I had a ‘special’ mailman at NASA Ames in 2007-2009. This guy was the best mailman ever; he was 100% focused on his job and did it with the seriousness of handl

I had a ‘special’ mailman at NASA Ames in 2007-2009. This guy was the best mailman ever; he was 100% focused on his job and did it with the seriousness of handling CBRN materials. You might wonder how someone can go from good to great at mail handling, especially to someone that doesn’t send or receive much mail. There were lots of unexpected things. Address errors always got to me. Mail was sorted by ‘importance’ in the box. Hand delivery of government mail and warnings about anything anomalous. I got the feeling that you could give this guy any small job and he would study the minutiae intensely, finding ways to get better long after any ‘normal’ person would have gotten bored and started thinking about something else. I see a lot of problems when people don’t employ them well. They often live institutionalized and do odd jobs part-time like grocery bagging. At Stop’n’Shop, they are switched around and perform poorly. At the Westford Market Basket, there was a special bagger that had a rough first few years, but learned everything about the store, and ended up managing it, superlatively imo. 100% focus on whatever they are told to do for years at a time. My mailman would have made a great project manager, a set of well-defined human tasks that are almost always ignored and subverted because of the power that comes with the position. Imagine a person in a power role that was actually focused on doing their job right.