Posted: 3/21/2008 10:14:41 PM EDT
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There were two kinds of men in the room, gladiators and scribes. The gladiators had just come from the arena, still covered with blood and sweat. The scribes were cool, alert, and energetic. Now they were shown the drawings of what had gone on in the arena. Oddly, the discussion was limited to pictures of faulty fighting. As the images were shown the scribes would comment sagely “That thrust was rather weak” or “There you could have advanced”. The gladiators now and then would try to explain that in the arena there is not time to think of all these things, that blood is slippery and the lions have their own ideas. The gladiators were now fighting in an arena they did not understand. The weapons now were not the familiar swords and spears. The weapons were numbers, words, and rhetoric. As to these weapons, the gladiators were no match for the scribes. The scribes retired to the safety of the stadium seats. The gladiators returned to the hot, hostile floor of the arena. They knew they had suffered at the hands of the glib, clever scribes. But they remained convinced that no one but a gladiator understands the problems of fighting in the arena. |
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That sounds alot like what I deal with on my job. "Why did you do this?" What didn't you remember to do that?" "What happened with this or that?" I love the fact that what I do in the span of seconds or minutes with little time to make decisions can be picked apart by a SNCO who was fast asleep in his bed with his family at home when I was out in the night making things happen. I tell you the scribes are my leadership and I'm one of the gladiators. I am so glad that I'll soon be hanging the gun belt up for good and gladly take my wooden sword for my troubles. I hate being monday morning quaterbacked. |
Yeah and way too in love with technology. Some shit can only be solved with manpower and boots on the ground. The tech shit looks cool on their staff meeting slides though  ETA: During my last tour in the shitbox, we came up with a new name for the "scribes". We called them Craftsmen(named after the TOOL!) "Sir you are an amazing craftsman when it comes to the job." They would never know we had just called them a tool to their face. Pretty funny shit. 
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