The World According to "Aaarrgh!"

No, I am not talking about one of my alma maters, the University of Missouri, joining my other alma mater, the University of Tennessee, in the East Division of the Southeastern Conference, even though I am pleased as punch that Mizzou is finally going to a conference with some stability, friendly people, great football, and very enjoyable tailgates.  I have fond memories of football Saturdays in Knoxville….

I am talking about the fact that I quit my full-time job with the City of Tulsa and have decided to semi-retire from engineering to focus on Victoria and I’s shop, the little shop with the funny name, Steinkrueger and Schwarzer, Ltd.  It seems drastic, but if you really know me, it makes sense.

While I like engineering and science, I don’t like engineers.  I find them to be conceited, arrogant, vain, and most of all, petty.  Most engineers are in it for an ego-stroke, for the “Look at me!  Look how great I am!”, instead of to improve the welfare of others.  Engineers love to get their faces in front of a camera and their names in the paper, a self-serving bunch who like to pat themselves on the back for a job well-done.  Mind you, there are a minority that are great people who truly have others’ interests at heart; unfortunately, they are a small minority.  For the better part of twenty-five years, I have been around people who who deliberately made things much more complicated than what they have to be to get the accolades as great “problem solvers”, when many times there really wasn’t much of a problem to solve.  Instead of just going out there and doing what needs to be done, and doing it before anyone ever knew that there was a problem, the typical engineer is more actor than scientist and makes it known that there is a problem and that he, “The Mighty Engineer”, has come to save the day.  Most engineers I have met could easily win an Oscar for best dramatic performance.  And then they bellyache and whine that engineers don’t get any respect.  Well, quite frankly, most don’t deserve any.

I remember while working for another engineer having to draw a detail set of plans for the installation of a fence- a fence!  It’s a blooming fence!  Same thing for signs, silt fencing, sodding, rip-rap, etc.  All basic and simple stuff that were made unnecessarily complicated by engineers!  I would say it’s about greed and money, because that fence design cost thousands of dollars.  But it isn’t.  It’s about ego, plain and simple, and ego has ruined my profession.

My father was an engineer.  He was also extremely difficult to work for.  At his wake, one of his former employees came up to me and told me how my father wanted every job done his way.  I could completely understand.  Most engineers I know are the exact same way.  They cannot accept or tolerate any other way to solve a problem or get a task done except their own, because it might make them look bad.  I remember designing a storm sewer system for a consultant, only to have to completely redesign it because that’s not how he would have designed it.  Did my design work?  Yes.  Was it cost effective?  Yes.  But it wasn’t how he would have done it.  Needless to say, I very quickly moved on, as I found it very insulting; after all, my P.E. license was as valid as his.  For an engineer to criticize another engineer who is willing to put his own neck on the line and sign and seal a design because that design isn’t how he would have designed it…talk about egomania run amok!

Halfway through my undergraduate degree, I wanted to switch from engineering to journalism, because I liked the journalists better.  My father disapproved of the idea, and so I stayed in engineering.  The only times I have enjoyed the profession is when I have been a free agent working for myself, in control of my own destiny.  Of course, free agency, while applauded in athletics, is completely frowned upon in engineering.  Yes, I have had a lot of jobs- so what!  I seized opportunities to improve myself and broaden my experience whenever they presented themselves.  What is so wrong with that?    I have been called unstable and unloyal and a host of other insulting names because I have refused to stay in jobs that provide no opportunity for growth and advancement because it is what I am supposed to do.  Sorry, but I am a free- thinker, and I am not just a mindless drone slaving away for someone else so I can get a longevity pin and a meager pension.  That may have been my father’s life, but it isn’t mine.

Every time I struck out on my own as a businessman, I was roundly criticized, mostly by my father.  So, to make him happy, and to make others happy, I took a job at which from Day 1 I was pretty much told I was unwanted and stayed there for seven years, knowing that I would never progress or advance.  I had to subject myself to insults from coworkers and supervisors, see grown adults act like petty children, to please others.  Hearing citizens whine and complain about petty and meaningless stuff is bad enough; having coworkers play “gotcha” with each other and throw each other under the bus to win favor with the bosses was the final straw.  I expect adults to act like adults and behave like grown-ups, not like little children.  Unfortunately, there are few of those out there. 

I will digress a moment here and say that I am immensely proud of my two adult daughters, and how they have risen to the challenges that have been thrown their way.  One is finding college to be a lot harder than she thought it would be, but is taking her lumps stoically, and, most importantly, is learning how to adapt.  The other has discovered that the big-people world is a hard world, where you have to work at a thankless job just to earn enough to cover the basic necessities of life, and things that you thought were important, aren’t that important, after all.  She has also learned how to adapt, and I am extremely proud of her.  So, if you talk to either Jacqueline or Elizabeth, tell them that their father has publicly stated that he is proud to be their father.  Okay, enough of my digression….

I have always wanted to run a second-hand shop.  Several months ago, I decided it was time to do so.  I knew it would break my father’s heart to see me leave engineering, as he loved being an engineer more than anything else, so I waited until after he passed to do so.  I resigned effective of my seven-year anniversary date, kind of a seven-year itch symbolism.  I proved to everyone that I could be a mindless drone, that I could take heaps of abuse, that I could stay loyal; that I am not nuts or unstable or any of that rot.  I was the triangular peg in the football-shaped hole, and my philosophies and world-views are so much different than the rest of engineering, that after 25 years it was time to move on. 

Yes, it has been 25 years; actually, it has been longer.  My first job as an engineering tech was in 1985, so it has been 26 years.  That is a long time to do anything.  Now, I am dedicating my time and energy to the little shop with the funny name (as some have called it), to work as hard as I can to make sure it succeeds.

I heard from one of my ex-coworkers over the weekend.  I told him that even though being a merchant is a hard way to make a living, even though I am working harder than I ever did, even though some days are discouraging and business is gawd-awful, I have no regrets.  I was miserable and spinning my wheels at a dead-end job, going backwards fast, my future in the hands of others.  I now control my own destiny.  I am not deluding myself that the next year will be easy; it will not be.  We have been open for three months now and every day someone comes in and asks us when we opened, and are surprised to find out it has been three months.  But, every day, people come in.

My depression has lifted, and I am enjoying life.   That alone will make all the future struggles worth it.