At the retirement open house, the Mentor said, "the real reason the Spotsyltuckian loves the beloved machine is its dependability."
The builders of the machines no longer have a place at the table.
That's not all bad.
Raised an industrial apprentice, the Dickensian way, S. offers, "once we separate the men from the boys, it's of no concern when workers at minimum wage come and go."
A., for similar reasons, doesn't believe it worthwhile to train anyone.
Racist, sexist, their day is past.
Their lasting legacy, nevertheless, remains efficiency.
Is the latter possible absent the former?
Yes: with access to the machine shop restored for repair - management trusting to pride of ownership - productivity soars.
Though ends do not justify means, in pursuit of ends, we often lose sight.
When a technical glitch surfaces in the design of the replacement for the beloved machine, our team resolves it.
We've already discussed the preeminence of duty whether or not the employer or task is worthy.
When Mr. Hardhead offers donations to our shelter, re-directing funds from the Diocese, from which he was in dispute, and I was not, the temptation to accept, clouds better judgment.
The resolution of the technical glitch described above can not excuse the result, in the name of a greater good, so why do it?
Prior to World War I, German industry triumphed in the manufacture of synthetic dyes and fertilizer. Unforseen consequences surfaced (then, and twenty-five years later) when a national need for the by-product, poison gas, was introduced which appealed not only to their patriotism, but as a challenge to the ingenuity of Jewish engineers dedicated to problem resolution.
Len Wein's Starbreaker (JLA 29) says, "eon's ago, I learned the greatest energies are contained in the bright minds and dark emotions of intelligent beings survive on the karmic energy of human suffering."
More innocuous, perhaps more terrible, is a heedless response to an irresistable urge to solve any current technical problem.
Richard Fortney says in Dry Storeroom No. 1, "a museum is a place where the visitor can come to examine evidence."
Jokes continued to entertain, during the retirement open house, as they had for years, on moving the beloved machines to the Museum of My Front Yard.
Fortney, reflecting upon a Diplodicus exhibit, writes, "not that I regard a constructed replica of an ancient fossil as an old friend, it is just consoling to pass the time of day with something that changed little in a mutable world."
Dependability has more than one meaning.
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