What Gets Measured
it sat on his desk. the cheap white mug. chipped with soulless black font, inside a fine coffee stained patina was developing. it read:
he told his supervisors, and betters, that it meant dividing joy equally into the parts of his work. of course they where onboard with anything that could be measured by a ratio. OKpi. and he couldn't blame them, it did make sense if framed a certain way. what gets measured gets done, presented by a solid slide deck and backed by a metric. work items solved by month maybe. fine, but then what was the meaning of ensuring work atoms where split into million, billion & trillion items? just to get the KPI numbers up.
the line was one he had been forced to draw in the sand. when it had overwhelmed him and staying above water meant choosing sides. he was middleaged when he realized his meaning was less about corporate work and more about something he couldn't yet articulate let alone name.
he'd just ordered the mug in rageful defiance of all that was consuming his soul. like a lot of things, it's meaning was not what he said it was. what he believed he generally felt had to be witheld. twerking above working was a signal to the outside, something he was unwilling to hide. his truth was not entirely hidden, it seeped out of prestine paper cuts.