I hate cross-trainers. Just running shoes, please.

I need some new running shoes. Not cross-trainers. Not cute sneakers. Running shoes specifically designed to support my feet while I torture myself so that I can zip my jeans. My shoes blow out every so often. They look fine on the outside. Hell, sometimes they look brand new which is indicative of my preference only to run only when the weather is perfect and the path is clear. But materials can only be compressed a finite number of times before they loose their resilience, at least in my shoes.

A sales lady, towering over me in three inch heels, suggested a flashy pair of cross-trainers. I could lift in them. Run in them. Flip in them. Break land speed records in them. But I hate cross-trainers. They try to accomplish too much and in the end achieve nothing. They don’t stabilize my foot well enough to lift weights. They aren’t flexible or light to help me run. If I flip, I’m upside down and the shoe is irrelevant. The only land speed record I’ll ever break is the time to bridge the distance between my computer and the refrigerator.

My husband, who probably won’t appreciate being mentioned here, is currently being cross-trained at his place of employment. This doesn’t bother him, but in my head it plants doubt. Some days I hope that more versatility will correlate to job security. But the risk in cross-training is that you lose expertise. You take a person who is efficient and productive, an expert in their area, and stretch them over a wide expanse, allowing no depth of knowledge to accrue while increasing pressure on the individual. In an ideal world, this person would become an expert in everything. But like a cross-trainer shoe, the functionality will be superficial because the truth is that time and experience are required to become an expert in anything. If you know a little about everything, then probability is you know a lot about nothing.

Instead of treating employees like poorly designed shoes, what is wrong with recognizing that people are, in fact, not interchangeable? Management systems are in some contexts effective for setting standards and measurable goals, but many times reduce an employee to a procedure. Weren’t most of these systems based on Japanese business models of the 80s? Japan has an astronomical suicide rate and, if I read the papers correctly, has been essentially displaced by China. Are we now going to institute martial law and imitate environmental catastrophe to follow suit?

Just because some random guy could take out the garbage and watch basketball on our TV doesn’t indicate that if you sat him on my sofa he could replace my husband in my life. Employees are not interchangeable. Competent people are irreplaceable. The best employees in any business, be it hospitals or shoe salesmen, are those who can think for themselves. You know who that person is – the one that everyone in the office calls to solve a problem.  It is the person you search for when you call a business with a complaint, the one thinker in the bunch of drones who can assist with your issue. Why can he solve your problem? Because he is an expert. He knows the system. 

Now take that same guy and force him to learn three other jobs simultaneously for the same salary while increasing his hours. He may be smiling on the outside, but how many times can you compress the employee before he loses his resilience? 

Enough thinking. Time to go shoe shopping.