It occurred to me today that I’m certainly glad that not every wheel is squeaky.

I had one of my co-workers today send me an email –WITH OUR BOSS CC’ED– describing all of the tech issues that this coworker is having and that I need to address.

I hate it when they do this.

The idea behind an attempt like this (it happens to me often enough that I’ve come to understand it) is that I am magically going to become less busy –> less busy to the point that I will become available to address a particular issue for a particular user, if only that person includes the appropriate individual, in the appropriate position of power, as part of the conversation.

I think they call it pulling rank.

The problem with pulling rank is that it runs on the assumption that I’m not working myself to the bone every single day, during the first few weeks of a school year, trying to address everyone’s problems. It runs on the assumption that I’m sitting in my office, not doing much of anything at all, and the one thing that is going to get me off of my over-used butt, to respond to XYZ issue from ABC user, is that my boss should be made aware of the fact that I’m not quite getting to everyone in the manner that they’d prefer.

The approach backfires when your boss thinks that you’re overworked and sympathizes with you, thankfully.

I got so angry, in the moments after reading that email, that I shot an email reply back to the both of them –my coworker and my boss– and I said that I’m doing the best that I can.

And then I thought about squeaky wheels.

* * *

If only the squeaky wheel gets greased, then what happens to the other wheels, that don’t squeak and just quietly do their job? The answer is, they never get any lubrication, and then eventually what happens to them? That can’t last. The wheels that don’t squeak need lubrication, as much as the wheel that does squeak. Perhaps, when we grease that squeaky wheel, we should address all of the wheels.

Have we become a society that only addresses symptoms and not underlying diseases? You certainly see this in the medical field, to mix the metaphors a little bit.

The individual who avoids the annual physical, or any medical appointment, for that matter, until the point in time when they have a continuous pain in their bowel and get diagnosed with Stage 4 intestinal cancer. Maybe an occasional medical checkup would have caught that somewhat earlier. Benjamin Franklin famously said that ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’, but we just don’t think like that much anymore.

The fact that there is a squeaky wheel is certainly a sign of a problem, but if you don’t get to the place where you address prevention, as opposed to just fixing problems, then you’re always going to end up just fixing problems, because they’ll keep coming, as a result of the fact that you never addressed what’s causing the problems in the first place. Unfortunately, I think we end up getting stuck in this mode, where all we do is address the problems that keep coming up; and then, we can’t ever get past such a place, to be able to ask ourselves why these problems keep happening.

* * *

I’ll bet someone out there, reading this right now, has a reflexive desire to stand up in defense of the ‘squeaky wheel’ approach. Maybe, at some point, you’ve been the ‘squeaky wheel’. I can’t say that I blame you for using that approach. I’ve known plenty of people who’ve used the approach and been successful in doing so.

In fact, for as many times as I’ve gotten irritated when people try to pull that selfish garbage with me, I’ve probably –just as many times– given way to the power that such an approach uses.

And it’s a disservice to the people who do what they do, without being obnoxious about getting their needs met.

But, I also have to confess that I am so darn busy, with all that lies before me at work, that I sometimes just plum forget to answer the help desk request that comes in only once, and then gets buried under a mountain of other requests. The squeaky wheel in my help desk system is the request that comes in on three or four different tickets.

* * *

So, for most of the day today at work, I was thinking about writing this post on squeaky wheels, after that email from my coworker. Then, at the very end of the day today, my boss told me about a plan that she was working on to try to get me some help with all that I have to do. She told me about the plan moving forward and gaining ground, and she told me that she’d been very vocal about trying to get me some help; she even identified herself as a ‘squeaky wheel’ on the subject.

When she said to me that she’d been a ‘squeaky wheel’, and that it had worked, I chuckled; since I’d been thinking about this post all day long in my head, it was funny that she was admitting to me that she was using this approach.

If you are going to go about the practice of being a squeaky wheel, of raising your voice to draw attention to something that needs to be addressed, it’s one thing to do so as you seek after your own needs. It’s another thing entirely, IMO, if you go about doing the squeaky wheel thing to try to get assistance for other people.

What do you speak up for? Is it primarily for yourself, or are you speaking up for people who need your voice, drawing attention to their circumstances?