We are stuck with technology, when all we really want is stuff that works.
~Douglas Adams
Strange things happen when an instrumental piece of equipment fails. Our building is four floors high, and one day the elevator stopped working.
At first a person flounders, unsure of what to do, everything turns ashen. It is machinery betrayal, left in the lurch by a lift. The elevator had been such an important part of everything, without it, life would fail, time itself would collapse, there is a theory that black holes are caused by corroded hydraulic systems. Nobody in the small building where I work would argue.
It seems impossible to understand. In this case there is only one stage of grief, denial. “It has to work, maybe nobody tried pressing the button.”
Everything seems hopeless. It will never work, not without the elevator.
Strange things happen, though.
Soon, everybody adapts, responsibilities merge, assignments become fluid, work shrinks into manageable units of labor. As the tragedy unfolded, tasks became shared steps, everybody had a piece of almost everything. Without realizing it we had welded into a unit, whose only goal was making it to the end of the day. It seemed to be one entity working on four separate pieces of the same problem, guided by one goal, success. A machine functioning in a vacuum, no communication necessary, everybody knew what had to be done. Somehow, we had evolved into a silent form of shared learning.
The shipping guy became a sort of Tetris champion. He has a soft-sided, synthetic box, approximately two feet wide, deep and tall. He can stash thousands of packs, small boxes and envelopes in it. It’s artwork, the way he can nestle them together. He has perfected the lift, drag and lower technique to pull the container down the stairs, each step gentle and soft, everything in the same condition as it was at the top. He stands, proud, and victorious after a day’s work. With his defiant, angry beard and impeccable posture all he needs is a spear and a shield and he would resemble a Macedonian hoplite following Alexander in world conquest. Thaulos (Macedonian god of war) would be proud.
The person responsible for the international distributor orders, the biggest, most labor intensive, has mastered the little stair climbing cart. A small electric motor turns rubber tracks along an inclined plane directly behind the platform where boxes are loaded. He has developed a symbiosis with the machine, it’s electric whine sounds more like a gentle purr when Bill uses it. He stacks it in impossible loads and is off to the next floor to fill some more. He always pushes the correct button, green for climb and yellow for descend. He is one with the machine.
I look at those guys, and I’m impressed. Boxes and bins and tubs have gone up and down the stairs. There was grumbling, complaining, and carping. Every day, though, we did everything we had to do, and we came back for more.
In his exhaustive, thorough book, Hell in a Very Small Place, the Siege of Dien Bien Phu, Bernard Fall spends a few brief paragraphs on the 250,000 peasants who wheeled their reinforced bicycles along jungle paths, carried artillery pieces up and down mountains, facing air strikes, tropical disease, venomous snakes, hunger and dehydration. General Giap was hailed as a tactical genius for the victory ending France’s empire in southeast Asia, rightfully so. But it was the indomitable spirit of Vietnamese civilians who sacrificed so much that made it possible.
There have been volumes written about Theodore Roosevelt’s exploration and mapping of the River of Doubt in the Amazon. They even renamed it to Roosevelt’s River. However, without the “small army of porters” many of whom perished carrying their burdens across the unforgiving Brazilian highlands the trip wouldn’t have been possible.
After months, the elevator was finally repaired. We can move loads of boxes with relative ease from one floor to the other. I look at my co-workers a little differently, a little more reverentially. Sometimes it seemed impossible. Somehow, it wasn’t.
Nobody ever builds monuments, or names rivers after the porters. Human pack animals who keep things moving. They are left languishing in the lonely shadows of history. Here is my salute to the forgotten. I raise my whiskey glass and give them a toast. Somehow they always come through.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
