I just had dinner with a friend. And I was complaining or telling him how I wanted to work on some cool / more impactful shit at work but then I didn’t feel comfortable / it would be inappropriate to just drop my sprint work to work on something that I feel is more important / worthwhile.

And then it hit me. I was waiting / asking for permission being doing the right thing. One thing that I really dislike about people in the service industry is that their job is to provide you a good service. When you go to the bank / restaurant / hotel / gym or whatever. But one thing that I’ve noticed is that they have so little power to help out the customer. Almost everything needs to be discussed and have manager’s approval. And then it’s like… omg. The customer experience is so retarded if you need to consult your manager for every little thing. I keep thinking that people in the service industry should use their brain and just provide good customer service and that they’ll be rewarded.

And then it hit me. We were talking about the book The Effective Engineer and how I wanted to do something that I thought would be more valuable and fix something that was annoying me. And then it reminded me of all the instances of the shitty customer service people consulting with their managers. Wow. I can’t believe that I didn’t notice that I was exactly like all those horrible people that needed permission to do their job properly. Hmmm. Food for thought.

I guess the thing I wanted to write about is… I’m a total hypocrite? Or I judge people to a standard that causes me to not notice when I do myself. Other people are assholes but I’m not because I’m me. Hmmm. Makes sense I guess. I’ve been told that I’m narcissistic.

The other thing is… I’m just gonna be an effective engineer and start working on things that interest me. Build cool shit. Someday when I’m rich I’ll start a restaurant where the wait staff has the power to give people free shit.