Factory workers tend to no more work than absolutely necessary, which speaks about the impossibility of having a labor of love on the factory floor. Robert Schrank explains:
I was beginning to learn the second work lesson that would be taught me many times over in a variety of different jobs: Don’t do more work than is absolutely necessary. Years later I would read about how people in the Hawthorne works of Western Electric would “bank work” and use it when they fell behind or just wanted to take it easy. I have seen a lot of work banking, especially in machine shops. In some way I have felt that banking work was the workers’ response to the stopwatches of industrial engineers. It is an interesting sort of game of hide the work now, take it out later. In another plant, would you believe we banked propellor shafts for Liberty ships! (Quoted from Ten Thousand Working Days, 1978, by Robert Schrank.)
Anybody know if office workers bank work?
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