If I Had A Hammer Drill

Persuasion is better than force. I don’t mean that in a moral way, that persuasion is honorable while force is not. No, I’ve got nothing against force, but persuasion WORKS better. You force a change, then by definition there is resistance to that change. That means if you ever let off on the force, you’re fucked. This is costly, keeping force applied.

If you can persuade a change it is, again by definition, voluntary. This means it is self-perpetuating and requires hardly any maintenance. Want a dog to jump in the cold lake? Give him a reason, throw a stick.

My boss is incredibly manic and fussy, coming to you every five minutes –someone left an empty box on the floor, somebody didn’t coil up the air hose properly (clockwise is correct), somebody nailed his stool to the floor – never ends. This is because I’m now doing his job, and although that’s what he wants, he is afraid everyone is laughing behind his back, thinking him a redundant old fool, not to be listened to or worse, to be dissmised entirely...

(This is amazing… he just phoned me this minute at 7:03 on a Friday night, as I struggled over the above paragraph, to ask me if I’d told the young guy we didn’t need him on Saturday after all. No joke. Jeez it scares the shit out of me when he does that. I always think it must be something major to call me at home…)

I can’t force him to pull his head in, but I can keep him informed, look appropriately grave and keep everything clockwise. It does not matter whether he deserves his chair nailed to the floor, nor whether he actually has a point. I cannot force him, so if I want the result (off my back) I have to allow him to let go while saving face. A trapped animal is unpredictable and dangerous, but given a safe way out it begins to relax.

But then again, we shouldn’t rule out force entirely. There's something to be said for lobotomies, they used to be all the rage...why, you could call it an "industrial accident"...sure you could.