Someone high up in my chain of command saw a snowflake icon on their cellphone the other day, and all hell broke loose. Now, sometimes, I’ll concede, the loosening of hell is what’s called for. If snow falls upon a city with hundreds of elevated roads and bridges, and you don’t prepare in advance, said city will come to a grinding halt the next morning.
Those signs that say “BRIDGE ICES BEFORE ROAD” are not kidding. And that means that driving becomes treacherous. So, any city with sense is going to take measures to prevent snow from sticking. In my city’s case, we use a brine solution and/or de-icing pellets, both of which are environmentally friendly, and when they’re used properly, they can prevent the snow from sticking to the surface to form ice, and also encourage faster melting.
So far, so good, right? I am all for public safety. As a bridgetender, safety is my jam. I will spread brine with the best of ‘em when brine is needed, and no complaint. And on drawbridges, the operators are usually called upon to manually apply these substances on the sidewalks and bike lanes for the entire length of the movable span. Do the brine trucks come by and do it in a matter of seconds, as they do on fixed bridges? No. It’s up to us.
It is, without a doubt, the most backbreaking work I do. But it’s part of the job, so I just grit my teeth and soldier on. But here’s where the “work smarter” part comes in. Or actually, where it most assuredly does not come in, and that’s what I find maddening.
Like I said, someone high up on the chain of command saw a snowflake, and we were immediately thrust headlong into DEFCON 1. Brine! Brine! Brine! Ours was not to question why. Ours was to just shut up and do as we were told.
But for those of us at ground zero, the ones who actually do the grunt work and know what’s going on, the “because I said so” explanation tends to chafe more than a little. When you’ve worked on the same drawbridge full time for 10 years, when you’ve loved it and tended to it, you get to know how it will respond in all weather conditions. Okay, so yes, that boils down to an extremely educated guess. But in this case, science is on our side as well.
Nowadays there is a weather station within 100 yards of every single drawbridge, so we have accurate, real-time data on which it would be quite easy to base our decisions. This, one would think, would make much more sense than freaking out when you see a snowflake on your phone. Especially when said snowflake is supposed to be a one-size-fits-all forecast for a city that is 142.5 square miles in size. You can’t possibly look me in the eye and say that you believe that two spots, twenty miles apart, are going to have identical amounts of snowfall, can you?
On the day in question, the local weather data told me that we had a 60 percent chance of getting 0.04 of an inch of snow. That’s the equivalent of 1.02 millimeters. That’s about the size of your average grain of sand. That’s the size of a mosquito egg. That, in the overall scheme of things, amounts to NO EFFING SNOW!!!!
But someone so high up as to be removed from reality saw a snowflake, so we all had to brine. Between manpower, equipment, and materials, the taxpayers spent tens of thousands of dollars for nothing. Nothing. Brine alone isn’t cheap. And did I mention what was in the forecast? Rain. Do you know what rain does to brine? It washes it away.
So, while snowflake man slept all snug in his bed, dozens of us, citywide, were out in the cold and rain, spreading brine for what many of us knew was a monumental waste of time. I can’t speak for everyone, of course, but for me, that meant 2 ½ hours doing the following: Lifting full 5 gallon contractor buckets up, pouring the brine into a funnel, and filling up the things we use to distribute the brine, then running up a flight of stairs while shouldering about 2 gallons of the stuff, going out into the cold, windy rain and spreading it on the sidewalks and bike lanes until I ran out, and then running back downstairs to do it all again. Conservatively, I repeated this process at least 16 times.
Toward the end, as I became weaker and more unsteady, I spilled a lot of it all over myself. My coat was soaked through. My clothes were soaked through. My shoes were ruined. My salty skin, as it rubbed against my salty clothes, felt as if it was going to slough off and leave raw patches of flesh to scream in pain. And yet back out into the cold I went, to brine.
By the time I was done, I climbed back up the stairs into my tower, and my back was in spasm to the point that I had to lie flat on the dirty floor. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was that this insane order came down through at least 5 levels of command, and any one of them could have had the integrity to stand up and say that this made no sense, and put a stop to it. But no. We brined, because someone saw a snowflake. We brined because they said so.
And because I would like to demonstrate that there is at least a modicum of human decency in the world, I’ll give you this sweet side note. When I called dear husband to vent and blubber, expecting nothing more than that he’d listen, he took it upon himself to drive the 25 miles from our house to my job to deliver a clean, dry pair of clothes and shoes, so I wouldn’t have to sit in wet briny clothing for the rest of the shift. Inside the bag was also some chocolate. He knows me too well.
When this whole debacle was brought up in a meeting later, even when they were shown the local forecasts, and even with the evidence after the fact that not one flake of snow had fallen on my bridge at that time (nor has a single flake fallen at any time in the weeks since), they refused to budge on their policy. Because, they said, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Because, they said, when we tell you to brine, you need to brine.
So once again, bureaucracy overlooks one of its most valuable resources: The brains of the very people who do the work. We are never consulted. Our suggestions are never taken seriously. Pointing out that there is a better way to do things is considered insubordination, rather than a desire to do the best, most efficient, most cost effective job possible. Logic? That isn’t even a factor. Compliance is all they care about.
Ever since that day, I’ve been thinking quite a lot about the phrase, “Work smarter, not harder.” In a system that considered consequences, and looked at the big picture, if such a system existed, that phrase would be the goal. Mine is definitely not such a system. I have a three-page list of efficient suggestions that I’ve made over the years, none of which have been implemented. Not one. Why the resistance? It’s more than ignorance and shortsightedness.
I have a theory. If you look at a bureaucracy much like a food pyramid, with all of us poor working slobs at the base of it, you start to realize that our hard work does not impact people higher up at all. They don’t care about how much we sweat, as long as the work gets done. They are sitting pretty. They just need to avert their eyes, and they don’t have to feel any guilt at all.
But if someone suggests a smarter process, then, oh, my, what a hassle for the upper tiers. They are then forced to make a little tiny bit of effort themselves (such as looking at the various local forecasts before making a decision about snow). They’re also forced to take risks. (“What if it really does snow, and we didn’t do anything? Then it’s our butts on the line!”) They would have to have some integrity and some courage to make such changes. (And that would take a lot of effort for people who haven’t exercised those particular muscles in ages.)
All of that sounds like, well… work. God forbid they do that! No. when someone sees a snowflake, and he sends out his proclamation, and the next person gets it, even if he suspects the command is ludicrous, it’s much, much easier for him to just pass the order down to the next person. No danger there. No negative consequences whatsoever. And the next person passes it down to the next, and down it goes, like scum sinking to the bottom of a pond, until it finally hits the very bottom, where it settles.
When a ridiculous order reaches the bottom rung, there is no way to pass it further downward. And all the work, as insane as it is, settles heavily on our shoulders, like a thick, brine-soaked jacket in a cold rainy wind. The working smarter part would benefit us down here at the bottom rung, but it would be too much risk, effort, and hassle for those up above, and hey, they are the decision makers, and they get to stay warm and dry, so they don’t care.
Some of us (like me) can’t resist looking upward and shouting, “Hey! This is STUPID!!!!” But no one listens. The more diplomatic ones might even suggest a better way. And for that they are reprimanded for being unprofessional, until they finally become so disillusioned that they give up and become part of the problem.
As long as you get to push the insanity ever downward, you don’t have to acknowledge it, let alone address it. No. You’re above it all. You don’t even have to worry about mussing up your coiffure. So why on earth should anything change?
I understand the desire to get rid of fraud, waste and abuse. I truly do. But the solution isn’t to do a wholesale firing of the people on the bottom of the bureaucratic pyramid. They’re only doing what they’re told, and most of them know it’s stupid. No, if you really want to make a financial difference, then work on the top tiers. Get them to efficiently communicate, encourage innovation, and embrace change. Until that happens, you can make all the cuts you want, but the cancer will remain. It’s a cold, heartless, spineless world out there, especially for those of poor schmucks who do the brining.
May you have a bright, bright sunshiny day, Dear Reader, secure in the knowledge that you won’t have to worry about sliding on my bridge. I’ve got it under control. And then some.
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