When I was in college and home for the summer, I was visiting a friend of mine whose father was working in the yard by the driveway when I arrived. We got to talking before going inside to visit with his son, and I remember telling him how important I was going to be when I graduated and finally got my first job.
He asked me to go back behind the house and fetch him a bucket and fill it with water. I returned with the bucket of water and sat it on the ground beside him. After a bit, he told me to stick my arm down into the that bucket of water as far as it could go. I thought this odd but complied. After a bit, he told me to remove my arm and I again complied. He then spoke.
"You are as important to a company as the hole the left in the bucket of water once you removed your arm."
By this time, his son, Vic, my friend, had joined us and was just as mystified as I was by what his father had told me.
This experience took place in 1967, but it was not until 1990 and several employers, including the US military, that I finally realized that his words were absolutely correct. From 1080-1981, I was in Grad School, and had professors tell us, as potential professional managers, we should see our employees as expendable commodities but not treat them that way which appeared to me as a contradiction.
Employees are commodities and can be easily replaced, most of the time, by someone else with equal to or better skills and abilities and at a much cheaper cost depending upon how long that particular employee has been employed.
Next time you think about it, ask a computer language programmer about the bucket of water parable. He will be the first to be replaced by the AI Humanoid Robot that is just around the corner.
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