The Management Revolution

Back in the early days, the women gathered fruits and the men hunted meat. Some among them became leaders... saving their strengths to fight only the most ferocious preys or to fend off predators ...serfdom and slavery then made it clear that there were some others who deserved to be much lower than everybody else.

Communism tried to rectify that and leveled the playing fields. It was supposedly a good thing, becos during those times, regardless of how much one has studied, or how skilful or talented one was, everyone was contributing to the economy. Since everyone contributed, everyone should have a equal paycheck. Lawyers, doctors, teachers and pilots would be paid the same way the farmers or the acrobats and the good ole village fool was.

Then came Taylorism and the scientific management was invented. Every motion had to be studied and wasteful steps eliminated to enhance efficiency. Soon, everyone had to be efficient and worked to keep their jobs. To ensure that the more efficient workers would be getting paid more, during that time, out of every 10 who had work to do, there would be 6 working and 4 watching.

Then soon entered the auditors. As the world gets smarter in this information age, management also gets re-educated and enlightened. But soon, out of 10 workers in the company, there are only 4 working, 4 watching and 2 getting pensions.

But during economic recessions, many companies will be trying to tighten their budget with what they consider "fats". They will also probably have to send teams of auditors to check on which part of the "fats" they could take off. In the end, I think we may be left with only 4 working, 2 watching and 4 who will also eventually get laid-offs.

I don't know what else will the govt do with 4 laid-offs and 2 supervisors doing all the paperwork and audits all carried out religiously to make sure that these 4 other miserable working bodies will not be able to have too much of a good life at the expense of the company's accounts.

Some bigger companies have also been praised by the government for rehiring some of these "retrenched executives" and gave them jobs to make sure "the girls at the counters" would remember to smile to the customers.