Work Smarter, Or Don’t Work

In 2006, I worked for a natural gas pipeline as a remote data/communication gathering specialist. We hired a very talented lady just out of tech school to assist with data analysis, but found she couldn’t write a legible sentence. I offered to send her to and pay for night English writing classes, but she never applied.

I made a significant upgrade to our analysis software that saved her approximately twenty hours a week (half her work hours), and she took to it immediately, while I worked on additional upgrades.

In her annual review just a month later, I asked what additional she was doing to fill her extra time, and she nonchalantly said, and I quote: “Nothing. Just slowing down and letting my current tasks fill the day!”

OKAY….

I finished my final analysis upgrade, which made her completely unnecessary. I went to my boss and gave him a thorough review of my upgrade. He agreed that her role had been made redundant, so we called her into his office and terminated her on the spot. She gasped and sputtered, asking what we would do without her? Get more profitable since a $4,000 computer running MY program replaces your $50,000 (plus benefits, taxes, etc.) salary, works 24 hours a day, and saves us the $1,000 tuition I budgeted to pay for the night classes that you refused to take?