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.

A month or so ago, I was helping one of my associates.  She had brought out her clipboard and measuring wheel so she could revise the plans.  I told her that in operations, we don’t do things that way, that we do it just the opposite – we do it in the field and then draw the plans to match.  The reason it has to be done this way, as backwards as it seems, is that plans, even the most perfect ones, are never right.  You see plans reflect what exists when the plans are drawn; sort of a snapshot at one moment in time.  The problem is the world is not static, but is always changing, and so what is actually out there is not what is shown on the plans.

This was a parking space and a crosswalk that was installed according to the plans.  Do you see what is wrong with this picture?  Yup, the parking space is indeed across the crosswalk.  Of course, this isn’t a problem when no one is parking there, but it could be a teensy tiny problem for those pedestrians, I don’t know, who are blind?, or who are in a wheelchair, perhaps, when a car is parked there.  Kind of blocks the handicapped ramp, doesn’t it?  And, I don’t think a blind person is expecting to be sprawled over the hood of a car when crossing the street.  But, perhaps I am just being cynical….

Yes, another wonderful “Oops!” brought to you from one of my fellow Oklahoma engineers!  And yet we wonder why people don’t respect us?  I can’t imagine!

Steinkrueger & Schwarzer has now been open a month.  Well, not really a month, more a half-of-a-month, as we were bascially shut down the first two weeks of September for Dad’s funeral.  While not  a financial windfall, we have made a little bit of money.

My father got up out of his chair to go to the bathroom, and it was no longer the healthy him, but rather the frail one that we have seen since his fall on the ice. He was having trouble keeping his balance, and fell on the floor. I rushed over to pick him up, and he was gone; the only thing left was his shoes. I wept.

I told Victoria my dream, and she told me she has had similar dreams about her dearly departed mother.

I think my mother in the dream was right- he is still here, in the minds and hearts of those who loved him.

You’d think that when the person doing a project is out attending two funerals in two weeks, that there would be some thought to extending some deadlines that were set before the two funerals. You would think, but apparently no one at the City of Tulsa. So, I came back from my father’s funeral and had to spend the next week-and-a-half being yelled and cussed at because I was having trouble making these deadlines that should have been extended because two of my close family members died two weeks apart. I was so annoyed that I commented to several of my coworkers that I am sorry that my brother-in-law and father had to die and upset some schedules, that the next time, I will tell my family members to be more considerate of others and their schedules when they decide to die.

it is not just the time issues; it’s money issues as well. I budget about 45 days in advance, and it is impossible to budget for a funeral, much less two. I do not know when my loved ones are going to die, but it seems that there are those who I owe who think I should. Somehow, I am now looked at as some kind of deadbeat, because the money I had budgeted to pay their bill had to be used to fix my car so that I could get to the funerals and the cost of going. I did not tell the fan motor on my car to quit the night before I was to travel seven hours for a funeral. I did not tell Jim and my father to die right when Victoria and I were in the process of opening the shop, forcing us to lose two weeks because we had to close to attend my father’s funeral less than a week after we opened. Not a good way to start, as no one even knew we were open. This past week was the first full week we were open. Yet, instead of the “good Christian people” that we owe a couple of hundred dollars to doing the Christian thing, and actually giving us a couple of weeks to digest this huge financial hit, all we are getting is gimme, gimme, gimme, and gimme now! To add insult to injury, these are the same people who eagerly cry “Woe is me!” to others so that they will cut them some slack! The result of this has been the permanent poisoning of personal and business relationships.

I am sorry that Jim and my father died and disrupted your lives.

Oh, and don’t think I will forget the complete lack of compassion…

http://thefineprint.t2s2.org/Oklahoma/tfp091211.html

(If you are having problems with the link, either copy the URL into your browser OR go to “The Fine Print” on the www.t2s2.org website and click on the OKLAHOMA index and it is the post for Sept
12 2011. Sorry about the link issues!)

At first, Victoria herself didn’t know what to make of this eighty-something year old man calling her Gloria instead of Victoria.  After she got to know him, she realized it was just my father being mischievous to stir things up with my mother, because he knew that it would get a rise out of her!

Sadly, because my father is now one of God’s angels, “Gloria” is no more, and we will miss it.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/stltoday/obituary.aspx?n=howard-g-schrader&pid=153527172&fhid=12331

It is now 220 am. I had my nightly highball, and that got me just over two hours of sleep. I normally get up at 530 am, so if I were to fall asleep instantaneously, I would be pushing five hours. Since that obviously isn’t going to happen, I am hoping I might catch another hour.

The problem I have is too many thoughts crammed into my little pea brain. I can’t stop thinking. Normally, my highball will relax my brain enough, but not tonight. When I was at the university back in 1990, I was the midnight radio guy (“Michael Midnight”) Wednesday mornings (or would that be Tuesday nights?), so I at least made good use of those extra awake hours given to me by my friend insomnia, and had fun using those hours, too!

One of the newspaper columns I wrote while in Arkansas had to do with insomnia and its effects. It can be crippling at times.

So what is keeping me awake tonight? Deep pondering philosophical thoughts, that’s what. I wonder why people with college degrees assume that those without college degrees are somehow stupid and deserve to be treated with contempt and scorn. I wonder why most of my fellow engineers act like pompous, know-it-all jackasses. I wonder why they act that way towards me, a second generation engineer. For some reason, since I don’t go around reminding everyone around me how great I am and expecting them to be awed and prostrate themselves before me, The Great Engineer!, then somehow I am not really an engineer and I am deserving of scorn and ridicule!

So what if I don’t blind people with science! Why do engineers have this incessant need to make everything so damned complicated? Why do I need to spell out everything to the Nth detail when it is much easier to provide the education and tools necessary to solve the problem. Maybe it is the old teacher in me, but I have always found it to be better to teach people the right and wrong ways to engineer things so that they can solve the problem themselves rather than hoard the knowledge so that they have to be dependent on me, Engineer Man!, to save the world! I don’t understand why engineers have to have spreadsheets and computer drawings and other over-the-top fancy schmansy stuff to do a task when a simple two-bit calculator and a pencil and paper will do the job just as well and five times faster! I am an enigma, an oddball, a heretic amongst engineers because I prefer to use my noodle and good old fashioned common sense to solve problems than technology. Ninety-nine percent of the engineering problems I have solved in the past twenty-five years took about five minutes. Yes, it really is that simple!

Yet, my fellow engineers act like it is so hard and complicated, and it really isn’t! The Romans and other ancients created engineering wonders such as running water in Rome 2000 years ago and yet somehow running water is so complex that it takes state-of-the-art technology and millions of dollars in design fees? It is all a lie! Engineers intentionally make things sound more complicated than what they really are for self-preservation. Think about it- if you learn how to solve your own problems then you won’t need me, will you?

I am at a major crossroads in my life. I love engineering, but I hold most of most fellow practitioners in complete and utter contempt. There are only a handful of engineers who I would ever recommend or hire; the rest I view as incompetent shysters who perpetuate the deceptions and lies and pat themselves on the back about how great they are. In reality, they are an embarrassment to the profession that I am passionate about.

With the shop opening on Tuesday, I now have another option available to me. I am seriously mulling walking away from engineering for good. But in the back of the my head I keep thinking that if I don’t stay and fight for it, continue my insider’s crusade to expose the illusion and the fraud and restore the honor and dignity of the profession, then who will?

This is what keeps me awake at night.

Hopefully, September will be much calmer!