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Re: The black box problem (was Re: Reviewers for localized materials - are they required?)

Subject: Re: The black box problem (was Re: Reviewers for localized materials - are they required?)
From: "Martin Bosworth" <martinhbosworth -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 09:11:06 -0400

Dick,

Unfortunately, it has been my experience that many teams and
supervisors will demand unreasonable standards of perfection and have
that same "dehumanizing" attitude towards their co-workers as they do
other companies or agencies.

I'm not saying you're wrong, necessarily, but more that the
increasingly atomized and self-centered nature of the workplace
culture has caused us to be almost incapable of developing real team
relationships with each other. Passive-aggressiveness, vicious
backstabbing, and the like are the order of the day.

Or maybe I've just had bad luck with employers. ;)

Martin


Dear LQ (but not Lou Quillio, one presumes),

I cannot answer your specific questions, because I don't have the
relevant experience. But the first part of your post triggered a
thought about a more general problem.

We all have the experience of work among people of varying abilities.
These may be team members doing essentially the same tasks we are doing;
they may be coworkers whose work we review or who review our work; they
may be managers or company executives. Some of them we judge to be
brighter than we are and better at their jobs; some of them we judge to
be complete idiots and wonder how they were hired in the first place.
But I dare say we see all of them as fallible human beings. We
anticipate that, in the pressure and chaos of what passes for corporate
culture, everyone will make mistakes now and then. Some of those
mistakes go out the door, and we deal with customer complaints as they
arise--gracefully or not.

The moment we purchase a service from another company, though, we
believe the blather on their Web site or in their marketing
collateral--that they are a well oiled machine turning out perfect work
and garnering unanimous praise from their customers. We are shocked when
they commit even the smallest error. Waiter! I said hold the mayo! What
kind of a jerks do you have working in that rat-infested kitchen of yours!

We all do this to one extent or another. It's as if, in not being able
to see human workers sitting at desks and acting like human beings, our
brains assume the non-existence of those people and substitute an image
of an error-free automaton.

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Follow-Ups:

References:
Reviewers for localized materials - are they required?: From: Localization Question
The black box problem (was Re: Reviewers for localized materials - are they required?): From: Dick Margulis

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