In this temporary job that I shall soon be leaving we had to do a stock take. I have experienced some forms of stocktaking in the past. These were mostly small time and did not involve a massive amount of organisation. In fact, the entire stock-taking system seemed fairly unintuitive and quite inaccurate based on my past experience. When a stock-take is done poorly, a retail outlet is run poorly and the poor management skills of the company are highlighted. My stock-taking experience this week was completely different and seemed to shed light on two aspects of capitalism.
The level of organisation this week was quite phenomenal. In a big company like this one it is very difficult to get every member working towards the same goal. By planning this stock-take weeks in advance the company was able to focus the entire workforce. This was most obvious during the actual count. Experienced workers from across the company were brought in bringing highly expensive and specialised equipment with them. Dozens of people filled a large room and in complete silence counted every piece of stock in the building. As a corporate machine we worked completely in tandem.
Secondly, the method of stock-taking shows basic elements of capitalism. Every piece of stock, every cultural element in the building and all the work that went into creating, producing, marketing and distributing them was summarised in a single "bleep" sound from the stock-taking machines. Everything was given a single value and this made it possible to count and compare them. More than this, us people counting became valuable based on how quickly and effectively we could count.
These patterns of unity are neither good or evil, just elements of the bleeping capitalism that we live in.
-The English Student
No comments:
Post a Comment