Monday, September 29, 2008

Listeriosis in meat products, the Aftermath

Well its been a few months and the news have had their comments and the public has had its scare. What, if anything was learned from this? Absolutely nothing. Problems like this will just happen again and again. Don't get me wrong, changes have been made, but they are only cosmetic changes. If you have a corpse in your living room and a visiting guest points it out to you, I guess your first reaction would be: "how can you tell?" Well the face of the corpse is white, there is no blood flow, that's the evidence. Explain to me how putting make-up on this corpse to give it some flesh tones change the fact that it is a corpse? Well that is the reaction of the corporations when presented with the evidence of something wrong, they apply make-up instead of getting rid of the corpse.

Remember the Emperor's new clothes? Someone had told the Emperor of the latest fashion and he paraded himself in the newest fashion and everyone said "wow, what great fashion trend!" Until a child spoke out and said that the Emperor was not wearing anything at all. Now take the story to its logical conclusion by drawing the parallel with the meat infection. The Emperor does not question his own judgment at his inability to discern that he was fooled, he fires his current fashion advisor and promptly hires a new fashion advisor who studied at the same school. The Emperor does not wonder why no one in his immediate circle pointed out this flaw, the Emperor does not wonder why the entire public who watched him in the parade make any comments... No, the Emperor keeps the entire structure intact and fires the tailor (probably beheads him, it is an older story based upon feudal realities; but you get the point). Once the tailor is fired, he promptly hires someone of the same mindset.

Can anyone really blame the tailor/fashion consultant? The Emperor DEMANDS a new fashion, NEEDS to be prestigious! A threat is uttered, a reward is offered. Someone proposes a daring new fashion of invisible clothing.... doesn't matter if it makes sense, the pressure is on to produce something, anything and the tailor has done his duty to the Emperor. The Emperor accepts his invisible clothing and carries on. Then, when the bleep hits the proverbial fan (the listeriosis infection or the child pointing out that the Emperor is naked), the Emperor blames the ones who followed instructions, hires another "yes-man" and never learns his lesson.

The managers and the decision-makers are currently scrambling and looking over their bureaucratic instructions and causing undue stress upon their employees who have followed the bureaucratic rules without question. They are trying to find who, if any, disregarded any rules. Any perceived incompetence gets a severe reprimand.... but none of the high level managers or decision makers really get into the crux of the matter, they just invent a new bureaucratic rule to avoid this particular incident: which was that the blades in the internal part of the machinery were infected and that the current cleaning methods did not reach so deep.... therefore a more thorough cleaning procedure will be implemented. People had to die before they discovered this.

So the employee who was actually following blindly the instructions of their superiors are hunted down to see if they really were following instructions blindly. When they can't find fault with the people, they add new rules and insist that the employees continue following the newest rules blindly. Hence, the cosmetic change. The employees who may have questioned the rationality of some of the rules are still ostracized and the employees who followed all instructions without question now have the extra stress of a new rule to follow which they probably won't understand.... remember, understanding rules are not necessary to implement them so employees are hired under those conditions and encouraged to think in those conditions.

Imagine you are fighting a forest fire. The fire is spreading and you want the fire to die down on its own because it is too big to fight normally with water. The winds are blowing from east to west. Your manager tells you to build a trench of 100 meters wide but the length follows the east to west direction. You wonder aloud how this will stop the fire from spreading west?

Manager A-->"Do as you are told, I'm the boss and you are the employee." Conclusion, the manager has no clue why he's doing it and does not want to appear incompetent so he does something: he produces.... and in this society, you get rewarded for that kind of thinking.

Manager B-->"The manual says that when there is a fire like this, we must dig a trench to block the fire and the example given says to dig lengthwise east to west." Conclusion, the manager is not understanding why the manual says what it says and the manual is silent about wind directions. This manager just has to say that he followed instructions as written and this manager will get a promotion.... in this society, you get rewarded for following instructions without understanding why. Later, they will add wind directions into the manual to prevent mistakes.

Manager C-->"Come now, we don't want to be lazy, now do we? We can do it! Lets all work hard to dig this trench, and no negative attitudes, ok friend?" Conclusion, see Manager A, except the difference is that he is "motivating" continued foolish and irrelevant production.... and as usual, this will also result in a promotion.

Manager D-->"You're right, I had a small lapse in judgment, we will do north to south lengthwise so that when the fire reaches the trench it will not be able to continue westward because of the wind.... I don't care what my superiors think, we will do what works." Conclusion, this manager will make alot of enemies along the way and will probably get set up on some foolish bureaucratic faux-pas and get demoted to a position of irrelevance..... (of course he will be seen as an immediate hero having made the right decision to stop the fire but after a year or so..... when there is no forest fire, he will be discarded..... maybe this manager will be remembered when a new emergency hits and be re-invited, but....)

The problem is that we are not given the time to think: it is all reflexes and knee jerk reactions. We have the technology to allow us time to think. We have access to knowledge to allow us to make proper decisions. But we prefer to act as if our lives are in constant danger because greedy fools want to outproduce other greedy fools.... and the products are not even decent quality anymore. And how do these greedy fools solve their accidents? They blame their underlings who have followed their instructions to produce without thinking, to react to stimuli instead of encouraging a step back to think out a situation.

Why do we give medals to greedy fools? Why do we tolerate greedy fools to dictate society's policies? Are we citizens in a democracy or consumers in a store half the time and subjects to greedy fools (who wear crowns we gave them) the other half of the time?

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