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| You CAN haz cheesburger! |
On a trip to Oregon in August, we visited the Tillamook creamery, where they were packaging 2-pound blocks of rat cheese.
It starts with blocks of approximately 40 pounds, which are sliced into 20 pieces. These are wrapped in heavy plastic and weighed. Underweight packages are directed to a man who uses a butcher knife to unwrap them, after which they are returned to the front of the line, where another man slices a thin stip off a block and carefully fits it to the shortweight block. A woman then adds this surgically-enhanced block to the wrapping line again.
Why the shortweight blocks are not weighed and removed before being wrapped is a mystery to me, and there was no one about to ask; just another example of American mangement genius, I guess, like the Wells Fargo sales operation.
However, I want to focus on a career as a food unwrapper. It isn't only cheese; I once toured the Hershey chocolate plant in Pennsylvania, where 2 men had the job of unwrapping miswrapped Kisses. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not break out unwrappers in category 51-3090, Food Processing Workers, Miscellaneous, but it's a living.
I guess.
A hazardous one at Hershey. A good many of the naked Kisses went into the unwrappers instead of the remelting bin, and both of them weighed around 400 pounds. That, at least, was not a temptation with 2-pound slabs of cheese.
I have head many people who work in mental jobs say they wish they had the satisfaction that comes from having produced a tangible thing at the end of the day. By that standard, I suppose unwrapping food must be one of the least satisfying jobs you can have.
Why the shortweight blocks are not weighed and removed before being wrapped is a mystery to me, and there was no one about to ask; just another example of American mangement genius, I guess, like the Wells Fargo sales operation.
ReplyDeleteYour incomprehension is indicative only of your incomprehension.
Well, that and arrogance.
So, explain it to me
ReplyDeleteI have no idea. Clearly, neither do you.
ReplyDeleteI strongly suspect there is something going on that isn't obvious.
You strongly suspect you know more than anyone, especially management and the production line designers.
I'll bet I'm right.
Ockham says you are incorrect
ReplyDeleteNo,just the opposite.
ReplyDeleteYou are ignorant. That is the explanation with the fewest entities, and by far the highest likelihood of being correct.
Well, since you just claimed you are as ignorant as I, then you must be guessing wrong. Also, that's the silliest misreading of Ockham I've ever seen.
ReplyDeleteHarry, your invocation of Ockham was what is stupid beyond measure. You had one (apparent) fact to which you definitively ascribed an explanation in complete ignorance of an untold number of other facts.
ReplyDeleteOckham's razor, properly understood, which, like racism, you never do, is an assertion that the explanation with the least number of entities, without losing explanatory power, is the most likely to be correct.
I in fact correctly applied Ockham: you have one fact, and beyond that you are totally ignorant, including how ignorant you are. Therefore, your assertion is almost certainly wrong.
Moreover, since you ignored how ignorant you are, then your theory eliminates an entity with a great deal of explanatory power.
I'll just bet I your record of invoking Ockham is perfect. Perfectly wrong, that is.
And I'm certain I can provide links, if you so desire them.
Unlike, say:
[Harry:] Since you have repeatedly objected to each and every instance of calling rightwingers racists ...
[HS:] Then you should have absolutely no problem linking to at least one of those each and every instances, right?
(Enquiring minds want to know -- who do you think you are fooling?)
Yawn.
ReplyDeleteYou know exactly what you wrote, so I'm not going to indulge you. Any other readers who want a repeat, if they ask, I'll direct them.
Interesting that you refuse to consider incompetence as an explanation for business mistakes. Wrapping and unwrapping cheese is an amusing example; Wells Fargo's sales strategy is not -- but what is the fundamental difference between the two?
You know exactly what you wrote ...
ReplyDeleteYou are inverting a fact in evidence. I know exactly what I wrote, and I am throwing the bovine excreta flag. Of course, you could humble me in an instant by supplying evidence otherwise.
The fact, oft repeated, that you haven't is all the proof anyone needs that you are, like all progressives, a lying vista with an overpowering defamatory itch.
Interesting that you refuse to consider incompetence as an explanation for business mistakes.
Interesting that you keep assuming facts not in evidence.
What is clearly in evidence is that I refuse to arrive at firm conclusions on the basis of ideological blinkers and a nearly complete absence of facts.
Unlike you, in that I have a great deal of experience you obviously lack working in very complex systems, I am willing to grant that in what I do not know lies an answer I cannot yet conceive.
But since you are a journalist, well, that says it all right there.
We could discuss Wells Fargo. Or the Detroit automakers. Or the mortgage lenders of 2006-7.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, we have discussed Detroit and you blamed the troubles of the Big Three not on management but the workers.
Why even have managers then?
When I said you refused to consider incompetence, I wasn't thinking only, or even principally, of Tillamook cheese.
Bollocks, Harry. Never mind the rest of that misdirection, you made a specific claim about Tillamook management, based upon stampeding ignorance.
ReplyDeleteThat is what is in play here, nothing else.
So how about stopping trolling your own blog and respond to the very point you raised.
In fact, we have discussed Detroit and you blamed the troubles of the Big Three not on management but the workers.
I dare you to quote me to that effect.
Let's see, who did I hear from repeatedly about singling out Chrysler in wage negotiations?
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, that was you.
Where's the link? If you heard from me repeatedly, I'm sure that will be easy for you to find. Far easier, in fact, than the quibbling, misdirection or crickets sure to follow.
ReplyDeleteNot playing that game, Skipper. Any newbie who wants a pointer, all he has to do is ask.
ReplyDeleteWell, you need to play that game. Or at least a different game than the one you are playing -- Mr. Google has once again proved you to be a flagrant liar.
ReplyDeleteOf course, as always, you could provide that pointer and humiliate me.
I'm not worried.
The definition of insanity seems to fit here: repeatedly doing the same crazy thing, and expecting a different result each time.
[crickets]
ReplyDelete