5.1 Introduction
Chapter 5: Service, the Controllable
Uncle John asked his Service Manager, Carl, to prepare a written “evaluation and recommendation on K Mucros’s time in the Service Department” that would be used in the next “Ops Review” meeting that would include Uncle John, Carl, and the Defender and K. In response, the Service manager wrote the following memo:
DATE: 11/30/98
TO: John D. Mucros
FR: Carl
SUBJECT: K Mucros’s Service Internship
K’s objectives while serving his internship in the I-10 Service Department were (as I saw them):
Learn how the service side of our business operates
Take an objective look at our processes and procedures, personnel placements and structure
Determine our strengths, weaknesses, and identify opportunities for long term strategic planning in growth and profit.
Mr. Mucros, I believe that all of these objectives were met and or exceeded. K performed duties while in the service department, including clean up, supervision, customer contact, billing and management. This gave him insight as to how we operate.
With this insight, K was able to identify what we were doing right and what needed to be changed or modified. I believe that the changes in the organizational structure of our Service Department to the “Service Team” concept, and the total restructure of I-10’s management to the business units concept, is a must if we are to grow and prosper in the years to come! (Lead, follow or get out of the way)
K’s ability to use the current management team as a sounding board and accept constructive criticism to modify a given idea when needed, made him a very welcome asset to our Service Department. He has earned his tenure with the Service department staff, personnel and management.
Carl
Service Manager
Carl’s reference to “changes in the organizational structure” concern a special project that K’s uncle had initiated earlier that year, just after they met to discuss the “Self-Evaluation” which opened the previous chapter (§4.1).
Since then, Uncle John, Carl, Bruce and K had been meeting once a month in order to develop something they came to call the “Business Unit Concept”. An important part of that project was to understand how each of the dealership’s profit-centers might be reorganized in anticipation of substantial growth. This reorganization will be described in greater detail below.
When they actually got together for the evaluation meeting, Uncle John invited Carl to start things off. To K’s surprise, Carl didn’t begin by referring to either the memo above or to the previous month’s operating statement. Instead, he handed K a form which he hadn’t seen before entitled “Employee Evaluation Report” and asked K to read it out loud.
The first sentence of that official looking document read: “Under the ‘Freedom of Information Act’ and the ‘Federal Privacy Act of 1974,’ I understand that my work performance is being evaluated.” K was sure that everyone in the room registered the confused look on his face when he read the next two sentences: “I understand that I have the right to review and discuss difference in order to receive them. I also have the right to request amendment to and/or modification of any equipment.”
At this point Carl and Cal could not contain their laughter and K realized that the serious looking form was a just a practical joke. They insisted that K read all of Carl’s evaluations point-by-point: “Knowledge,” “Accuracy,” “Attitude,” “Reliability,” “Appearance,” “Performance,” and “Leadership”. Thanks to Carl, they all had a good laugh before they got down to the serious business at hand.
In this chapter, the learning process continues with a lesson in psychosocial types and their shifting roles—specifically, their systematic distribution as determined by the field of participation.
“You have heard of Fortunatus’s Purse, Miladi? Ah, so! Would you be surprised to hear that, with three of these leetle handkerchiefs, you shall make the Purse of Fortunatus, quite soon, quite easily?”
“Shall I indeed?” Lady Muriel eagerly replied, as she took a heap of them into her lap, and threaded her needle. “Please tell me how, Mein Herr! I’ll make one before I touch another drop of tea!”
“You shall first,” said Mein Herr, possessing himself of two of the handkerchiefs, spreading one upon the other, and holding them up by two corners, “you shall first join together these upper corners, the right to the right, the left to the left; and the opening between them shall be the mouth of the Purse.”
A very few stitches sufficed to carry out this direction. “Now, if I sew the other three edges together,” she suggested, “the bag is complete?”
“Not so, Miladi: the lower edges shall first be joined—ah, not so!” (as she was beginning to sew them together). “Turn one of them over, and join the right lower corner of the one to the left lower corner of the other, and sew the lower edges together in what you would call the wrong way.”
“I see!” said Lady Muriel, as she deftly executed the order. “And a very twisted, uncomfortable, uncanny-looking bag it makes! But the moral is a lovely one. Unlimited wealth can only be attained by doing things in the wrong way! And how are we to join up these mysterious—no, I mean this mysterious opening?” (twisting the thing round and round with a puzzled air.) “Yes, it is one opening. I thought it was two, at first.”1
First, we report how a couple of old-timers at the dealership picked K up one time when he was feeling down (§5.2). Specifically, we report how K got some unexpected help from the Tucson general manager and the dealership’s school bus salesman when he needed it most. Among other things, the report illustrates how things get named in the course of practice (for example, “the Defender”). Then we describe the dealership from the point of view of K’s third assignment, the Service Department (§5.3), featuring the the case of “the bouncing tow truck”.
K noticed that the dealership’s Service function depends on a certain distance from “customers,” which led him, in turn, to realize that this depends on a certain distance from the present and that this distance varies systematically between each of the types and roles in the Service department.
“Its outer surface will be continuous with its inner surface! But it will take time.”2
We then demonstrate how these several kinds of evidence lead us to refine and extend our thinking about the complex relations between learning and work (§5.4), using our newfound understanding to reflect back on Carl’s mock evaluation form and forward to a number of themes developed in the ensuing chapters.
“And Fortunatus’ purse, presented as a Möbius strip, is made of handkerchiefs sewn in the wrong way, in such a manner that its outer surface is continuous with its inner surface : it envelops the entire world, and makes that which is inside be on the outside and vice versa. In Sylvie & Bruno, the technique of passing from reality to dream, and from bodies to the incorporeal, is multiplied, completely renewed, and carried out to perfection. It is, however, still by skirting the surface, or the border, that one passes to the other side, by virtue of the strip. The continuity between reverse and right side replaces all the levels of depth; and the surface effects in one and the same Event, which would hold for all events, bring to language becoming and its paradoxes.”3
Lewis Carrol, Sylvie & Bruno Concluded, “Chapter VII”.
Ibid.
Gilles Deleuze, Logic of Sense, p.31.