Running with the Red Queen

In Lewis Carroll's book Through the Looking Glass (the sequel to Alice in Wonderland), Alice and the Red Queen begin to run a race. But after a bit, Alice realizes that for all their running, they are still exactly where they started. And she remarks on this:

"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

We had a Red Queen moment at work yesterday. Our unit manager brought us in for a meeting and told us that we would be working much harder in the future than we are now.

And we've been working flat out. Everyone's taken on extra duties. Through herculean efforts our organization has reached out to more people than ever, has held more marketing events than ever before, has closed more transactions than ever before. The reps are on the road so much that I've forgotten what they look like. The back office staff is staggering under the processing load.

And we haven't grown dollar volume one single dime.

Yes, we're getting more sales, but smaller ones. If we hadn't gone flat out, our revenue would have dropped by half. So we're working twice as hard for every dollar. Expending twice as much overhead capacity per dollar on every sale. And the pressure will only increase as the sale amounts get smaller -- even more transactions, even more promotion, more back office work. More and more work for all of us, with no extra help, no overtime, no nothing. And somehow the budget will be cut. I think we'll be bringing our own pencils soon.

Our unit manager is not a bad guy. He's a family man -- he's got a life -- and he understands. He said, "Anything I can do to make life easier, if you think you've got too much work to handle, I'll do what I can. I'll help you prioritize, and I'll stand behind your decisions. You're a great team, and I want to keep you together."

Unsaid in the room floated the thought, "Keep us together? Where else is there to go?" Outside our office door, the official unemployment rate is 13 percent. And that doesn't count the people who've given up.

And the Red Queen laughs, and screams, "Run! Run! Run twice as fast as you can! You should be grateful that you HAVE a job."

Somebody put a bullet in the head of our economic system please. Just kill it. Let's have a new one that doesn't run on greed -- and fear.