ISO Liz

[Notes From The Cube: Liz is a friend, a friend caught between the International Standards Organization (ISO), unwanted responsibilities, her own hard-working ambitions - and her own limitations. Why can't we learn to Just Say "No"?]

Liz is nice, nicer than so many. If you have a car breakdown or a family crisis or just need to talk things out, come to Liz.

Liz is tough, tougher than so many. If you are a slacker in your standards or like to skip steps or screw up on dotting an "i," look out for Liz.

Liz is suspicious, more suspicious than so many. If you work for her and do anything involving judgment, don't expect any decision you make to go through without her scrutiny.

Liz runs a department. She did not always run a department. She did not always run this department: it came her way because no one else wanted it, 15-18 years ago, when Liz had been around 7 or 8 years herself and was capable and trustworthy and certainly honest. She didn't know what this department was supposed to do - but neither did anybody else - and the anybody else's were smart enough or deft enough or tricky enough to pass on the responsibility for rising or falling to newbie manager Liz.

Sometimes you don't rise or fall. Sometimes there's a third way: existence without understanding. Much like life in a universe where, whatever our belief in God, Creator or Samsara-Enlightenment, it's always a one-way conversation for public consumption, leaving the human beans to make their own interpretations about the metaphysical facts on the ground.

"Metaphysical?" Well - yes. Liz's department answers to Higher Powers sometimes - aka state and government regulatory agencies - and some self-made Rules - aka ISO rules - and with no one to guide her, Liz created her own Oz-like maze of logic and "I-think-that's-what-they-want" rule-making that no one at the time took the time to figure out if it was true or wishful thinking or bonehead desperation.

But Liz had done it - and she hadn't fallen on her face - and now it was Hers.

And it works like crap: an unwieldy structure of rules and reinforcements that everyone agreed to for expediency and now they are stuck with - and stuck with Liz as their appointed Knowledge Source on the subject.

And it works like crap: everyone knows it - including Liz. But no one knows a Better Way, nor wants to propose a Better Way for fear of getting stuck with it themselves, or for fear of taking on Liz (who, after all, did this loyally and with full approval of all).

But self-knowledge of one's own failings is a terrible burden - and one that must be covered up. Liz cannot admit her failings. She cannot say: "I am lost, help me." She cannot lead the revolution - against herself. No. She is stuck as Defender of the Faith, a shaky temple where even the slightest doubt could set the foundation a-trembling. So, like a good Inquisitor General, Liz persecutes any and all Doubt: heretics - for don't we know (and we know) that the Purpose of the Faith is good?

Or do we know that anymore?

More and more rumours and back-grumbled discontent shred at the edges of the Faith that Liz has constructed for the company, on behalf of the company, with the mandate of the company. That the Faith is false obscures the Truth underneath, the Truth missed by Liz, who can never find it, underqualified, unenlightened, unchosen by Knowledge as she is.

And so she turns obstructionist to logic and reform, to nit-picking on the typographical rituals instead of addressing the structural substance, the face of all that is wrong with her misconceived Faith.

But Liz is more - because, as is noted, no one will step in to help her. Or maybe they cannot, like a nonswimmer helplessly watching a drowning man sink. Either way, intentions good or ill, Liz has assumed her iconic, traditional place in the way things are. The woman who will take the Fall.