If there's one thing I don't like, it's being put in impossible situations. One tries one's best, one works hard and does the best one can. Yet tonight at that... place, I was told, firmly, aggressively, that I am not to take two pizza off the conveyor belt at once. This is the only way, I am able to keep ahead of the curve, to stop pizza from going all over the floor. (No one else there does two at a time, and in truth, there is room enough for three pizza).
Alas, I tried to reason with this... person, and asked, "What about if there were two pizza of different sizes? Would you allow me to take two off the conveyor belt then? For surely there is no way that they could be confused." I was told a flat no: I am to do only one at a time. This... person, is beyond all reason. There is no compromise. He expects me to work twice as hard while simultaneously cutting my potential ability to work in half. He (the younger thug) said, as he laughed, "this is your 'course'" alluding to my academic studies.
In the second century of the Christian Era Seneca the Younger (Moral Letters 76.10) once wrote, "What is so special about man? Reason." (trans. Latham). Likewise, Seneca wrote (Moral Letters 76.9), "What is the best thing for man? Reason: this is what animals fall short of but it follows the gods." (trans. Latham). These people (if they can be called such) are less human, but more animal, lacking reason,.
I had this with the Chinese firm, expecting to edit work where there is nothing wrong with it, but being told that I must change it (when it is free from error). This is all because of an inflexible, unreasonable demand from a tyrant, again more animal than human. All because of a hard sell down a telephone from a receptionist demanding a "deep edit" (for more money) when none was required.
I am not a fan of being put in an impossible situation, and I foresee, that tomorrow night at that... place, I will be put in such a situation. Friday nights are crazy busy. I have taken appropriate measures, naturally. I don't actually care, at all, about some frivolous unskilled labour job I did as an undergraduate, for minimum wage. You can be certain that I will be taking a torch, appropriate layers of clothes and a good set of boots (for I have had to make this journey with no light, no moon, nothing but a T-shirt and no torch before) to work, for walking home two hours across difficult terrain. I have done this before, and will do it again. I refuse to be put in a situation where I am expected to work faster, yet am ordered by some hoodlum to half my potential work load.
I have a few irons in the fire (well, maybe more than a few...). I have several publications just about to come out, and more than that, I have worked hard enough over the past month to keep myself on an even keel, at least for a little while. There are also noises about making a new school, a new academy (appropriately named the Unseen University) I have the honour of being co-founder. Let's not worry too much about those... people, unreasonable, bullish, and without the ability to compromise. They ridicule my education, so let them. They will be laughing on the other side of their faces when they are stuck in a dead-end job for minimum wage when pouring scorn on scholars. "And Sir knight, hereafter speak well of scholars" Marlowe, Dr. Faustus, Scene 10, ll.81-82 [A text].
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