If you control someone else’s workload, be reasonable in your expectations
At primary school we were told a moral story that seemed to me so ridiculous that I still remember it almost thirty years later. I couldn’t believe that anyone could be quite so stupid and quite so demanding as the story’s protagonist.
Last night I was talking to Paula Tew about how shifting demands placed on one set of people tend to drip down to burden others, without any extra capacity to meet them. I was reminded – not for the first time – of how wrong I was about the pertinence of that story our teacher told us.
It went something like this:
One day a shopkeeper ran out of hats to sell, so he went to the milliner.
“Forty hats please.”
“Certainly sir.”
The milliner made the hats. The shopkeeper was very pleased with his hats and paid the milliner. Over the next few weeks the shopkeeper sold all of the hats. He went back to the milliner, but this time he was feeling greedy.
“Eighty hats please.”
“Excellent sir. That’s twice as many as last time.”
“It is. But I’m not paying you any more than last time.”
“But I’ll have to use more felt!”
“No. Use the same amount of felt.”
The shopkeeper was quite arrogant and didn’t wait for another reply. He strode away happy that he was getting eighty hats for the price of forty.
A few days later the shopkeeper went to pick up his hats.
“Have you made my eighty hats?”
“I have.”
“And did you use the same amount of felt as before?”
“I did.”
The selfish shopkeeper grinned unpleasantly.
“Well come on then, let’s see them!”
With a faintly discernible smile the milliner walked to the shelf and returned with a tray of eighty, tiny, hats.
“What have you done!” Roared the shopkeeper. “Only dolls are small enough to wear those!”
“Eighty hats,” replied the milliner in a steady tone, “from the same amount of felt as forty. Now pay up.”
You can see why I was bemused at primary school: why would anyone be stupid enough to think they could force more results from the same amount of resources? Yet it happens all the time.
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I can second your story, that is exactly what maff/defra has done to farmers. Over the past 40 years government has demanded more from the same resources…
cyberdoyle