nuclearsandwich's

Mad scribblings and inexpert musing

A Compelling Argument for Fucking Shit Up

published: 20 Sep 2012 12:09:00PM

I've told this story a lot in the last few weeks and figured it was time to write some of this down.

I really utterly despise broken stuff. I used to be crippled in my ability to write software because I could never make it perfect. I've since learned to accept little flaws (some of the time) in the interest of putting software in front of folks and fixing it iteratively as time goes on.

That's hard for me. Terribly so... so imagine the difficulty I have dealing with things which are utterly broken.

I used to work at a café where there was no authority higher than the barista who was currently on bar. They ran the store. It was awesome, it meant we shared the responsibility of management so that there was no true manager. The owner of the café valued and trusted us, so it made sense. There were some problems with this though. Like taking responsibility for the management roles that were outside the daily operation of the café. For these, we all relied on the owner and this put a lot on his shoulders when he was busy just trying to find the best green coffee.

However, we had this mop. The fixture on the mop was so old, so stripped out, that the head would fall off every few minutes. The first night I noticed this, I asked the owner for a new mop the following morning. He said "sure, of course". The next night I closed. I noticed we still had the same shitty old mop. I assumed he'd just been busy that day and that he'd get to it some time during the week.

Months went by.

When I was mopping after a particularly long shift, I realised that so long as there was a mop its degree of functionality didn't matter. When I finished mopping, I broke it in half and threw it in the dumpster. The very next day when I closed, there was a brand new mop.

Sometimes progress can't be made while the old system is still in place. I'm very much a fan of always making things just a little bit better. But there are systems in our life for which the people who can fix them don't perceive the spectrum that you do. They see a binary. Either we have a mop, or we don't there's no notion of degrees. A mop is a mop is a mop. When you're in this situation. The only option left to you, is to be unhappy or to fuck shit up beyond all capability of recovery.

It's important that you ensure there's no progress being made. The last thing you want is for someone who is taking action to have you send their work up in flames. It teaches them not to attempt progress in the future.

The onus is yours to verify that nothing is being done about the broken system. If that's the case, and you can't make it better incrementally. Burn it the fuck down and make sure that whatever takes its place is better.