The Genius of the Mundane
Okay, serious genius moves the whole world ahead, involving big leaps of thought, like Einstein and Shakespeare.
That’s what I think of as the fancy genius, inelegantly phrased, but it works for conversation.
In the here and now, when it comes to regular people just trying to get through the day, here’s what I think of as regular genius:
A lot of people have tough, disrespected and/or low paying jobs, a daily grind which might be little more than a spark in the darkness. Getting through life like that, without surrender, and then doing a little more:
that’s the genius of the mundane.
Public school teachers are a great case, doing mission-critical work for little recognition and less pay. Once in a while they find students they prize, who show real promise, and that can be rewarding.
One teacher friend told me that “nothing beats meeting with a classroom of hungry minds. But [we] didn’t sign up for sainthood, or for having to pay out-of-pocket for needed supplies, like pens and paper.”
(If you want to help, check out DonorsChoose.org.)
Increasingly, Federal government workers don’t get no respect, they’re an easy target for bad actors in media and politics. A real problem among a few can be used to taint an entire organization, like the recent scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Bad actions by a few tainted the good actions of well over three hundred thousand workers, and that pisses me off.
For that matter, staffers on Capitol Hill begin with little pay, long hours, and no recognition. I hear they need to forage at fundraisers, and I can only suggest they focus on the vegetable platters, not cheese.
On the other hand, this reminds me to do whatever I can do to show respect for Feds, including pushing a customer-focused approach, with bottom-up employee innovation, which I have done for well over five years.
In any case, it takes a kind of genius to do the job well, knowing that no one might notice.
Customer service reps in most organizations suffer from lack of respect, frequently getting no more than lip service about their importance. However, I feel that customer service IS service, serving the public when
one’s corporate culture allows (sometimes that’s not the case).
Same here; getting through the day takes a little genius, particularly during intense abuse.
I’ve been a customer service rep for around twenty years at a company I founded, and I won’t claim any particular intelligence, but I realize that maybe it’s a deep realization of the basics which gets one through the day.
Basics? That’s like helping people get a job and get a place to live, which is to say helping people put food on the table, and a roof to put the table under. One effective way to make that happen is to provide free, effective advertising to people for whom paying for ads is a stretch.
Doing that for tens of millions of people over twenty years, that ain’t bad. Turns out that “doing well by doing good” can work out really well.
It’s not the fancy genius, it’s the most boring, everyday, quotidian stuff. But, it’s what I feel matters, getting through the day, helping a lot of other people do so, then doing more. That’s the genius of the mundane.
