F.W. Taylor was the original closet organizer guru on Netflix—only his reality docudrama series was based on maximizing the amount of pig iron that a man could haul in 1911. He was irked that the passions or desires of the workers were so easily stirred when these people wanted to – that is, were enjoying themselves. In today’s world we see this evasion of labour to engage diligently in other tasks, video games, for instance, with the rise of a nifty device called the mouse jiggler. This simple device, a French tickler for the techie worker, you might say, provides endless release from the need to, due to management surveillance, appear to be rapturously engaged in labour at one’s computer screen. Available for twenty dollars on Amazon, the mouse jiggler utilizes a turntable that causes one’s mouse to dart to and fro like a taxidermy version of its fully-alive self and, operating as would a ventriloquist puppet run amok, the manager’s computer program assumes that the diligent worker is alive and at her work station poking and prodding her way through assorted files and documents.
The jiggler, besides enabling the aforementioned gaming sessions, allows workers to take the opportunity to step out for some groceries or to pick up a child from school. Certainly, it’s an innovation but, as always in the social sciences, we must remember that what counts as productive creativity depends on who is writing the paycheques. Furthermore, managers have lately developed computer programs that figure out the algorithm of the preprogrammed mouse jiggler such that “machine-learning tools can identify repetitive cursor movements or irregular patterns in someone’s computer activity”. It’s a bit like the moment when your cat looks up from the plush mouse stuffed with catnip and, with a wry kittie smile, says with its eyes “you have got to be kidding – the jig is up!”
One classroom professor told us that the phrase the jig is up referred to an ill-timed visit by a manager to the factory floor, where s/he discovers a time and labour-saving device that the workers would squirrel away from prying eyes lest they be expected to work harder during their shifts. To this day carpenters use jigs for assorted projects. Time-saving devices only become money-savers for those paying the bills, after all.
Workers even without unions nevertheless found ways of discouraging their more apt colleagues from working too hard, and too fast. This process of collective management of the expectations thrust upon them Taylor termed soldiering. To overcome soldiering, the mind-numbing task of shovelling coal all day for instance, Taylor found himself a willing research participant. The worker’s name was Fritz, a German newcomer to Pennsylvania, and he was an absolute dynamo; able to shovel coal or haul iron all day and then return each evening after a Bratwurst and beer to a vacant lot he had bought—there to build himself a house for his not-yet arrived Fräulein. Soon Taylor had calculated the maximum coal Fritz could shovel and, with dubious clarity, he righteously demanded that the rest of the workers follow suit. The predictable result was a vast surge in resentment and hatred toward management. Many students of all ages reach this paradoxically situation when they turn in some of their best work only to have the instructor announce “oh, I just knew you were capable—heretofore I shall accept nothing less!”
But we don’t want to be too pessimistic about Scientific Management; a balanced appraisal yields the fact that Taylor was the first to take seriously the specialization of shovels – when workers picked the shovel customized for their task they did indeed work harder. Maybe the personalized feel helped their psychology; we know from 21st Century life how merrily a worker will glide through traffic to work when s/he at long last owns her very own car or scooter. We know from our studies that the reward lies in our sense of managing the progress of our own accomplishments.
At a more abstract level, we might want to rethink how we interpret buzzwords like innovation. Maybe sheer difference is what we’re attracted to in life rather than any essential value in a given idea, method, or major. In our breakneck digital culture, innovation has a glamour about it, a ring of excitement and improvement. But how many innovations actually make our lives as citizens, workers, and students better? Often, profits and efficiency are the root cause driving assorted innovations and so-called improvements.
With that in mind, we might recall the 90s alternative rock band Everclear’s lyric “living isn’t a simple thing, but I know some things that make it easier.” The song’s existential concern was far from any factory or classroom, more about depression and life struggles, and with that in mind we might want to think twice before jumping full bore into the world of AI. A great irony lately was the suggestion that, after spending their semesters told to never ever use AI to write their school essays, college students were implored to give AI a try for writing the cover letters for their summer jobs. Ironic! In the end, the best fit for academic malaise or over-work might be to come up with a personalized jig that makes the experience more exciting, if not more efficient.
In some areas, regions of the heart and mind, maybe Taylor’s notion of the great human who must be made rather than found rings true. Our most authentic, most diligent, and most expressive selves often can be accessed through rigorous practice (writing exercises and journal-keeping, for instance), but maybe, in our heart of hearts, we know that the us that is most ourselves can be neither trained, re-trained, maximized, or moulded. Somewhere in our core, as we learn and grow, the essential us-ness remains the common denominator in our lives – our passions and interest begin first with our inborn passion and interest, and only later with the object of our desire. In this sense productivity is truly about merely being our best self – to that end AU is a great place to do our best work because here we become our own study buddies, office managers, and, in many ways, whip-crackers (if not mouse jiggler).
