Bread and Lilies

“We need someone who knows more than us.”

That sentence just blows me away with the sheer magnitude of giving up inherent in those words.

I’ve worked with a lot of different people and I’ve always striven to be the one who know more.  When I’ve worked with people who knew more than me, I tried to learn everything I could from them, I paid attention to everything, sucked in every bit of knowledge I could so that I would know more.  When I’ve worked with people who knew less – and who wanted to learn – I’ve passed on as much knowledge as I could because working with smart people who want to learn is the best damn thing.  When I’ve worked with people who knew less – and didn’t want to know more – I got away from them as much as possible.

When I didn’t know enough and there wasn’t anyone who knew more to teach me, I sought out the knowledge myself so that I became the person who knew more.  I read, I googled, I went looking for other people to ask questions and I found answers.

“We need someone who knows more than us.”

Translation = I want someone to tell me what to do, thinking for myself is too hard, please get someone who will just tell me what to do so I don’t have to think.

Those days are gone, Office Space jobs, IBM jobs, sit in a cubicle for 40 years and retire with a gold watch jobs, they’re gone for good.  They’ve been going away for the last 10-15 years, because of outsourcing to other countries and because of new generations of kids (whose grandparents were boomers like me) who want a job that makes them think, that’s challenging.  The last nail in the coffin for those jobs was the recession, companies finally figured out that people who think, people who want to know more, who want to learn, are much more valuable to the company than people who want to be told what to do.  And if a company needs people to be told what to do, they’re literally a dime a dozen in India and all over the Pacific Rim so they’re not hiring for those jobs here in the US.  You want a good job here in the US?  You have to make yourself into the person who knows more and you have to stay hungry to be the person who knows more every single day.

You can be the guy who thinks big, who thinks everything is possible.  You can discover that challenging yourself to learn more, to do more can be a lot more fun than doing what you’re told.

Or you can be the one who’s always trying to shut someone down, who’s always saying that’s just too hard…the one who says:

“We need someone who knows more than us.”

What’s my choice?  I want to work with the deck chief on the Battlestar Galactica!  Cause he’s teaching himself to be the someone who knows more.

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Battlestar Galactica, Flight of the Pheonix

Deck crew hand: “What’s going on, chief?”

Deck chief: “Alright, here’s the deal, we are going to build a new fighter!”

Deck crew hand: “Uh, what about the rest of the ships, I’m three days backlogged as it is…”

Deck chief: “Strictly an off duty project, nobody takes one minute away from regular maintenance and repairs, you got it?”

(lots of “gee, this sounds like a lot of really hard work” looks between crew)

Deck chief: “You don’t think we can do this?”

Deck crew hand: “I wouldn’t even know how to begin…”

Older hand: (under breath) “What else is new…”

Deck crew hand: “Screw you – he’s talking about fabricating a frame, avionics, life support, it’s frackin’ impossible!”

Deck chief: “You know what then, forget you, I don’t need you!”

Female hand: “Chief, wait, it’s not like that…”

Deck chief: “I said forget it, get back to work.” (turns away with look of disgust)

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The deck chief doesn’t know how to build the fighter, he doesn’t have the knowledge to do it, none of them do, but he’s going to do it anyway because they need it.  He’ll figure out it out one way or another, he’ll become the someone who knows more and anyone willing to pitch in and help him will be that someone too.

You hear it most places you go, restaurants, stores with clerks, fast food drive-thrus, even the food marts in most gas stations and it comes in variations:

Can I get you anything else?

Did you find everything you need?

Will that be all?

All translating into the same thing, can we sell you anything more?

We hear it so often, it’s a routine, both on the part of the person asking and in our responses, nope, I’m good, yep, got everything, yes, that’s all and we pay the bill and we’re on our way.  Every once in a while tho, we pause, we think, we do have something else we need, something we couldn’t find and we break from routine.  Opportunity!  Even if the store/restaurant/fast food/whosis can’t get us what we asked for, they tried, they voiced concern and a willingness to fulfill our needs and wants.

Tonight, as I’m sitting in a decent mid-level restaurant, the waiter brings the check instead of the question.

Maybe on a different night I would have said, no, nothing else, just my check please.  But tonight, the waiter lost 75% of his tip and cut the check total in half, all for the lack of one little routine question.  Because this night, the night the waiter was in a hurry to turn over the table, I wanted coffee and dessert and the resulting higher check would have gotten him a much higher tip.

Instead I drove a block down the street and got my dessert from a cafe/bakery and went home for coffee.

One routine question missed = opportunity lost.