Business.

[kingtycoon]

Hideous middle-beard, it's time to make a decision!

I have so many things to say about my work and I'm not gonna, just yet. But I'm thinking about them. Tomorrow is a big meeting that I've set up over a long period of time and I have a little anxiety concerning it. Anyhow, We Will See.

I got sent to business school again - tonight, at Parker Hanifin - this giant company out in, I guess Mayfield? Beechwood? It's back with all the big corporate plazas, these enormous glass-clad buildings wreathed in parking lots and... Man is it some kind of big deal. It's weird and good to be in manufacturing - that's a thing I consider often - the creation of something from lose bits of wire and rock and oil pumped out of the ground - a substantial Thing is created that's demonstrably and actually superior to all the things that went into it. There's a nice amount of purpose that stiffs up inside you when you know that your efforts have caused this giant pile of black rock to appear one day. I helped make that, I think 10,000 tons or so a month. Anyhow we hate potholes yadda-yadda - and it's a nice company, mine, a nice little operation - 50 people or so, and we do all right, but I go to Parker H and it's... Damn. I guess, pumps? They invented some kind of pump 100 years ago and that's the whole thing pumps, hose clamps what-have-you. I don't think they make anything at the spot I go to - everyone looks clean and like they have a degree in something. Something stupid probably. That's the kind of place you end up working when you don't like teaching but get an English degree, corporate functionary. And right, it's an enormous huge business and there's like, museums inside, plaques and replicas and relics, all arranged in some fancy-memorial like arrangement. It's hard to emphasize that it's fancy, but I'll just keep mentioning how fancy it is. They have all these big training centers and classrooms, just this giant operation that makes stuff that's probably vital to national defense. Which nation? All of 'em. Probably. I think they make parts for spaceships even. You know how weird it is that you could just end up working at that spot where they make spaceship parts? And anyway there's like 5 other businesses in that office park that probably do the same these gigantic operations and they all have flags outside - of all the countries they do business in - or have factories in, or huge business enclaves 20, 30 flags, countries you'd have a hard time identifying just off of the flag.

And they make these pumps. I guess? Pump-parts and it's inconceivable that the world we inhabit can exist without a place like this and you'd never even know what it is that goes on in there except you step inside and look at the museum they have going on.

Sometimes it's confusing and strange and powerful and alienating and comforting to think of how much of the world is made up of these hives of people just accomplishing something inscrutable and secret all off some beaten path in a suburb.