Working

I came across an article this morning about 'the HP way'. The people who ran the place -- Hewlett and Packard -- started it because they wanted to create products that they could not get anywhere else - products that they felt the market wanted, and for which it would pay. In their case, the product was technical instrumentation, but it could have been anything. They strove to engage the people who worked there so that they saw their job as to help make the products that HP made be the best combination of effective and inexpensive. HP was their company -- at least, the part where they worked. When they did their job well, HP prospered; when they did not, HP did not. In return, HP took the attitude that these people were their responsibility -- both to challenge and to reward. They might, and did, ask them to work harder and longer than others would, but they recognized that with this came the responsibility to look out for them. To keep them around in lean times. They would not be a 'hire, use, and fire' company.

Things are different there, today.

Much of our sense of self worth, of who we are, comes from working. I know that this is not true everywhere. Part of the reason that I hope that we get to go to France next year is that I would like to see our exchange student again. But it's also true that I have this image of France, at least, the non-metropolitan parts of France, as having a different attitude toward work. I don't know exactly what to call it. Not more relaxed, not casual -- but something that says Here, work is subservient to life, not the other way around. I used to occasionally read a web comic whose plot I never entirely understood; it had something to do with sort of a combination Mission: Impossible and Tech Support thing. This strip was part of it. It resonated with me.A little more wine?