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About two weeks after I started on the flightline in the Air Force I realized I was an IMPORTANT small cog in a very big machine. I asked my trainer a question about the planes we were preparing for a deployment. There was a piece of equipment that had to be installed on the planes that deployed. We were physically checking the 24 primary birds. I asked my trainer 'What about the spares that may make the flight if one of the primaries abort? Won't they need the same device?' He looked at me for a moment then said follow me, and led me into the Shop Chiefs office. Here I am in the office of the boss three levels above me. My trainer turns to me and says 'Ask Master Sergeant Summers what you just asked me' I gulped and said 'We're making sure all the primary birds have a 'widget' but what about the spares? Won't they need it if a primary bird aborts?"
They looked at each other and my trainer grinned and MSgt Summers said "S%!T" My Trainer said "Yea how come out of a shop with 40 trained technicians the junior trainee sees it?"
Things got real hectic for the rest of the day as we pulled components out of supply and got all the widgets installed and aligned in the spares. The next day 24 primary and 12 spares prepared to launch. I think 22 primes and 12 spares launched. By the time they got to the go/nogo point to cross the ocean 4 of the spares continued on making the deployment
So I learned early that any cog is important and as I went through my career I tried to make sure that younger folks that worked with or for me understood it also.
About two weeks after I started on the flightline in the Air Force I realized I was an IMPORTANT small cog in a very big machine. I asked my trainer a question about the planes we were preparing for a deployment. There was a piece of equipment that had to be installed on the planes that deployed. We were physically checking the 24 primary birds. I asked my trainer 'What about the spares that may make the flight if one of the primaries abort? Won't they need the same device?' He looked at me for a moment then said follow me, and led me into the Shop Chiefs office. Here I am in the office of the boss three levels above me. My trainer turns to me and says 'Ask Master Sergeant Summers what you just asked me' I gulped and said 'We're making sure all the primary birds have a 'widget' but what about the spares? Won't they need it if a primary bird aborts?"
They looked at each other and my trainer grinned and MSgt Summers said "S%!T" My Trainer said "Yea how come out of a shop with 40 trained technicians the junior trainee sees it?"
Things got real hectic for the rest of the day as we pulled components out of supply and got all the widgets installed and aligned in the spares. The next day 24 primary and 12 spares prepared to launch. I think 22 primes and 12 spares launched. By the time they got to the go/nogo point to cross the ocean 4 of the spares continued on making the deployment
So I learned early that any cog is important and as I went through my career I tried to make sure that younger folks that worked with or for me understood it also.
cute story, I enjoyed reading that yay for little cogs linking big cogs together, big cogs are useful for big movements, little ones help make it run smoothly
And if you don't think that, don't worry you'll find out. Or if you want to post something in opposition to this then that doesn't change the fact that this describes a good 99 percent or so of the human race.
I guess I was 26 when I had this dawning realization. I was at a newspaper job and had spent my whole life wanting to be a reporter. Then one day I was just fired. Unjustly so. I know this because I sought legal advice and was told I had a case. Of course I never went through with it because again, "insignificant cog."
The good thing about being unjustly fired is that other employers are less likely to hold it against you. So I went back to a former employer and am still there as well as working for another similar company with hours totaling about 70 per week. Neither are in journalism, which I don't think I'll ever get completely over, but I get by. I also have no real passion to ever try to get back into journalism or a desire to move to the middle of nowhere and make $20,000 a year without benefits just to try to "live the dream."
I guess I still have some hope, but I feel kind of like Winston in 1984 after he gets found out by Big Brother. By working so I much I may some day sock away enough money where I can retire at a fairly young age, but know there are so many obstacles in place this may be less likely to happen than will.
Anyway, not sure if this is venting, some kind of joke or just honestly looking for others who believe this is a genuine reality. Perhaps it is a cathartic post made for purely that experience and to know others may see it rather than just to have it exist in my mind. I'm definitely not looking for sympathy though (at least not intentionally) as I've certainly been worse off and said nothing and also know plenty of you lot have it much worse off than me.
That is a pretty strong statement. If you read the book you know nothing is like Winston Smith after he gets found out by Big Brother. He was tortured beyond what you ever want to experience and then taken to Room 101. Are you ready to become a good party member or...be vaporized?
About two weeks after I started on the flightline in the Air Force I realized I was an IMPORTANT small cog in a very big machine. I asked my trainer a question about the planes we were preparing for a deployment. There was a piece of equipment that had to be installed on the planes that deployed. We were physically checking the 24 primary birds. I asked my trainer 'What about the spares that may make the flight if one of the primaries abort? Won't they need the same device?' He looked at me for a moment then said follow me, and led me into the Shop Chiefs office. Here I am in the office of the boss three levels above me. My trainer turns to me and says 'Ask Master Sergeant Summers what you just asked me' I gulped and said 'We're making sure all the primary birds have a 'widget' but what about the spares? Won't they need it if a primary bird aborts?"
They looked at each other and my trainer grinned and MSgt Summers said "S%!T" My Trainer said "Yea how come out of a shop with 40 trained technicians the junior trainee sees it?"
Things got real hectic for the rest of the day as we pulled components out of supply and got all the widgets installed and aligned in the spares. The next day 24 primary and 12 spares prepared to launch. I think 22 primes and 12 spares launched. By the time they got to the go/nogo point to cross the ocean 4 of the spares continued on making the deployment
So I learned early that any cog is important and as I went through my career I tried to make sure that younger folks that worked with or for me understood it also.
You became a bit dangerous in their world at that time. Fortunately, the military isn't a cut throat job security type of corporation. They valued your input and you gained something from it as the MSGT has more clout than some junior officers.
I was responsible for a few facilities having to write non existing SOPs in my career. As in your case, they were astounded the new guy picked up on it. The people who had been there hated me for a few months. They loved me when it came time to train new hires.
That is a pretty strong statement. If you read the book you know nothing is like Winston Smith after he gets found out by Big Brother. He was tortured beyond what you ever want to experience and then taken to Room 101. Are you ready to become a good party member or...be vaporized?
I feel like I'm being a good party member now by being a cog. Sometimes I welcome the thought of vaporization. At least it would stop the repetition or be a change. But I'm not suicidal or anything. Which is why I used Winston as an example. I'm just kind of numb to it all. Although you're right in that our experiences are quite different. Hence, why I put the "kind of like" qualifier in.
Right after college I worked as a temp at many corporations...which is about as insignificant as a cog can get.
I worked for about two months at Blue Cross/Blue Shield in a department that....did absolutely nothing, as far as I could see. We pushed paper around. Nothing seemed to actually have any purpose. It was incredibly boring, and the department secretary was a petty dictator with no computer skills who was resentful that I had figured out how to use Word Perfect and she was still struggling after taking several classes in it. One day I was at the copy machine with a big pile of documents and a woman comes by and sees me heave a big sigh. She says "You have to walk before you can run" and all I could think is "You call what you do 'running'?" Because she was a mere one step above me and did not appear one bit happier. So I quit.
Happened to me pretty early on in my career. I was the senior editor in the publications department of a major American university. My boss loved my work. He said I was the best editor he'd ever hired. Then one day, a new VP comes in and decides to do some restructuring and cost-cutting. He cans my boss, who was about two years away from retirement and relied on his insurance coverage for a host of serious health problems, and then he decides the department can get along fine without any editors. I got three months' severance and was left completely disillusioned.
Today I work by choice as a contractor. I have a 10-year relationship with the company I contract for -- five as an in-house employee, and the past five as my own boss. People talk about my value to the company, but I've heard it all before, and I'm sure I'd be one of the first to go in the event of budget cutbacks, since I make a fairly decent wage doing what I do. Why pay me what they do when they could pay two kids fresh out of college to do my job part-time for less money? I feel like it's just a matter of time, especially since the company lost a huge contract a year ago and has been flailing around ever since for a direction.
I'm just barely old enough to remember the days of company loyalty. You could go to work for the mill downtown, earn enough to feed your family and buy a nice house and a car, and retire with the gold watch. Now our manufacturing base has been gutted and moved overseas, and employers seem to be on a race to the bottom on wages and benefits with the jobs that remain.
The most toxic idea to ever take hold in the business world is that the only purpose of a business is to make money. That reduces human beings to a cost to be minimized. Corporate ethics used to dictate that all stakeholders in a business mattered, from shareholders to employees, customers, suppliers, and the local community. Now it's all about maximizing profits for the few at the top and focusing on short-term results to appease shareholders. It's sick what we've become.
I would love to believe your version that once businesses existed not just for money, but for noble reasons, but no matter how far back I go in memory, and recalling elders' memories, I just can't find a time when that was true.
I do think it's "sick what we've become," when viewed as failure to progress culturally. We have moved forward in some areas, but it seems so slow, especially when one considers how the open exchange of ideas has been aided by the Internet.
I realized this at the age of seventeen when I joined the Army, then later, in a civilian job. To be honest, I'm fine with it since it allowed me to live a decent life and I retired in my early 50s. Without the need to work ever again in my life. As said earlier, I focused on being a quality "tool" than just an average "tool" that has very little to no value at all to the organization.
Call me a sell out or whatever because I'm a realist and not a dreamer.... I grew up in the 70s and I knew that most of my hippy teachers were full of it or that they were still high on whatever they were smoking and/or living the 60s fantasy to the max. When they tried to tell us "we are special" and that "dreams do come true," I knew that was just BS. I grew up watching my mother busting her butt at a thankless job every single day. But, it paid the bills and allowed us to have a roof over our heads and food in the frig.... Plus a movie and ice cream once or twice a month.
I think way too many people fell for the "your special" propaganda and actually thought that life would be full of rainbows, butterflies and pink unicorns. I guess I learned early that life is what you make out of it... Nothing more and nothing less.
Plus, if you're a quality "tool" and are the go-to "tool" when there is a problem, you can maneuver around with ease and do things in a manner that you can find joy in your work at the end of the day. Again, a corporation is there to make money, not solely to make the employees happy or rich, but to turn a profit for the business and their investors. If making the employees happy furthers this mission to make money, that's more than great!! Yes, I'm a capitalist and it's the only system that works... I know a bunch of people from the old Eastern Block and actually lived under communism and/or some other form of socialism.... They will simply tell you it severally sucked to the max... You will not find too many of them complaining about just being a "tool" in America since it's far better to be a tool here than in Soviet Russia, Red China or Nazi Germany.
Again, call me a sell out, but get with the program and find happiness... Even if that happiness only comes on paydays!!
Really my first job after college in a call center. By the nature of the job, you are meant to be a cog in the machine, anonymous, and you really can't be a star.
OP, I'm sorry you've felt insignificant in your line of work. I can see the frustration in your post.
The job market has and will always favor those that have set themselves apart from the lot. Even in very specialized fields like mine (engineering), an employer can still howler and they will get a whole line of engineers ready to do whatever it takes to get in. The thing is this. Chances are, all these engineers probably can do the same work with relatively the same quality. The only way for you to compete with this sea of cookie cutter candidates is to do something to set yourself apart from them. Or you can just be happy being part of this sea of cookie cutter candidates.
I speak from experience having been part of the cookie cutter candidate lineup in the past.
I graduated with a 3.5 or so gpa with a degree in engineering. This was actually a very typical gpa. Got 2nd place in senior design expo. I must have applied to 20 different places each summer for an internship and never got any. When I graduated, I had a terrible time trying to find a job in engineering just like everyone else. Trust me, there is not a big market for entry level engineers.
I realized very early on that no matter how well I performed, I was still just another engineer. There are thousands of others that could do exactly what I could do. So, aside from learning my trade and make damn sure I could do my job very well, at home I started working on a software idea that I drafted up myself. Completely original idea. There is no other software like it in the market.
In the past few months, I'd been showing it off to random people at various places. Most weren't that impressed by it. You know the saying if it ain't broke don't fix it? That's the kind of attitude I've been meeting. Even in my own company, the higher ups have been really hating my software. They want me to do the traditional way. I had to go directly to the department of transportation and got special permission from them for me to start using my software for work.
I'm not going to get into the details of my software, but I'll just say that I recently used it to do an assignment, and while it normally takes up to a week to do such an assignment I was able to get it done with 100% accuracy in less than a day.
Anyway, 2 weeks ago, I saw a job posting by a multi-national engineering firm. They wanted someone with at least 7 years experience in the specific skill. I only have 2. My boyfriend told me what the heck just send in my resume and see what happens. So, I updated my resume and submitted it.
Here is the sequence of events. Submitted my resume on Friday morning. Got an email from the hiring manager on Friday afternoon telling me to expect a recruiter to contact me. Got an email from a recruiter on Sunday evening to set up a phone interview. Had phone interview after work on Monday afternoon. Got a call from recruiter on Tuesday morning to set up an in-person interview. Went in for in-person interview on Thursday after work. Got verbal offer Friday morning. Got offer letter for a permanent employment Friday afternoon.
In the in-person interview itself, they asked me to demo my software that they had heard of before. I spent about half the interview demoing and explaining to them how much more efficient my work have been using this software. There were 2 project managers and the hiring manager there. I was actually surprised how interested they were in my software. I've found that most structural engineers don't care much for these things. By the end, they even offered to help me develop it and eventually buy it from me.
I would have been happy with a 20% pay increase from my current job. They offered me a 50% increase if I start working for them in 2 weeks.
The point is in just a few short years I went from being an entry level engineer that had a lot of trouble finding a job to being an engineer that is highly sort after. Again, in my particular field there are plenty of candidates out there with a lot more experience than me. I've had no choice but to do something out of the ordinary to set myself apart from the others.
I know you are frustrated right now. I used to be like that, too, when I applied to so many places but never got a call back. Like ever. Hang in there. I strongly recommend you start to come up with ways to set yourself apart from everyone else. Be on top of your traditional trade and add something else on top of it. Otherwise, you're just like every one else and employers can treat you like crap and get away with it.
Now, here's the kicker. Whatever you do to set yourself apart from the cookie cutter candidates, make sure you can show or demo. There are plenty of people out there who are very good at convincing employers they have special skills. Employers can't tell the difference between a BSer and the real thing. Until I started demoing my software to people, it was just smokes and mirror.
I wish you the best of luck. Take care.
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yay for little cogs linking big cogs together, big cogs are useful for big movements, little ones help make it run smoothly 
