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I see a factory like that! At one point the only remaining work was when something went wrong. The production line ran so fast, if something went wrong it produ

I see a factory like that! At one point the only remaining work was when something went wrong. The production line ran so fast, if something went wrong it produced enough garbage for 15 people to clean up. Not sure how they arrived at 15 but with fewer it took longer to resume production. I estimate the thing crashed from 2-3 times per day to every 3 days or so with the later more often. Took about 15-20 minutes to clean up with 15. Say 1 person would need 4-5 hours. Then they gained 4.5 hours of production per incident (with 15 people) 15 * 8 hours * 3 days = 360 hours each of the 4.5 hours would then cost 80 man hours. Better numbers with more frequent crashes. Investors didn't like to see people sit, chat and drink coffee most of the day. The solution was to remove some machinery and all of the chairs. People had to work with insane speed to keep up. No time to scratch your itch, the work spot was designed for a machine, the one in storage. Imagine working there and going from drinking koffie all day to insane speed conveyor belt work because someone put the machine in storage because an investor might visit 1 time per year. Really brings out the best in people (ehm!)

commandlinefan 3y ago
> Investors didn't like to see people sit, chat and drink coffee I do believe that the "workers must be uncomfortable all the time" mentality drives a ton of inefficiency. When my son was born, my wife worked from home, but we still needed a nanny to watch him most of the time so my wife could work. So we hired a teenage girl to come over and keep an eye on him for $10/hour. He was a baby, so it was pretty easy work - she spent most of the time watching TV. My wife complained that she was paying somebody $10/hour to just watch TV and insisted that she spend time cleaning instead. Well, she ended up leaving and we had a hell of a tough time replacing her - I said, "why do you care what she does as long as she gets her job (making sure our son doesn't die) gets done?" But she was adamant that if she was paying somebody, it had to look like "work" to her. I spent six years in college practicing the fine art of reading books and regurgitating their contents back in various contexts so that I could qualify for a job where any time spent reading anything is prohibited because it doesn't look like "measurable" work.
- eternityforest 3y ago
  In the construction industry there seems to be some kind of thing where workers impose it on themselves or have to for competition. I'm constantly seeing tool demo videos with comments full of "What, you're not strong enough to just use X?" where X is usually something unpleasant but sometimes slightly faster or cheaper, like phillips deck screws or driving screws with an drill instead of an impact. It makes me wonder if the trades actually need to be as hard on people's bodies as they are. If the demand was there to make the tech a bit cheaper.... it seems like a lot of manual labor could be saved, but there's a culture of not complaining.

commandlinefan 3y ago

> Investors didn't like to see people sit, chat and drink coffee I do believe that the "workers must be uncomfortable all the time" mentality drives a ton of inefficiency. When my son was born, my wife worked from home, but we still needed a nanny to watch him most of the time so my wife could work. So we hired a teenage girl to come over and keep an eye on him for $10/hour. He was a baby, so it was pretty easy work - she spent most of the time watching TV. My wife complained that she was paying somebody $10/hour to just watch TV and insisted that she spend time cleaning instead. Well, she ended up leaving and we had a hell of a tough time replacing her - I said, "why do you care what she does as long as she gets her job (making sure our son doesn't die) gets done?" But she was adamant that if she was paying somebody, it had to look like "work" to her. I spent six years in college practicing the fine art of reading books and regurgitating their contents back in various contexts so that I could qualify for a job where any time spent reading anything is prohibited because it doesn't look like "measurable" work.

eternityforest 3y ago
In the construction industry there seems to be some kind of thing where workers impose it on themselves or have to for competition. I'm constantly seeing tool demo videos with comments full of "What, you're not strong enough to just use X?" where X is usually something unpleasant but sometimes slightly faster or cheaper, like phillips deck screws or driving screws with an drill instead of an impact. It makes me wonder if the trades actually need to be as hard on people's bodies as they are. If the demand was there to make the tech a bit cheaper.... it seems like a lot of manual labor could be saved, but there's a culture of not complaining.