Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Bus Driver Punished for Using Initiative to Correct Mistake

Another example demonstrating cog labor instead of human labor. In its drive to grow gdp at all costs like cancer, the 'humanity' to a large extent has been lost. An army of mindless cog labor to follow instructions - standard operating procedures. No need to exercise initiative -humanity.

When workers are treated as cogs instead of humans, surely the results(blogposts) are:


Standard operating procedures for safety are to be followed. The problem is those workers who lull themselves thinking by being obedient & follow instructions will ensure they would have a job. If mindless robots are cheaper you can expect that mindless robots would replace the mindless cog labor.

Sillypore's Hybrid Regime Profit Strategy:

  • If cog labor gets expensive - open floodgates & flood in lots of cog labor.
  • Can't afford to automate or don't want to - open floodgates & flood in lots of cog labor.

Just follow/blindly obey instructions = cheap salaries will suffice until automation makes it even cheaper.



Upper half of the reply is apologizing for the driver of bus 168 who has been driving the same route for 2 years went off route. The main gist is with the lower half (screenshot above).

Show initiative (humanity) without waiting for instructions = punished

What the public transport company just did is advertising to its entire staff that showing initiative to remedy the mistake will be punished. Henceforth the staff would just adopt a can't be bothered attitude(bochup). I wouldn't be surprised if this is the same 'corporate culture' infesting the ministry of home affairs thereby allowing a limping terrorist to escape & can't even catch him.

How to Strike Without Breaking the Law
The incident taught the workers how to strike without breaking the law - just wait for instructions. In a big corpseration, many things can go wrong & standard operating procedures can't possibly cover everything. If everyone wait for instructions from higher up......

The incident also shows the mindset of top management in control via standard operating procedures. Control freaks which i will illustrate using Adolf Hitler.

Control freak - Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler often had late night meetings with his staff generals & as such slept late & woke up late. D-Day on the western front happened in pre dawn when Hitler was sleeping. The generals in charge of the panzer armies (tanks) wanted to launch a counterattack before the allies could establish a beachhead. That's initiative but Hitler was asleep & only with his personal approval can the tanks be unleashed.

No generals dare to tell Hitler to wake up for fear of being punished('corporate culture'). When Hitler finally woke up in the late morning to give instructions, it is already too late.



The bus driver treated as cog is not just symptomatic of 1 company. It is symptomatic across vast swathes of the local economic landscape given that overwhelming number of workers are bochup, 'zombie' & low job satisfaction.

So much for promoting tourism.

1 comment:

  1. Not just Singapore - I also get punished for showing iniative in England (NHS)

    ReplyDelete