Saturday, April 4, 2020

The DoENut of the week: Stop Fighting This Battle. Your Weapon Is No Longer Approved

Once upon a time,  there was this general who was in command of the largest army in the land. 

Although enormous, and very powerful, the general feared criticism from anyone at all and he never truly bothered to train anyone in his army. Instead, he sent his officers take their battalions to the parade ground every day. And every day his officers would lead that army as they marched up and down the parade grounds. And that was their existence! They would march on rainy days and they would march on sunny days. They would march on hot days and on cold days. Whole years -whole decades- would go by and this army would know only marching from left to right.

Now this general had plenty of money. So when the troops' boots began to be worn, it was nothing to the general to just simply buy more. When their uniforms became tattered, the general would just simply order more uniforms. And when the troops began to complain that they, were not being used to their full potential (this was an army, after all, that had never actually been asked to do anything but march in unison!), the general became frustrated and used his money to hire more officers. 

These officers were used to "supervise" the troops such that, when any one soldier raised any concern at all, the officer would simply swoop in to "supervise" the soldier into submission. And that's how that army ran.

Before long, the general was employing twelve officers for every soldier. And he treated those officers very well! No matter how incompetent or harmful an officer would be to a troop or to the principles of army life, rare was the occasion when the general would actually fire one of his beloved officers. 

"Anything to get those god forsaken' troops to march up and down that parade ground the general once said. And march up and down the parade ground they did. 

One day, a terrible event occurred. Suddenly that army, which had never been asked to do anything but march in the correct order of steps, was pushed into battle. Mortified at the realization that his splendid army had never really learned how to use their weapons, the general called on his beloved officers to provide training for them. 

He gave them four days.


And in that four days that ol' army showed what it was made of and learned how to use all of the weapons that the general had given them.

And, although he gave them only three, the army trained with all of its focus and energy to learn how to use these tools. And those tools were crazy! The "Elektrisches Notenbuch", effective only in keeping the enemy (laziness) at bay, the troublesome "abc.xyz", known for its motto "I'm Feeling Lucky" but infamous for only being a band aid and a brand new weapon, the "Fàngdà" designed to bring troops close with one another in the theatre of battle -so close, in fact, that the troops themselves felt uncomfortable using it.

But they were an army and this was a war and these troops were ready -completely ready- to do their part. They t had a mission. They had four day to prepare and they were going to be ready!

And then just twelve days into the war, the general told them to stop using the Fàngdà. There was no explanation of words but the soldiers had learned that the weapon was known for flashing when the soldier least expected it. War or no war, that general wasn't going to get sued for flashing. So one night, late on a Friday, the general sent word: The Fàngdà was no longer to be used.

Starting? Well, right now of course! This is how the general's army rolled!

Instead, the army was  to use a new weapon, one that was not identified and in which no one was trained. And this time, the army had just two days to figure it out -without training and without assistance, because all of the general's beloved officers had gone home.




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