The instant response was “customer
satisfaction.”)
The influence that a positive, reassuring, work environment -
one that cultivates self-dignity and encourages contribution -
might have had on our food machine operator is obvious.
I would like to suggest, however, that there just might have
been other factors contributing to his reticence – factors that
have little to do with working conditions in the factory.
It may be a long shot, but it’s at least remotely possible that
in order to understand our operator’s reluctance to share
information, his unwillingness to involve himself more than he
had to – we might have to look farther than at his work life
alone.
We might have to look, in fact, at his earlier life, at what he
was doing even before he began to work. We might even have
to go back to an earlier stage, as far back as his youth, or
even earlier.
Perhaps he might have acted rather differently had he been
blessed with a self-confidence not dependant on external
circumstances, with an unshakeable sense of self-esteem.
And perhaps his self-esteem had been shattered many years
before.
A friend who is an experienced educator once made an
interesting confession to me.
petroleum jobs