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My favourite is Fritz Zwicky’s “spherical bastard” - someone who’s a bastard whichever way you look at them
Some guys aren’t good at the work but are great moral support on the job. Some suck at the work and they don’t improve the vibe, they gotta go.
You can be a dick or you can suck, but you can’t do both.
I agree as far as workers are concerned. Bosses are almost always both.
Morale guys are huge. I remember watching the Mets a season or two ago, they had Jesse Winker, okay but replaceable on the field, but absolutely a morale boost.
Back when I was in the Marines, we had guys who were just funny. Mediocre Marines, didn’t really pull their weight, but they got away with it because they could lighten the mood when we were all about ready to snap. To me, that’s important. That being said, they were also competent enough to not get themselves or others killed, which is probably the only thing more important than being funny. If you are incompetent you get to stay home.
Yup, gotta be good enough that they won’t turn the breaker on while you’re splicing the lights.
Oh damn. I might integrate this into my lexicon.
Chris Hadfield, astronaut, says in his book that in space everyone is either a +1, a 0 or a -1.
Everyone should strive to be a +1, but mostly being a 0 is fine. Being a -1 is pretty terrible, a whole other person is needed just to get back to a stable state. Which is basically what the message above is getting at.
Some of my favourites, might’ve been mentioned here:
Wisdom has been chasing you, but you’ve always been faster.
You have a unique way of contributing to the discussion without adding anything.
This is one that you might hear early in a career, get good out of spite, and drop on an incompetent newbie of your own shortly before retiring. An insult handed down through generations of reformed shitty tradespeople.
