[1.1] Introduction

During a discussion of Patrick Moore's ideas about instrumental discourse, my TC 501 professor asked a provocative question that has been buzzing like a bothersome horsefly in my mind ever since. Like most thought-provoking questions, this one can bite more painfully than any flesh-and-blood insect: Which choice will we students make in our careers as technical communicators — will we choose to become managers, with the power to make policies and influence the field; or will we choose, consciously or by default, to become cogs in the industrial machine? (Sauer)

In this essay, I will explore the implications of this question. In particular, I will focus on the advantages of choosing the cog function instead of the managerial function. Given my combined status as graduate student, long-time practitioner of editing and writing, and cog in a state-funded bureaucratic machine, I feel confident about exploring the issues and offering insights not only to TC graduate students, but also to practitioners and professionals currently working in the field.

Edmond H. Weiss asserts that "many of the students currently enrolled in [TC] graduate programs are unaware that most of the problems have been solved and the profession has been dramatically altered" (9). In a quote that refers obliquely to outsourcing work to other countries, I suspect that Weiss tacitly defines the manager and cog functions:

As in programming, technical communications will always need a small cadre of inventive, imaginative writers and designers, to organize and manage the media databases. But most of the writing and illustrating, the input to these databases, will (should) be provided by a less professional, less talented, less expensive class of workers (9).

Further, Weiss writes that technical communicators must either choose to "swim against the tide in pursuit of personal satisfaction" or "aspire to become the central cadre of inventors and designers" (9).

Is the choice really so simple? As Moore writes, "Reality arrays many powers against people" (112). Although he's introducing a list of specific ways in which we are coerced by our physical and social realities, Moore's quote is relevant to the issues here. Sometimes, what we expect and what we get in reality are at odds.

For example, Greg Wilson discovered a different reality in the workplace than he had expected as a graduate of a master's program in TC. Neither Wilson nor his classmates had expected "low job satisfaction and little job security" (6) after working several years in the field. Wilson held several jobs in four years, many of which were temporary, contract positions that he found challenging, but not as fulfilling as he had hoped. He had become primarily a translator and negotiator: "My job was to help [technical experts] translate their meaning into my more universal set of symbols" (6). Because he didn't like the job conditions but did love the field, he decided to return to graduate school to earn a Ph.D. in rhetoric and professional communication. Yet, ironically, he found himself within a bureacracy training students for a career that he himself had experienced as "professionally unpalatable" (6).

Some of us are grappling with similar issues, or will be soon. Having made and reaffirmed the choice myself to work as a cog, I'd like to examine the consequences more closely. In this essay, I will explore the "verbal reverberations" (Hagge 462) of several terms: cog, cogwheel, hack, and drudge. I will touch upon the topics of ownership, recognition, egoless writing, personal perception, and detachment as related to the cog function. I will also describe briefly the benefits of poetry writing and general editing taught in a workshop setting: poetry as an alternative and useful creative outlet for TC cogs, and editing as a way to work toward detachment.

Finally, I will discuss several advantages of working as a cog, based primarily on my own experiences as cog and manager. However, this essay also features insights distilled from interviews with:

• three cog colleagues;

• a colleague who left cog status to work as a manager at Starbucks, then returned to his former cog position at the university; and

• a technical writer, programmer, and prototyper whose former function at Microsoft was manager/cog.

[2.1] Hacks, Cogs, and (Cog)wheels

As the new year begins, I enter my eighth year of service for the State, as editor and writer at a research university's Admissions Office. You could call me just a work-for-hire hack, and a willing, contented cog in a bureaucratic machine. But what do these terms mean on a practical level?

Although Tyanna K. Herrington discusses in great detail the work-for-hire doctrine, here's a basic and intriguing aspect: "The doctrine creates a legal fiction in the sense that authorship is legally attributed to an employer who controls the work of an employee — the actual author" (3).

In other words, I get no credit, no byline for anything I write as a university employee; because, legally speaking, the University has written it. This is a surreal concept for a pragmatist like me. For one thing, my "byline" in the form of my name and title appears in actuality on the majority of documents I produce for the University, and nearly every document I produce is archived as official documentation of the Program I coordinate. Despite the apparent security in ascribing authorship and accountability to a bureaucratic entity for all that I create on the job, I believe it would be unethical to deny personal responsibility, and hence also the credit, for content of those documents.

As for bureaucratic, I would imagine that most readers have favorite notions of what the word means, so I'll refrain from defining it here. Instead, I'll include a quote that the University has written, under the name of Mary Whisner: "'Bureaucracy' is sometimes seen as a naughty word" (665).

And I suppose that hack and cog are sometimes seen that way, too. Despite their negative connotations in popular usage, however, I'm sure that these terms can be defined if not positively, then more neutrally. From The Random House College Dictionary (TRHCD), here are a few formal definitions that suit my purposes:

• hack, n. ... 2. a professional who renounces or surrenders individual independence, integrity, belief, etc. in return for money or other reward in the performance of a task normally thought of as involving a strong personal commitment: a political hack. 3. a writer who works on the staff of a publisher at a dull or routine task; someone who works as a literary drudge.... (Stein, 591-592)

• drudge, n. 1. a person who does menial, distasteful, dull, or hard work. 2. a person who works in a routine, unimaginative way.... (405)

• cog, n. 1. (not in technical use) a gear tooth, formerly esp. one of hardwood or metal, fitted into a slot in a gearwheel of less durable materials. 2. a cogwheel. 3. Informal. a minor person in a large organization, movement, etc. (261)

• cogwheel, n. (not in technical use) a gearwheel, formerly esp. one having teeth of hardwood or metal inserted into slots. (261)

Of course, there are more cynical definitions of hack, with specific references to mediocrity or mercenary motivations (see especially the online Merriam-Webster dictionary). Yet I believe the definitions I've chosen from TRHCD are more germane to this essay, and to technical communicators. As defined by TRHCD, some of us are hacks of a sort, having made informed choices to give up independence and higher salaries for, say, the greater security and satisfaction of serving students in higher education. Greg Wilson, mentioned earlier in this essay, comes to mind.

[2.2] Starbucks Manager Gives Up Freedom and Fortune

Although he's not a technical communicator per se, one of my colleagues at the Admissions Office has a related story to tell as an academic hack and cog. A few years ago, Jesse Knappenberger left his position at the university to co-manage a Starbucks coffee shop and retail store. Yet a year later, he had given up the freedoms he had enjoyed in managerial status. He gave up the financial rewards and the opportunity to climb the corporate ladder at a successful and popular company — to return to his former duties as cog at the university. Why? As we chatted during a tea break, Knappenberger summed it up this way: "I appreciate the academic environment more than the corporate." He said that he enjoys his work with University applicants and students, and knew just what he was getting into when he returned to the position. He accepts that there's drudgery involved in the daily routine, but he's willing to make the tradeoff.

Some of us realize that the "dull" and "routine" (TRHCD) tasks that we perform day in and day out do not necessarily equate with mediocrity. Dull and routine may be how we perceive the unglamorous, so-called grunt work that underpins and supports our commitment to higher goals, e.g., the delivery of distinctive public service. Yet the payoff in personal and professional satisfaction can be glamorous on a less tangible level.

[2.3] Alpha Status vs. Cheap and Dispensable

As for cog, the informal definition (i.e., minor person) is the one that many people think of, and usually in a derisive way, certainly not as a status that anyone in his or her right mind would aspire to. Indeed, I would say that most of us aspire to the privileges of Alpha status: power, prestige, and financial compensation topping the list for many of us. We would prefer to be the dominant gorilla (er, primate) in the group. If that's not possible, then we tend to expend a great deal of energy scheming to affiliate ourselves with the Alpha individual or group.

(To read about the fascinating quirks of primate behavior, see Fisher and Morris, cited in the bibliography. In addition, see works by Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, which focus on non-human primates.)

Put another way, we human primates often calculate the best or most expedient strategies to align ourselves with the dominant paradigm within one or more discourse communities, and we search for ways to become powerful, i.e., influential, in those spheres. (Dominant paradigm: Kuhn 10-22; discourse community: Zappen.)

Interestingly, when I searched online databases such as ERIC and LISA, I could find only one specific reference to cog in the TC field:

All around me, high-salaried and experienced technical communicators were being downsized out of stable companies, companies that saw technical communicators as interchangeable cogs and, to a large extent, the cheaper the cog the better (Wilson 6).

I believe this notion of cheap and dispensable rests at the heart of what disturbs people about working as a cog, or being perceived as one. Not only does such a notion devalue a person's talents, and negate self and individuality, but it can also shake a person's sense of job security to its foundations. Few of us want to deal longterm with the sort of anxiety this produces, so we look for a "better" job or career, one that gives us at least the illusion of security.

[2.4] A Cog's Fanny Isn't on the Line, but...

On the other hand, the cog function can offer a different kind of security on the job. According to Informant 1, cogs don't have to worry about making policy decisions, and "a cog's [fanny] isn't on the line." As you may imagine, this colleague of mine used a more colorful word than fanny. Plus, my colleague was quick to point out a trade-off for this kind of security: stress. Cogs may have to deal with fallout on the front lines caused by policymakers. For instance, Informant 1 has experienced that policymakers rarely deal directly with phone calls from upset students and parents in response to policy changes.

[2.5] The Flip Side: The Essential Nature of Cogs

Another of my colleagues, a fellow writer, suggested as we chatted over cups of fair-trade coffee that it's more than the job itself that determines whether a person is a cog. Instead, it may hinge on personal perception, on whether a person feels free to use his or her abilities and talents, and whether a person has choices and any sort of autonomy on the job. My colleague had some criticisms of the metaphor. Cog-in-the-wheel implies sameness across jobs and fields, but some positions are unique in that they offer cogs a greater degree of flexibility and influence over outcome. She also pointed out that, in the cog metaphor, individual personalities blend into others in the larger network of cogs — "a cogweb," I quipped. But rather than think of us workers as undifferentiated cogs in a network, she would prefer to see us as individual blossoms in a huge field that together make up a larger mosaic of sunflowers (Informant 2).

I agree with what my colleague was suggesting. In other words, each dab of color is essential to the larger painting. Cynical or derisive definitions of cog are missing an important and opposite element, the concept of vitality. This distinction does appear in the definition of cog from the online Merriam-Webster dictionary: "a subordinate but vital person or part." A cog is a minor person, a subordinate, in a large organization, but a cog brings to the job individual skills and talents that are critical to the operation of the company.

For example, Microsoft employs more than 30,000 people worldwide, yet how many can you name? Who are the major players who get the media attention? Who are the policymakers who decide to upgrade products that are still perfectly usable? And could this handful of people have made the company so successful without the hard work of all those thousands of minor workers whose names we don't know? As Informant 3 reminded me, a number of those cogs were so indispensable to Microsoft in the mid-1990s that they were able to retire as millionaires. In their thirties, no less.

The argument could be made that these millionaires were not truly cogs, that they were indispensable to Microsoft because they were part of the organization when it was still young and growing rapidly. I would agree, had they been among those who founded the company in 1975 or had they joined Microsoft even ten years later, when it employed less than a thousand people (Stross 20). However, when the company turned 20 years old in 1995, it employed 17,801 people (Stross 20) and was highly successful financially, with a net annual income in excess of one billion dollars. As Fred Moody puts it, "Microsoft, in short, was a juggernaut — universally feared, loathed, and revered" (xviii).

I would say that some of these cogs who retired as millionaries in the mid-1990s were indispensable to the company based on their specific talents and their intense drive to perform and produce, not because of any real longevity with Microsoft. After all, a few (including Informant 3 and his partner) had spent only five to seven years in "the Velvet Sweatshop" before retiring. Based on my readings of Moody, Stross, and Tsang, I gather that Microsoft hires the best and brightest, and has no tolerance for mediocrity or those perceived as low achievers. Even its cogs, the minor people in the corporate structure, represent the so-called cream of the employable crop, worldwide.

[2.6] Ethical Consultants: Cogs as Role Models?

James Woods, one of my most respected colleagues at the Admissions Office, suggested that cogs can be role models, good or bad. He asked whether there's room in the TC field for ethical consultants. "After all," he said, "we have watchdog groups in journalism, medicine, and law." Woods pointed out that, even though those who function as cogs are not directly responsible for making policies, they do put policies into practice — sometimes with horrific consequences. For example, "Hitler's secretary facilitated the Holocaust."

The point is well spoken.

[2.7] Final Musings About Terms

Given the definitions I've cited from TRHCD, it appears that cog and cogwheel may be used interchangeably. The metaphor I prefer is cogwheel, and I like my own spelling best: (cog)wheel¹. This construction seems to encompass cog, cogwheel, cog-in-the-wheel, and the concepts of interconnectedness and circularity all at once.

[3.1] (Cog)wheels, Ownership, and Recognition

Speaking of going around in circles, I'm fortunate to work as multiple (cog)wheels at the University: Copy Editor, Proofreader, Web Mechanic, Researcher, Interpreter, Analyst, and Managerial Editor, aka Traffic Manager. Don't be fooled by the last two terms. They simply mean that I "manage" a process (i.e., a program) by coordinating a substantial paper and electronic trail. Although I must be familiar with policies and how they affect the publication I work with, making new policies is not my job. I can suggest changes to certain policies, but the power to approve them rests with others who stand higher on the ladder of hierarchy.

My position also involves a great deal of writing. Three years ago, my "Curious Researcher" persona decided to measure my writing output. This was a fairly easy project, since 98 percent of my writing and editorial output is archived as official documentation for the Transfer Guide (TG). The TG is a continuously updated reference manual which lists in table form how courses transfer to the University from community and technical colleges in the state. I'm responsible for ensuring accuracy in the online Course Equivalency Tables, a section of the TG which would run 1100 pages in length if printed.

In the 18-month period from June 1998 through November 1999, I wrote 2,865 letters, memos, summaries, and reports — and I was only working half-time at the University during the latter nine months of that period.

Of those documents, roughly 30 percent were e-mails approximately 100 words long that notified members of a distribution list about TG updates. The remaining 70 percent of documents were a bit more challenging to write. Their length ranged from 200 to 700 words, and they contained potentially confusing information about transfer credit and course histories. My target audience included academic advisers, faculty, colleagues, and administrators.

To extrapolate then, my writing production has averaged seven documents per day, day in and day out, 22 workdays a month for seven years, minus an average of three days a month for holidays, vacations, and sick leave. I'd say this kind of output easily qualifies me as a hack (i.e, drudge). No wonder I'm pooped!

And not a single one of those documents belongs to me — they belong to the taxpayers of this state.

Of course, I'm a taxpayer, too, so the documents belong to me in that sense; but for all practical purposes, I cannot claim ownership. After all, I hold no copyright to the estimated 13,000 documents produced for the State, including the 222-page Transfer Guide Procedures and Style Manual I wrote in 2000. True, I have no desire to copyright the majority of these routine, formulaic documents, but it would be nice to hold the copyright to the manual. Why? Because it's quite an accomplishment. So much of my time, effort, and professional ego have been invested in the project. The Style Manual is basically a "brain dump," a repository of everything I knew at that time about the TG.

[3.2] Professional, Self, and Team Gratification?

Taking pride in my work and congratulating myself on my efforts only seems natural. Humans appear to have an innate need for recognition and appreciation, including self-recognition. As William James, 19th-century American philosopher and psychologist, concluded: "I now perceive one immense omission in my psychology — the deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated."

Further, I speculate that subordinate status may intensify the desire for recognition and appreciation, particularly from external sources, e.g., from those in supervisory (or Alpha) positions. Despite their value to an organization, cogs are often overworked and underpaid, a cliché but true nonetheless. Financial compensation is one way of gauging professional, and often self, worth. For academic cogs especially, it may be that attachment to work and the resulting pride of ownership become forms of gratification that help make up for lower salaries and (perceived) lack of recognition from external sources.

However, even in the private sector where salaries are higher, recognition and pride of ownership are still issues. For example, as Informant 3 described to me, there were approximately 600 people working on a major software product in the mid-1990s at Microsoft. Of those 600 workers, the core team included 50 people or so, yet the names of only two or three actually ended up on the product. Software developers who worked as contractor-cogs circumvented this general policy by surreptitiously embedding in the code the names and contributions of everyone who worked on the project.

I don't know just how much time developers spent to tweak the code that way, but I seem to detect a faint odor of what Jeffrey Carroll calls a "counterproductive dependence on possession" (19).

[3.3] Ego(ism): Are Cogs More Likely to Fall in Love?

Beyond the issue of recognition, does it matter who wrote the Style Manual? In a word, yes. Had the manual been written by someone who was more experienced with manual writing (and perhaps less possessive), it would have been a better, more useful product.

Despite the breadth of knowledge represented by the Style Manual, I've discovered two years after writing it that I actually produced an enigmatic, cumbersome, difficult-to-maintain resource that can be deciphered by maybe two people in the office, my supervisor and me. Even I have a difficult time finding answers to specific questions in it, and I know the terrain. I can only imagine how frustrating it would be to the uninitiated to try to navigate this document. This, of course, negates the whole purpose of writing the thing, as a helpful tool for those who follow me in the position once I've retired.

As Weiss writes:

Years ago, I half seriously dubbed this phenomenon The Principle of Enamorment: At a certain point in any large-scale writing project, the author falls in love with the work in progress [Weiss's emphasis]. After this moment of enamorment has passed, the artist-author, "fused" to the document, is incapable of receiving criticism well and is more likely to resist needed changes than to act on them (5-6).

Although I do concede that I was enamored of the Style Manual, I'm certain that I would have welcomed suggestions for improvements. I knew very little about writing manuals, nor did I have time to learn. I crafted individual sentences as much as possible, but the manual was written hastily, in six intense weeks; and there's been no time since then to revise the text properly to make it more user-friendly, to a wider range of people.

Weiss describes the ideal process of preparing what he calls an Egoless Manual, which includes these components:

• a high-level team to develop the proposal;

• a mid-level team to develop the specs;

• an initial test of specs;

• individual writers to work on small modules based on specs;

• a final review of all material by the design team;

• independent testing of the publication for accuracy and usability;

• a round of revisions based on test results;

• and, finally, archival of modules, specs, and documentation to use in later publications (6).

This sounds heavenly! If only we had the money in the Admissions budget to hire these teams. If only I were a manager and not a cog, so I could set the larger wheels in motion to make it all happen. We could rewrite the Style Manual. We could even write separate manuals for the various functions within the entire office!

But hold on a minute (if you'll pardon the colloquialism). Even if I were a manager, I would still need approval from a director, not only for the policies I would propose for this "ideal process," but also, and especially, for funding of this magnitude. My conservative cost estimate would be $400,000. This figure includes compensation for a minimum of 10-15 contractors working three to four months. It also includes costs of publication. If my director did not immediately (though regretfully) disapprove my request for funding, then she would consult the Executive Director for approval, who in turn would consult the Assistant Vice President, who then would consult the Vice President of the division. If the request for funding actually got approved up to that level, then it would be the VP who would make the final decision.

Of course, I'm writing tongue-in-cheek about my ambitions at the Admissions Office and the impracticalities of producing an Egoless Manual. However, I can assure you in seriousness that the process to approve funding for substantial projects at bureaucratic institutions can be complicated and can take many months, if not years. This illustrates one of the frustrations that managers may encounter: external restrictions on power that can easily transform a policymaker into a manager/cog.

[4.1] Managers As Cogs: Public and Private Sectors

During a similar budget crisis at a state-funded university in California, I worked as supervisor at the Admissions Office. I held the power to hire people and to evaluate their performance, yet my power to institute policy was limited to our small unit, Micrographics. Had it occurred to me, I may have been able to influence the field of micrographics by writing and publishing papers that included empirical and numerical data in support of this or that method of productivity. And by building a reputation in the field, I may have been in a better position to influence policies within the Admissions Office as they related to my departmental unit. But I doubt it. Micrographics technology was outdated even then, and I was too busy playing "Mother Hen" at the local level. It was challenge enough to motivate adults to work as cogs, if not contentedly then at least in concert without undue grumbling.

The greater measure of power resided with California state legislators and flowed down the ladder of hierarchy to the university's administrators, who then made decisions that affected the entire office, including how to allocate funds from the annual budget. One year, my supervisor discovered a windfall of $9,000 in the Admissions budget. She asked me to hire as many student assistants as needed in order to spend the money. "Whatever isn't spent during one fiscal year is deducted from the following year's budgetary allowance. Use it or lose it" (Smith, "A Foot in Three Camps," 116). By the time power had trickled down the ladder to my rung, all I could do was make the decisions involved in hiring eight student assistants. Then I had to scramble to find work space for them and to keep them busy for ten long weeks, not an experience that I ever want to repeat.

I'd much rather work as a cog than as a manager/cog.

[4.2] MS Program Manager

Of course, my university position in California had little to do with the TC field. Does this mean that the point I'm making would be any different otherwise? Let's consider the case of a technical writer in the software industry who came to the same conclusion independently. Informant 3 is a long-time friend of mine who asked me not to reveal his identity, so I'll use his pseudonym here for the sake of convenience. In the early 1990s, Tony A. was hired in permanent status as Program Manager at Microsoft. For six years, he served as intermediary between marketers, designers, and software developers, a job that frequently tested his patience and honed his skills of negotiation.

In the mid-1990s, the company employed approximately 18,000 people, 400 of whom were program managers (PMs). As Tony explained it, PMs were responsible for translating ideas from marketers for products, or components of products, into design specifications, which are a form of blueprint. Specs described what a product would look like, what it was supposed to do, and how people would interact with it. Not surprisingly, a spec could run anywhere from 8 to 200 pages long per component. (Clip-it, for example, was a single component of Word.) Specs also could include pseudo-code that gave an overview of the underlying logic. Developers then used the specs to write the actual code to build the product or component.

In addition to writing specs, PMs were responsible for overseeing creation of graphics and testing of components. PMs usually hired contractors for these tasks, but Tony preferred designing, prototyping, and testing components himself. He felt as though he had more control over the work that way. As managers of programs rather than managers of people, PMs had little control over the people who produced components. Tony also broke with convention by writing the code and building the prototype before writing the spec, because "words don't do the job." Prototyping helped him find and fix user-interface bugs in advance.

When I asked how much power he had to make policies, Tony answered that PMs were authorized to create style guides for spec sets as a consistent way of doing things; but beyond that, PMs had no influence over policies, except for how they were implemented.

Trish Millines Dziko, also a Program Manager at Microsoft during the 1990s, elaborated the situation this way: "You do all the design and all the scheduling. You have the ultimate responsibility and none of the power..." (Tsang 235).

However, as Tony pointed out, there was another way in which manager/cogs were influential. Microsoft allowed inventors to put their names on patents, but bought the rights for a silver dollar. That silver dollar was mounted on a commemorative block and presented to the employee. If the employee cooperated with MS patent lawers, he or she would be awarded an additional $1500, not per patent, but per application for patent. Tony was awarded several patents, and we calculated that one of them generated $50 million for the company. Yet his share of the profits was considerably less!

Before being hired as a Program Manager, Tony had worked for a year at Microsoft's Help Desk and had enjoyed dealing directly with end-users to help solve their problems with software. In retrospect, after six years as a Program Manager, Tony now concludes that he was happiest at the Help Desk. He feels that he accomplished more when he was a "pure cog."

[5.1] The Freedom Inherent to the Cog Function

Paradoxically, I've discovered more happiness and freedom as a (cog)wheel than as a manager (in the policymaker sense of the word). In my current position, one of my cog functions is "traffic manager." This term is actually a euphemism for "professional nag" and refers to my periodic and polite reminders to liaisons at other colleges to send me course materials. As appropriate, I route those materials to University departments for faculty review, then periodically pester the overworked departmental advisers for progress reports.

Although "nagging" busy people is one of my least favorite tasks, it's simply one of the few tradeoffs I make in order to concentrate on the tasks I truly enjoy: copyediting, proofreading, coding, researching anomalies, and otherwise tweaking print and cybertext.

My status as cog gives me the freedom to happily scribble my editorial suggestions in red ink all over pages, both print and virtual. Those pages sometimes come from administrators who ask me to "take a look" at a document before it's released to an audience. I scribble on the pages, making suggestions that the author is free to accept or reject, and that's the extent of it. Letting go of outcome related to documents from administrators gives me the kind of detachment that allows me to welcome the next scribbling assignment. I'm also free from dealing with the responsibilities and flak that administrators may face in response to their documents.

[5.2] Starbucks Manager Gave Up Freedom — for Freedom

As mentioned previously, my colleague Jesse Knappenberger worked at Starbucks as a manager. Although his title was assistant manager, he was treated so well that he felt like a co-manager, not a subordinate. As he explained it, Starbucks wants managers to "take ownership" of stores so that they feel more invested in their success. As a consequence, Knappenberger felt as though he had "lots" of freedom to make decisions that contributed to the success of his store. The downside was this: Although he was salaried at only 40 hours per week, there was never enough time to get everything done. He often found himself working 50 hours a week or more and unable to leave work issues at work.

Now, in his current cog status at the University, Knappenberger enjoys a more relaxed kind of freedom than he did at Starbucks: freedom from a grueling, restrictive schedule; freedom from feeling as if he had no time to enjoy his life beyond work; and the freedom, time, and motivation to resume his studies at the graduate level.

[5.3] Energy to Spare for Other Creative Outlets?

This sort of freedom can also leave cogs with the mental energy to influence people through other creative outlets. For instance, a poem I wrote playfully for an acquaintance in 1996 became a minor tool in a linguistic and political debate. This debate involved approval of a list of English common names for odonata (dragonflies) originally compiled in 1978 by Dennis R. Paulson and Sidney W. Dunkle, but revised several times prior to 1996.

In part as a respite from work-related forms of writing, I've dabbled in poetry writing most of my adult life. Some of the names on the odonata list were so exquisite that I saw them as linguistic gems. So I mined a few and strung them together in a "found poem" to honor the creativity of the list's authors. Paulson suggested I submit the poem to Argia, the news journal published quarterly by the Dragonfly Society of the Americas. Despite Paulson's encouragement, I'm sure that neither of us expected the poem to be published.

I wish I could say that the poem was so well constructed and luminous that even a scientist, the editor of the journal, was impressed with its brilliance — but the truth is, publication of "The (Un)Common Dragonfly" (Smith 18) was the result of fortuitous timing. Paulson wrote me afterward that the editor was among those who'd balked at approving the odonata list. I suspect the poem was published to illustrate the frivolity of common names. Whatever the reason, those 16 lines of verse became influential in a way that had never occurred to me.

[6.1] Recommendations

Frivolous may be the word that many technical communicators associate with poetry. Yet exercises in writing poetry could prove useful. For one thing, writing a poem can be a refreshing break from the drudgery of producing reference manuals, user's guides, specifications, directories, or other forms of discourse that Patrick Moore calls "instrumental" (106) and David K. Farkas calls "procedural" (42).

With my academic training in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, along with my years of experience with producing instrumental discourse, I've learned that constructing a poem can be among the most challenging and esoteric writing of all. A detailed discussion of poetic form and structure is beyond the scope of this essay, of course, but I will say this much: The discipline demanded by poetic structures forces writers to distill ideas and language in a way that can benefit their work-related communications.

I envision workshops that would encourage technical communicators to produce discipline-specific poems. Would these spark relevancy and interest, and inspire contributions to new subgenres and demands for new publications? Would these include hypertexts, with links and strategically located graphics or icons? Do such workshops or courses already exist? Has someone else in the field already suggested this idea? I do know that someone suggests a variation. Wilson discusses the value of mapmaking (10-14) as a way to "construct novel and useful (if contingent) structures in fields of information" (11).

[6.2] Walkin' a Mile on the Other Side of the Fence: Editorial Training

Mixed metaphors aside, I suggest mandatory training in editing techniques, in the give-and-take atmosphere of the workshop setting, so that technical communicators learn what it's like to be on both sides of the proverbial fence. Traditionally, there are distrust, animosity, and power struggles between writers and editors, and these may be aggravated by the perceived stresses of the cog function. Technical Editing: The Practical Guide for Editors and Writers (Tarutz) is a good resource for technical communicators in our role as interpreters, translators, and intermediaries between audiences. Chapter 5, "Working With Writers: Ten Lessons I Had to Unlearn," is particularly useful, because it explains how to maintain excellent working relationships between editors and writers (Tarutz 47-64).

[6.3] Letting Go: The Value of Detachment

I believe the greater value of poetry and editing exercises in the workshop setting is this: The give-and-take and role reversals between critics and authors, editors and writers, faciliate the process of detachment, of relinquishing at least a measure of the possessiveness and pride of ownership that we cogs can find ourselves prone to.

These recommendations are based on my experience with creative-writing workshops. The core of my academic training includes eight workshops, seven of them at the graduate level. I learned to analyze and manipulate text from three different perspectives: as writer, reader, and editor. In the process, I learned to separate my self-worth, and the worth of others, from the text — and to view words and phrases on the page as the building blocks they are.

Although it's true that I "fell in love" with the Style Manual discussed earlier in this essay, the attachment and possessiveness were temporary, the intense but normal flush of accomplishment after a lot of hard work and a hearty pat on the back from my internal coach. My experiences with writing and editing in the workshop environment, and with producing a high volume of instrumental discourse on the job, work together to help me maintain distance and objectivity, not only from the text, but also from the cog function itself.

I believe that this kind of immersion training and practice could benefit other technical communicators as well.

[7.1] Conclusions

It seems obvious that a choice between the cog and manager functions is not easy or clear — in fact, as we've seen here, managers themselves can function as cogs. In this essay, I have explored a few advantages of working as a cog, among them security and freedom. In the process, I discovered a few disadvantages as well, among them lack of security and freedom.

Our decisions about cog status, and how we deal with the consequences, will depend on individual philosophy and circumstance. The negative or positive state of being a (cog)wheel is primarily one of personal perception. For example, despite easily referring to myself as cog, hack, and drudge in this essay, I don't truly think of myself as those things, certainly not in a negative way. It would be more accurate to say that my job is fulfilling in so many ways that I accept and feel positive about my minor, subordinate status at the University and in the larger academic community.

Those of us who live to write and communicate will find a way to do so one way or another, whether we're cogs in an industrial or bureaucratic machine or whether we're leading a nation. The reality is this: If we work at a large company or bureaucracy, the majority of us will play the role of cog no matter which rung of the ladder of hierarchy we happen to be standing on. Knowing that our chosen organization could not exist without the work of its cogs, and believing that there's no shame in subordinating ourselves to a career of service in communication, may help silence that buzzing, biting horsefly of ambivalence.

(Parenthetical) Note

¹About my use of parentheses in the term, (cog)wheel: I respectfully acknowledge the influence of e. e. cummings, a poet working in the first half of the 20th century who experimented with punctuation and syntax as a way to wrench perception. I began borrowing this stylistic device about 15 years ago, particularly for my poetry, after running across this line by cummings: "gr(oo)ving the room's Silence)this like" (33).

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