Armpit Hairs

Before I retired coworkers were sharing a flyer with the drawing of a mushroom and the caption, “I must be a mushroom, because around here, I’m always kept in the dark and fed fertilizer.” Recently I thought it was more like being an armpit hair. I worked as middle management and we were always kept in the dark, compelled to enforce decisions that often smelled badly, even when senior management made an attempt to use deodorant, it still smelled.

Too often it caused me to sweat with attempts to get other staff members to comply. Most often it seemed that there were many more steps involved to accomplish a simple task which was already being done satisfactorily. Those decisions often mimicked the “common core math” fiasco that was forced on schools to obtain financing.

I’ve had school teachers support “Common Core Math” by arguing that with some children, it was the way they learned. My reply was, then teach those children separately. Children learn in different ways. Some children understand by touch and by feeling, some learn by audio input, while others learn by visual stimulation. Teachers use various methods to reach children who need alternate methods of learning. They don’t force all the other the children in the class to learn by one method only.

Computers were supposed to eliminate or at least reduce paperwork. Hospitals swarmed to join the rush toward a paperless society, but what I’ve seen is an increase of generated papers and an increase of repetitious questions. The unnecessary work causes a decrease in productivity. It doesn’t matter if the doctors or hospital is in the same system and it doesn’t matter how close the appointments are: the very same questions are asked over and over again. These computer programs were created for the ease of the bean counters. Each click registers a corresponding charge to make the calculation of billing easier.

Who remembers paper bags for groceries? Stores were compelled to use plastic sacks to save the environment. While paper bags are from a renewable resource and biodegradable, plastic is not. Plastic bags have become a huge problem, so much so that stores were beginning to enforce reusable shopping bags. Then the Corona virus hit and using “contaminated” bags suddenly became taboo. The reusable bags would save stores money, and from what I understand, stores plan to pass that cost along to the consumer.

And so it goes. There are too many people that make the regulations that govern our everyday lives that have absolutely no idea what is necessary once outside a boardroom or outside the virtual created computer world. Anyone else feel like an armpit hair?