I have written often about what I notice happening as the ground shifts beneath us and the cracks begin to appear: the growing reluctance of employers to put up with the economic waste of our human idiosyncrasies as the price of accessing the parts of us that are periodically useful to them. They appear to believe technology will now make that usefulness available on demand, without having to allow for holidays, sickness, or the social life we need.
I have also written about the people who act as the mortar that keeps the walls standing. Those people who keep things together because of who they are, their love of their job, or a simple humanity that makes people laugh at points when what they really want to do is scream. It is the sort of passive, quiet usefulness that escapes the silicon-based analysis that measures a very limited set of actively useful financial, productivity and efficiency parameters.
Mixing mortar is a skill. I live in an old house, built for a world in which walls …