Living among the types of people who do these jobs, I don't romanticize them in the least. Just trying to make the connection between what appears to be a systemic analysis of a system that rewards stupidity and your concern that we shouldn't leave workers off the hook.
Joe and I used to talk about how we _knew_ that our hard work was taken advantage of, that we knew that being too smart could get us in trouble, that we knew that we could get away with doing less. But, we couldn't live with ourselves doing anything less than 200% on the job. Who's the smart one. Me and Joe? Or the guy or gal in the next cube who slides by? Is that what you mean?
I dunno. The ex exploiter was big on the Field of Dreams approach: build it on the Web and the people will come. He wanted higher search engine rankings. I'd actually figured out how to do that by accident. And, while I gave 200%, to get those rankings up there for him, I would have had to give away a lot of free labor to do it. So, I shut my mouth and volunteered nothing that would require more work. If I thought the effort might have kept me a job, maybe it's be a diff. story. But, I disagreed with his field of dreams approach and figured the sweat equity would be a waste of my time. I was 'playing dumb' -- but was I really? Isn't it smart to avoid working 10 more hrs a week on salary?
As for the technology issue, when I was a waitress, computerized systems were just coming online. My old boss, Mr. B (looked like Lorne Green of Bonanza fame) was listening to the sales rep's sales pitch: "And not only that, you will be able to finance this by reducing theft. Your staff can no longer pocket the proceeds and never ring up the sale. Every sale must be entered into the computer in order for the cooks to complete the order. You can also track inventory and compare the sales receipts." (And, of course, to do that, he would have to further rationalize the operation.)
Mr. B looked at him and said: "Pal, you treat them like thieves, they'll act like thieves."
Now, o'course, Mr. B knew that people robbed him regularly, but he saw it as a two way street. He was letting them get away with something (psychological bennie) and giving them a kind of raise (material bennie), in exchange for loyalty. He didn't have to pay taxes on the 'raise'. Small business owners can be totally irrational about how much they spend to 'save' taxes. It's more symbolic for them when they rip off the social security system.
But it was about control either way. His way only seemed more humane.
1. Spend money/time cracking down, hiring a hostess to keep an eagle on all sales. 2. Hire guards to make sure no theft from storage rooms or pay a member of staff extra to rat people out, in which case you'd get internal strife and less productivity, more turnover. 3. Let people steal, no labor cost but reduced revenues. 4. Buy a computerized system, invest in training, some turnover at beginning, big costs up front, realize savings down the road -- maybe.
Mr. B was old school. Today's organization's tend to want to rationalize, rationalize, rationalize. For them, it's worth it to invest in computerized systems.
And, at least in tech, the trend is very much toward developing systems that deskill the workforce.
It's funny, I was thinking about the image of the younger gen about 10 years ago. It seems to me that young people were portrayed as extremely smart, leading the older gen by the nose into the 21st c. Think Stuart and the Ameritrade commercial -- which is a funny example b/c each character in that commercial was ripping off the company. Stuart was making party flyers for a beer blast, using the copy machine, Mr. T was in his office (not a cube) surfing Ameritrade.com investing. In the end, though, both Stuart and Mr. T were slavishly devoted to making money. Stuart just had green spikey hair and piercings and Mr. T wore a frumpy brown suit.
Still, Stuart had one up on Mr. T and could teach him how to make.money.fast.with.computer!!!!!!!
What was happening then? Employers were complaining bitterly that their whip smart techies had their balls in a mason jar. And that's _exactly_ the expressed used by the programmer I hired way back when. Jokingly, he told me to send my balls to him in a Mason jar because we were about to develop a roll-your-own LMS --as opposed to buying a tool to create the online course and building a backend to manage the data.
And, as it turns out, that's exactly what the programmer did. He kept himself in a job, not that he was going to lose it otherwise, by milking the development clock. But, the people who took over managing the project when I left it didn't have a klew X 4. And, he knew it. Smart or dumb?
This kind of stuff goes on regularly and on the other side, management is doing everything they can to keep from handing over their balls in a mason jar. And, it got a lot easier to do when the economy plummeted, flooding the job market with people desperate for any work.
Object Oriented Programming: management's answer to the Balls in a Mason Jar dilemma. Dwayne and others on the list can provide more examplles, no doubt.
You see the same thing in tech writing, graphic design, etc. The move is constantly toward rationalizing the production process so you can employ less skilled labor.