Small Widget Quotes

Democratic citizenship requires a degree of empathy, insight, and kindness that demands a great deal of all of us. There are easier ways to live. For example, we can reduce our public engagement to consumption, viewing our labour as whatever we need do to enter the consumer marketplace with money in our pockets, free to choose our widgets, to shape an identity based upon consumption. Or we can go global and expand our understanding of “us” by wandering the world and appreciating its cultures and wonders, considering both the people living in the refugee camps of the world and the residents of small towns of Iowa to be our neighbours, while maintaining a connection with our own local traditions and duties.

Are you chuckling yet? Because then along came you. A big, broad meat eater with brash blond hair and ruddy skin that burns at the beach. A bundle of appetites. A full, boisterous guffaw; a man who tells knock know jokes. Hot dogs - not even East 86th Street bratwurst but mealy, greasy big guts that terrifying pink. Baseball. Gimme caps. Puns and blockbuster movies, raw tap water and six-packs. A fearless, trusting consumer who only reads labels to make sure there are plenty of additives. A fan of the open road with a passion for his pickup who thinks bicycles are for nerds. Fucks hard and talks dirty; a private though unapologetic taste for porn. Mysteries, thrillers, and science fiction; a subscription to National Geographic. Barbecues on the Fourth of July and intentions, in the fullness of time, to take up golf. Delights in crappy snack foods of ever description: Burgles. Curlies. Cheesies. Squigglies - you're laughing - but I don't eat them - anything that looks less like food than packing material and at least six degrees of separation from the farm. Bruce Springsteen, the early albums, cranked up high with the truck window down and your hair flying. Sings along, off-key - how is it possible that I should be endeared by such a tin ear?Beach Boys. Elvis - never lose your roots, did you, loved plain old rock and roll. Bombast. Though not impossibly stodgy; I remember, you took a shine to Pearl Jam, which was exactly when Kevin went off them...(sorry). It just had to be noisy; you hadn't any time for my Elgar, my Leo Kottke, though you made an exception for Aaron Copeland. You wiped your eyes brusquely at Tanglewood, as if to clear gnats, hoping I didn't notice that "Quiet City" made you cry. And ordinary, obvious pleasure: the Bronx Zoo and the botanical gardens, the Coney Island roller coaster, the Staten Island ferry, the Empire State Building. You were the only New Yorker I'd ever met who'd actually taken the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. You dragged me along once, and we were the only tourists on the boat who spoke English. Representational art - Edward Hopper. And my lord, Franklin, a Republican. A belief in a strong defense but otherwise small government and low taxes. Physically, too, you were such a surprise - yourself a strong defense. There were times you were worried that I thought you too heavy, I made so much of your size, though you weighed in a t a pretty standard 165, 170, always battling those five pounds' worth of cheddar widgets that would settle over your belt. But to me you were enormous. So sturdy and solid, so wide, so thick, none of that delicate wristy business of my imaginings. Built like an oak tree, against which I could pitch my pillow and read; mornings, I could curl into the crook of your branches. How luck we are, when we've spared what we think we want! How weary I might have grown of all those silly pots and fussy diets, and how I detest the whine of sitar music!

Feeling like a displaced person Laura struggles with being defined by her status as a widow. “Distracted by the word widow, which had taken root, budded and bloomed in her mind like a weed in a vacant lot, Laura opened the dictionary on her desk. Flipping past thousands of words, she used in every-day communication with family, friends, and acquaintances – those little black letters, symbols to express thoughts for the ear to hear and the heart to feel – she wondered, What words gave expression to her pain? What words described the sense of something lurking inside her, or the dark shadows stalking her mind? Widow: a five-letter word, preceded by words like wide, and widget and followed by words like widow’s peak, widow’s weeds, and widower. This little word – widow- in small case, had no business masquerading as a noun: a person, place or thing. In contrast, - widget, a small mechanical object, not a feeling thing, just an object – seemed an honest noun. Widow is not an object, she thought. “It’s a word so thin as to be nothing but a wisp of breath passing through one’s vocal cords and disappearing almost imperceptibly between one’s lips. It has no life of its own. It’s a mere label, and it could just as well be a piece of paper saying, chocolate cookies or best before date.

President and Chief Operating Officer (COO), accountable for the overall achievement of the Strategic Objective and reporting to the SHAREHOLDERS who include, on an equal basis, Jack and Murray. • Vice-President/Marketing, accountable for finding customers and finding new ways to provide customers with the satisfactions they derive from widgets, at lower cost, and with greater ease, and reporting to the COO. • Vice-President/Operations, accountable for keeping customers by delivering to them what is promised by Marketing, and for discovering new ways of assembling widgets, at lower cost, and with greater efficiency so as to provide the customer with better service, reporting to the COO. • Vice-President/Finance, accountable for supporting both Marketing and Operations in the fulfillment of their accountabilities by achieving the company’s profitability standards, and by securing capital whenever it’s needed, and at the best rates, also reporting to the COO. • Reporting to the Vice-President/Marketing are two positions: Sales Manager and Advertising/Research Manager. • Reporting to the Vice-President/Operations are three positions: Production Manager, Service Manager, and Facilities Manager. • Reporting to the Vice-President/Finance are two positions: Accounts Receivable Manager and Accounts Payable Manager.

Widget Makers, Inc. Organization Chart

The growing necessity of deep work is new. In an industrial economy, there was a small skilled labor and professional class for which deep work was crucial, but most workers could do just fine without ever cultivating an ability to concentrate without distraction. They were paid to crank widgets—and not much about their job would change in the decades they kept it. But as we shift to an information economy, more and more of our population are knowledge workers, and deep work is becoming a key currency—even if most haven’t yet recognized this reality.

Murray also agrees to create a questionnaire and mail it to a sample of their Central Demographic Model consumers to find out how they feel they’re treated by other widget companies. At the same time, Murray is to personally call 150 of those consumers. He’ll conduct a Needs Analysis to get a better understanding of how they think and feel about widgets. What do widgets mean to them? How have widgets changed their lives? If they could have any kind of widget at all, what would it look like? How would it feel to use it? What do they want a good widget to do for them? Murray agrees to do the research by a certain date.

Democratic citizenship requires a degree of empathy, insight, and kindness that demands a great deal of all of us. There are easier ways to live. For example, we can reduce our public engagement to consumption, viewing our labour as whatever we need do to enter the consumer marketplace with money in our pockets, free to choose our widgets, to shape an identity based upon consumption. Or we can go global and expand our understanding of “us” by wandering the world and appreciating its cultures and wonders, considering both the people living in the refugee camps of the world and the residents of small towns of Iowa to be our neighbours, while maintaining a connection with our own local traditions and duties.

If the widget company consistently earned a superior return on capital throughout the period, or if capital employed only doubled during the CEO’s reign, the praise for him may be well deserved. But if return on capital was lackluster and capital employed increased in pace with earnings, applause should be withheld. A savings account in which interest was reinvested would achieve the same year-by-year increase in earnings—and, at only 8% interest, would quadruple its annual earnings in 18 years. The power of this simple math is often ignored by companies to the detriment of their shareholders. Many corporate compensation plans reward managers handsomely for earnings increases produced solely, or in large part, by retained earnings—i.e., earnings withheld from owners. For example, ten-year, fixed-price stock options are granted routinely, often by companies whose dividends are only a small percentage of earnings. An example will illustrate the inequities possible under such circumstances. Let’s suppose that you had a $100,000 savings account earning 8% interest and “managed” by a trustee who could decide each year what portion of the interest you were to be paid in cash. Interest not paid out would be “retained earnings” added to the savings account to compound. And let’s suppose that your trustee, in his superior wisdom, set the “pay-out ratio” at one-quarter of the annual earnings.