On Teamwork
A construction boss ordered two laborers, Romeo and Ace, to lay some planks across a deep trench. After the boss left, Romeo and Ace disagreed on who would carry one end of each plank up the rocky path on left side of the trench, and who would carry the other end up the smooth right-side path.
Romeo irritably grabbed one end of the first plank and started up the smooth right side. Ace scrambled to catch up to the other end, but he was too late; the trailing end went into the trench, pulling the first end out of Romeo’s hand and depositing a large splinter in its place. The plank crashed into the trench.
Ace growled, “Now look what you’ve done. I’ll show you how to do it right.” He seized the heavy second plank by its middle and staggered up the smooth side of the trench. When he tried to wrestle the plank across, it slipped from his grasp, smashed his foot, and crashed into the trench.
When the boss returned a few hours later, all the planks were in the trench, busted and wasted. Ace and Romeo were in the trench themselves, bruised and worn out. They were arguing over how to get the planks out.
The boss fired Romeo and Ace and hired Suzy and Clyde to clean up the mess. Suzy and Clyde retrieved the planks from the trench and threw them away. The boss ordered some new planks.
When the new planks came, Suzy wanted the less-rocky right side of the trench. Clyde said, “Sure. It doesn’t make any difference anyway, since we only have to carry one plank up the sides.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” said Clyde. “We don’t carry the first plank to the far end of the trench; we lay it on this end. Then we lay the second next to it, and so on. That way, we’ll be floating on the planks instead of floundering on the paths and nothing--including us--is gonna fall in the trench.”
copyright 2010 Harry L. Anderson