The Dysfunction Archipelago

by

Kurt True

College

Children have a way of repeating stock phrases to one another. Have you ever noticed that? I think it's one of those instinctive behaviors that facilitate bonding among primates.

Anyway, the most commonplace stock phrase that I remember from my early childhood was this: "My dad says when we grow up, you're gonna need to go to college to be a garbage man."

This was the 1960s. Nobody said "garbage person." Sexism was an accepted cultural norm.

So, from earliest childhood, my peers and I internalized this idea that we needed to go to college. We didn't know what college was, exactly, or at what stage of life a person went there, but we all knew you would have a rotten life if you didn't go. You would have a job that was even worse than being a garbage man. Who knew what job that would be? Maybe you'd be the custodian in the bar where your grandparents hung out, I dunno.

Either you went to college, or you were going to spend the rest of your life in misery, scrubbing toilets and dusting enormous jars of pickled pigs' feet in a smoky windowless dive on a grim commercial strip littered with cigarette butts and shattered glass. I cannot overstate how assiduously that lurid dread was instilled in all of us.

See, our parents, for the most part, hadn't been to college, or hadn't graduated from college anyway. I can only think of one parent in the neighborhood who had a college degree. That was my friend Jimmy's dad. Jimmy's dad was the psychologist for the school district. He taught me how to use a compass when I was six.

Now there's a practical skill.

But for the most part, the parents didn't put a lot of emphasis on real world know how. They just drummed it into our heads that we needed to pay attention in school, and go get that college diploma, so we wouldn't toil our adult lives away in some soul crushing daily grind with no chance for self betterment or upward mobility.

If you ask me, that's why you find such rampant dysfunction in the American workplace. It's because of people like me. People who grew up with the belief that college was where you went to to qualify for a decent job.

Now, don't get me wrong. I think you can learn some useful job skills in college, even if you major in the humanities or behavioral sciences. I mean, even if you're a sociology major, you're going to learn how to write an essay and conduct research, and no doubt realize significant improvement in your typing skills.

But even if you study something practical, like engineering or mortuary science, college isn't where you learn how to work. College is where you build a foundation of knowledge that maybe helps you approach work in a rational way.

But I think a lot of us, we never got that part of the message, the part about building on the foundation. We thought we'd already learned everything we needed to know in college. So when we got jobs, we thought we could just keep doing what we'd been doing in college: sit around, take notes, form discussion groups, learn some esoteric jargon, skim enough of the material so as not to feel completely lost.

Becoming the Dysfunction Archipelago

We became what I call the Dysfunction Archipelago, islands of backwardness and ineptitude, scattered throughout the American workforce whose inhabitants posess only the most limited understanding of the world around them. In their isolation, they tend to develop ludicrous belief systems, inexplicable rituals and customs abhorent to the civilized people of the world.

If you work for a living, you will, at some point in your life, encounter the Dysfunction Archipelago. You'll sail within sight of it anyway, and when you do, you need to steer clear. Change course if you have to, but stay away. Don't drop your anchor. Don't trade with the natives. Don't try to impose your worldview upon them, or claim their island in the name of your Sovereign. Just sail on. Sail on as fast as the current and prevailing winds will carry you.

But maybe you're new to the workforce, or maybe you haven't entered the workforce yet, or maybe you've been working for a while, and it just never occurred to you that the random imbeciles you've encountered in the course of your career represent a larger socio-cultural phenomenon.

"How," you might ask, "will I recognize the Dysfunction Archipelago? How will I know when I've arrived there?" You might even be saying "Hey, I think I might have been working in an island of dysfunction for weeks or months or years, but how can I be sure?"

Well, that's where I can help. I have spent most of my adult life in the Dysfunction Archipelago. I have lived among its people. I have gained their trust, learned their language, participated in their feasts and ceremonies, drafted their sacred mission statements.

You want to know what the Dysfunction Archipelago looks like? Well, follow me up the gangplank and step aboard the S.S. Irreversible. Don't worry about seasickness. The S.S. Irreversible isn't a real boat. It's a literary device. You think I can afford a real boat? Are you kidding? I majored in English Literature.

So strap on a metaphorical life jacket, and we'll shove off with the tide. Our first stop is just over the horizon. We'll be there before you can say "superflous FTE."

The Island of Extra Eyes

What did I tell you? Here we are at our destination. Hear that distinctive urgent jabbering in the distance?

That's your first clue that you've reached the Island of Extra Eyes.

This is the island where you'll hear traditional folk expressions like "Bob, we really need to put an extra set of eyes on this project." Or "Sally, don't you think your team could use an fresh set of eyes?" Or "I think I can spare enough bandwidth to put another set of eyes on your QA environment, Dave."

If you arrive at the Island of Extra Eyes with a specific technical skillset, you will immediately find yourself surrounded by inquisitive chattering primitives who have no idea what it is you do. They do, however, want to appear helpful. Or busy, at any rate. And they're not going to look very busy if you're doing whatever technical thing it is you do, and they're ordering supplies and refilling the tape dispensers.

So one or more of these people will find a way to attach themselves to your work. Not in any useful way, naturally. The person who volunteers to be your extra set of eyes isn't interested in auditing your java source code or computing payroll liens or flowcharting complex business rules or anything that might advance any pressing organizational need.

No. The Extra Set of Eyes sees only trivia. Your interactions with the extra set of eyes will sound like this:

"Bob, don't you think these column headings will stand out better if you make them all caps?"

"Sally, let's get your team together and brainstorm about the radio buttons on this search form."

"Dave, let me know when you've added that new new favicon to the QA servlet."

"Well, what's the big problem?" you might ask. "Isn't it helpful for someone to pay attention to those trivial details that I might miss?"

Well, that could be helpful, but the Extra Set of Eyes isn't there to help you. The Extra Set of Eyes is there to look busy, and that means the Extra Set of Eyes needs to keep you busy. Once you have an Extra Set of Eyes looking over your shoulder, you're going to find yourself doing all kinds of work that nobody asked for and nobody cares about. Nobody, that is, aside from your colleague, the Extra Set of Eyes.

The ultimate aspiration of the Extra Set of Eyes, and the ultimate danger that he poses to you, is that he will become your manager, or at the very least, a permanent part of the dysfunctional apparatus that manages your position.

As if you didn't have enough problems.

"But that could never happen," you say. "Why would my dysfunctional management apparatus surrender any authority to this person who doesn't know how to do anything?"

Well, what you need to understand is, in the Dysfunction Archipelago, the managers are the only people who don't want to be managers. They're always looking for a chance to abdicate their authority to somebody else, preferably somebody who isn't busy doing actual work.

Here, I'll show you what I mean. Let's get back onboard the Irreversible, and we'll sail off to the next port on our itinerary. All these extra eyes are probably making you nervous anyway.

The Island of Too Many Direct Reports

And here we are. Watch your step on this dock. It's a little rickety since the carpenters got reorganized.

See that guy over there with the expensive haircut and the flashy accessories? That's the Chief. Notice how he's beckoning to us. We'll go say hello in just a moment, but first I'm going to need to explain a few things to you.

See, when you land on the Island of Too Many Direct Reports, you always meet the Chief right away. He might be called the Executive Vice President or the Chief Technology Officer or the Regional Director, but he's the Chief of the island, the Big Kahuna, as it were. And, if the Chief likes you, he'll say, "Welcome to the team. You're going to love working for me. Can you start on Monday?"

When Monday rolls around, you might see the Chief, and you might not. But as the weeks and months roll by, you'll see less and less of the Chief, and at some point you'll have a conversation with the Chief that goes like this:

"Listen [your name here], I've been looking at this org chart, and I can't help but notice I have too many direct reports. I just can't give your position the attention it deserves, so from now on you're going to report to [person previously lateral to you on the org chart]."

Did you land on the Island of Too Many Direct Reports with hopes of advancement? Well, good luck with that. Now you're going to need a promotion just to get back to where you were on the day you were hired.

And, if you stick around, you're likely to slip further down the org chart. That's because the managers on the Island of Too Many Direct reports are always creating new layers of management, and every manager's top priority is to push your position into the next layer down on the org chart.

See, every manager on the Island of Too Many Direct Reports has too many direct reports, for the same reason that, if you were a duck-billed platypus trainer, you would have too many duck-billed platypi.

That is to say, the managers don't know what the hell they're doing. They have no special training or technical expertise that qualify them to manage your position. They need to get you out of the way as quickly as possible so they can get back to what they know how to do: form committees, go to meetings, attend presentations, write vision statements.

The truth is the Chief never had any intention of keeping you on as a direct report. The promise of working directly for the Chief was a happy fiction held out before you like the full color photo on a TV dinner, and behind that fiction a much less appetizing reality awaited you.

At this point, you might be thinking "The Island of Too Many Direct Reports sounds like where I work, except where I work some of the people never get pushed down the org chart. Now that I think of it, the people who report directly to the Chief are some of the most inept, useless people in the whole organization."

If that's what you're thinking, then our next stop is going to look pretty familiar. Let's get back on the Irreversible set sail for the lonely atoll that has broken the spirit and crushed the hopes many an unwary adventurer.

The Island of Jolly Morons

We're not going to drop anchor this time. We'll just sail around the island. We can see everything we need to see with our binoculars.

See all those people with the expressionless faces staring out at the surf? Notice how they seem frozen into a semi-fetal position, head in one hand, beverage container in the other?

You want to know how they got that way? They got stranded on the Island of Jolly Morons, that's how.

As a rule, the managers of the Dysfunction Archipelago try to insulate themselves as much as possible from anyone doing any kind of useful work. Contact with such persons can leave the manager feeling confused, inadequate and demoralized.

It's not always that easy, however, for a manager to maintain his distance from the small minority of useful people who inhabit the Archipelago. Suppose, for example, a manager needs a report, an actual report based on real data with numbers and calculations in it. What does that manager do? Go talk to the DBA, analyst or accountant who knows how to prepare the report? No. That person's just going to ask a lot of questions and maybe even tell the manager that the data he's asking for aren't tracked, or that the request doesn't make sense and needs to be revised or clarified.

Well, the manager doesn't have time for all that. He's got meetings to go to and planning documents to write.

"I know what I'll do," says our manager. "I'll put Steve on this."

There's Steve now. Point your binoculars at the spot between those palms. See the guy coming down the trail with a manila envelope and a look of unconcern on his face? That's Steve.

Steve, you see, is a Jolly Moron. Steve is the happiest guy on the whole island. He's lived through one relayering of the management team after another and has never lost his position in the organizational hierarchy. He's always reported to the same manager.

Steve has never had a deadline. He's never had to learn a new skill. He's never had to troubleshoot. He's never been asked to multitask. He's never been assigned a helpdesk ticket. There are no expectations for his position.

Well, there's one expectation. He needs to be flat out stupid. Utterly inept. Incapable of comprehending even the simplest instructions.

Steve has to be so dumb that when you see him coming you say "Oh crap. What the hell does he want now? How can I get rid of Steve as quickly as possible?"

Let's say Steve comes to you with a request for that report, the one with the numbers and the calculations. How will you get rid of him? First, you'll probably tell him where to find his data.

You might say, "Yeah, Steve, those numbers are in the product database."

Then Steve might say, "but this request says something about, what is it? Standard... yeah... ummm... standard something."

Steve always sounds like he's reading off a banner being pulled by a biplane.

"Standard deviation," you say. "You do a GROUP BY query and get the standard deviation."

"GROUP BY?" Steves asks. "Is that one of those... ummm..." He raises his hands and taps on an invisible keyboard. "...one of those computer things you do?"

"Yeah," you say. "You do a SELECT, then GROUP BY product, then call the STDEV f..."

You gaze into Steve face, which shows so little evidence of cognitive activity, he reminds you of one of those day-old murder victims they find in the opening scene of your favorite TV cop show.

"You know what, Steve," you say. "When do you need the report? I'll email it to you."

Do you see why Steve's manager finds him so indispensible? Steve will have that report ready in no time. And his boss didn't have to answer any of your pesky questions.

You'll no doubt feel a certain level of resentment the next time you hear Steve yucking it up with his fellow morons as you stare into your coffee mug, massaging a temple with your free hand, but things could be worse.

"Worse?" you say. "Worse than this place of mute, forsaken castaways? Nothing could be worse than that. Things can't get any worse"

Well, that brings us to one of those uncanny natural laws that seem to govern this strange place. Though this phenomenon has never been explained scientifically, it has been observed by many visitors to the Archipelago that when you say "Things can't get any worse," that's generally when things get worse.

Allow me to demonstrate this point by steering the Irreversible to our next destination.

The Island of Facilitation

Take a moment to recover your land legs, and decline, as politely as possible, any offers to join committees, attend meetings, or contribute to the knowledge base. The natives here can be quite persistent.

As you explore the Island of Facilitation, you will no doubt recognize the influence of the Dysfunction Archipelago's other cultures on the island's indigenous population. You will see extra sets of eyes, redundant managers and their jolly morons scurrying around in frantic swirls of pointless activity.

But the people of the Island of Facilitation have achieved a unique cultural innovation. There has evolved on this island a new species of dysfunctionist, the Facilitator.

The Facilitator combines the chattering inanity of the Extra Set of Eyes with the hopeless ineptitude of the Jolly Moron, but she possesses a skill highly prized by the island's ever expanding management apparatus. She knows how to perform mysterious rituals that ensure satisfactory performance from persons like you. You know, the ones who do the actual work.

These rituals generally take the form of repeating what another person just said, sometimes while drawing colorful symbols on a whiteboard or tear sheet.

Follow me to Conference Room A, where we can observe Facilitator Jan in action:

BOB: We could always run tomcat on two different ports, one for the public view and one for the restricted view.

JOAN: That sounds like a pain to maintain. What if we install two copies of the war with different web.xml files?

BOB: That works.

FACILITATOR JAN: So, Joan, what I hear you saying is we're going to install two copies of the war with different web.xml files.

JOAN: Ummm, yeah.

BOB: What did you just draw on the whiteboard?

FACILITATOR JAN: That's a Sherman tank, Bob.

BOB: That's not the kind of war we're talking about.

The Facilitator is a tireless notetaker. She attends every meeting she can find and writes down any mention of work that somebody else is going to do. She refers to these notes her lists of "action items."

Later, after the work discussed in the meeting has been accomplished, she will tell her manager that she has facilitated the completion of these "action items." Her manager will praise her publicly and remind her to attend your next meeting.

If all she did was show up at your meetings and explain with words and pictures what you just said thirty-five seconds ago, she wouldn't present such a problem, but the Facilitator seldom stops there.

No, the Facilitator knows that her status within the island's hierarchy rests upon continued faith in her power to facilitate action items, so she makes a point of manufacturing action items, whenever possible, out of the naive hopes and absurd misconceptions of the unskilled. She gathers these gullible, unsuspecting souls together and leads them in a process of mass self-delusion known on the Island of Facilitation as "brainstorming."

Now, step with me into Conference Room B, and you can hear for yourself what brainstorming sounds like:

GLADYS: I need the computer to give me subtotals for every invoice and a then grand total and separate column for tax.

FACILITATOR DEAN: So Gladys what I hear you saying is you need subtotals, then a grand total, and tax.

GLADYS: And then the grand total plus the tax.

FACILITATOR DEAN: So this bag with the dollar sign on it represents...

JOAN: Gladys, you can do this with your spreadsheet software.

GLADYS: No, I want the computer to do it.

FACILITATOR DEAN: So, Joan, what I hear Gladys saying is she wants the computer to do it.

JOAN: No, Gladys, you just type a formula in the spreadsheet.

GLADYS: No, I want the computer to do that part.

FACILITATOR DEAN: OK, Action Item 1: Joan will make the computer type the formula in the spreadsheet.

And here we see the real danger of the Facilitator. Facilitator Dean's manager has given him such a broad mandate that Dean can facilitate pretty much anything he feels like facilitating, creating action items at will.

Remember, the Jan's and Dean's respective managers don't want to manage anything or know how to manage any kind of useful work. That's why they send Jan and Dean all over the island in a never ending quest for action items. Eventually, each of those action items will become a bullet point on a slide that the managers will present to other equally inept managers as a means of rationalizing their positions in the island's bloated hierarchy.

And if you, like Bob or Joan, do some kind of useful work in the Dysfunction Archipelago, your manager, no doubt appreciates the facilitator's efforts, because your manager doesn't want to manage anything either. The more action items the facilitator can dream up for you to do, the less time your manager has to spend listening to a lot of tedious details about whatever it is you do for a living.

You see, one advantage that the island's facilitators have over you is their ability to present their ideas in cultural context that makes sense to the managers, a context shaped and informed by a belief in a magical concept known throughout the Archipelago as the Strategic Plan.

Perhaps you're unfamiliar with the Cult of the Strategic Plan and have never seen the mysterious power its shamans hold over declining human organizations. Let us climb back onboard the Irreversible then, and I'll take you to an island where the desperate inhabitants have sought the comfort that only such a messianic fantasy can provide.

The Island of Catastrophic Failure

We're going to need to lower the dinghy for this one. The harbor's silted up pretty bad since the head hunters poached all the competent dredge operators.

Nobody is sure where exactly the Cult of the Strategic Plan began, but antropologists theorize that it originated on an island much like this one, a place so devoid of rational organization and coherent thinking that its people long ago lost the ability to produce any product or service of any value whatsoever.

To make matters worse, the few inhabitants on the island with marketable skills sailed away to destinations that offered opportunities for career growth and professional fulfillment.

Then, upon that sad, economically unviable island, there arose a leader.

Well, the leader didn't just arise. He was hired by a committee of facilitators and morons after an archipelago-wide search.

The leader said he could retrain all the island's inhabitants, increase their productive output, rebuild their brand, and effect important technogical breaktroughs, and before you knew it the island would become a hub of innovation, attracting gifted individuals from all over the world.

Like all visionaries, the leader attracted a number of devoted followers who spread his message of hope and salvation throughout the archipelago, and his cult grew in power and influence. Eventually, strategic planning became one of the Dysfunction Archipelago's major industries, consumiing countless personnel hours and untold material resources annually.

Notice how busy everybody looks here on the Island of Catastrophic Failure. That conference room is crammed to the fire exits with personnel from five different departments doing a deep dive on the latest discovery platform. Down the hall you'll find twelve managers brainstorming action items for the e-business road map. The facilitators are on a retreat with the data miners, who've been crunching numbers all week for the Comprehensive Report on Collaborative Excellence. The web team is doing a round robin in the auditorium, and then they're going to break into small groups and discuss their pain points.

How do we account for all this activity? You guessed it. Earlier this fiscal year, the chiefs of the Island of Catastrophic Failure hired Planning Guru Marge, who promised to implement a strategic plan. Within weeks Marge had all the islanders scurrying around, writing planning documents, forming committees, going to meetings, presenting slideshows to one another, taking personality tests and participating in team building exercises. The islanders think that Marge is going to lead them into a whole new world of prosperity and commercial relevance.

How, you might ask, could a population of unskilled, unmotivated slackers and their abdicating managers believe that a planning guru could transform their dysfunctional homeland into a prosperous, commercially relevant hub of innovation?

Well, the islanders-- the ones who really do believe in the Strategic Plan and aren't just humoring their managers while they go out on interviews-- believe because Marge has a track record. She's implemented strategic plans on many other islands. And before that, she worked as an accolyte alongside other planning gurus, who sailed around the Dysfunction Archipelago, drumming up business among the hopeless and inept.

When the planning gurus thought Marge had reached a sufficient stage of enlightenment, they taught her the cult's most sacred principle. Namely, skip town before the clients figure out the magic you've sold them is a lot of empty ritual and mumbo jumbo that doesn't solve any problems.

That's why the timeline for Marge's strategic plan covers the next seven fiscal years. By year three-- four at the very latest-- she'll have sailed far away from the Island of Catastrophic Failure, perhaps working her swindle on the Island of Outdated Skillsets or the Island of Inadequate Infrastructure or Bumblers' Cove or Key Futility or Dunning-Kruger Lagoon.

Wherever she goes, she will succeed, because the Dysfunction Archipelago is a big place, and it's full of people looking for magical fixes for all the problems that plague the modern workplace. Like any successful cult leader, Marge knows how to win the confidence of desperate people, how to command their loyalty while neutralizing all skepticism and descent.

Speaking of which, here comes an angry mob of Marge's followers now. Looks like they're all fired up from the Confronting Microagression Workshop, and they seem to recognize me from that viral video I made about "Careers in Corporate Voodoo." We better make ourselves scarce. Do you remember where we parked the dinghy?

Escaping the Dysfunction Archipelago

As we pull up the anchor and sail off into the sunset, take one last look at the Dysfunction Archipelago. Don't be afraid. Those flaming arrows can't reach us from this distance.

Notice how stressed everyone looks. See how they stomp and gesticulate in a frenzy of impotent rage. Listen to their furious howls and bloodcurdling ululations.

Now do you understand what I mean when I say you need to avoid the Dysfunction Archipelago at all costs? The first time you visit, you might feel a natural inclination to help the natives by debunking their absurd myths and directing their energies towards a more productive way of life. They might even give the impression, with polite nods and melodious vocalizations, that they're receptive to your ideas.

Don't be fooled. If they want you to stay on the island, it's because they need your technical skills to straighten out some long neglected boondoggle to which a manager you'll never meet has recently assigned an arbitrary deadline.

And once you're done with that boondoggle, and that arbitrary deadline, you'll move on to the next boondoggle with the next arbitrary deadline, and the next, and the next and the next.

And escaping the Dysfunction Archipelago, once you've spent any significant time there, is harder than you might think. You know why? Because, for one thing, your résumé will have "dysfunction" written all over it. And what happens when you go on an interview, and somebody asks you "Tell us what is it you do at your current job? Something with spreadsheets and brainstorming?"

You might think that you can transform an island of dysfunction into a rational operation that makes some worthwhile contribution to the world. Especially if you went to college. College gives you the idea you can fix anything, right? Isn't that the whole idea of college? Get an education so you can go out into the world and tell people what they're doing wrong?

Well, don't try that stuff in the Dysfunction Archipelago. It's not going to work.

Think about it. What's going to happen if you tell some dysfunctional manager, "You know what? I've done the math, and you could fire all your jolly morons and facilitators and use the savings to hire people who have real job skills."

You think that manager wants to supervise people who have real skills? No. That would involve actual decision making and keeping up-to-date on emerging technologies. That manager wants to keep doing what he's been doing for most of his professional life: go to meetings and focus groups, attend conferences, draft initiatives and progress reports, update the Strategic Plan FAQ.

The dysfunctional manager needs his dysfunctional employees, and they need him. It's a symbiotic relationship. The people of the archipelago don't want you tampering with it.

Setting a New Course

So forget all that stuff they told you in college about becoming a leader of tomorrow, or an agent of progress, or moving the world to a brighter future or changing the world or whatever line of hokum they handed you on College Night at your high school. That was a lot of marketing hype. You're not going to change the world. You're not even going to change the Accounts Payable Department.

What you can change is your own approach to life, and work, and your career, so make some changes in your own life that will steer you safely clear of the Dysfunction Archipelago. Forget about moving the world to a brighter future. Move yourself to a brighter future. The world will catch up with you later.

If you already have some useful professional skill, great. Go put it to use someplace where your colleagues will appreciate your abilities, not some isolated pocket of nincompoopery where you're going to move farther down the org chart every time the management apparatus metastasizes.

But maybe you find that your skills are not in demand for whatever reason. Maybe your Fortran is a little rusty, or the Internet has disrupted your professional life, or maybe you majored in something that shows up every year on "Top Ten Worst Majors for College Grads" features.

Believe me, I know the feeling.

Maybe you think things are hopeless, and you'll never escape the Dysfunction Archipelago.

Well, I'm here to tell you things aren't hopeless. There's never been a better time to escape. There's never been more opportunity to escape.

You can enroll in university extension classes or go learn plumbing or carpentry at a community college. In some parts of the country, you can take classes at a maker space. We have one not far from where I live. I took a woodworking class. Now I know how to make reverse grain cutting boards. Or, if your budget's too tight for that, you can learn useful skills on the Internet. I learned how to make mitered seams on YouTube.

And the Internet makes it possible for you to market your skills-- or the goods you produce-- to a worldwide audience, with minimum capital and technical knowledge. So think about how you might use the Internet as an instrument of self-promotion. Would you like to blog? Open an online store? Participate in an open source project? Write an epub? All you need is an Internet connection and some spare time.

What I'm trying to say is, if you're stuck in an island of dysfunction, or you think you might be drifting towards one, don't worry about how you're going to save the island. Worry about how you're going to save yourself. Think first about how you're going to develop the aptitude and outlook that will move you towards a productive, rewarding career, and a productive and rewarding life.

What's the worst thing that can happen? You end up working as a garbage man? I'm sorry, garbage person. Well, what's wrong with being a garbage person? It's an honest living. Garbage persons make a useful contribution to civilization, don't they? If you want to know how long civilization would survive without garbage persons, ask anybody who's lived through a garbage strike.

Actually, I have. Lived through a garbage strike, I mean. Detroit. July, 1980. I'd give it about a week and a half.

Civilization, I mean.

Now, how long do you think civilization would last without facilitators? Or extra sets of eyes? Or toadying morons? Or strategic planning consultants? Or superfluous layers of management?

Think about how you would answer that question, and let your answer guide you to a friendly shore on which the Light of Reason shines, a place where your talents will be appreciated and your efforts rewarded, a destination far from the Dysfunction Archipelago and the bizarre, intractable cults that keep her people in darkness.