Science of verk

This is a continuation of my uncle’s diary from here.

The tremendous success of verk and oververk is reverberating through the Ministry of Everything, so it came as a great surprise when the program was suddenly put on hold.  The culprit turned out to be a government-wide initiative know as:

Work-Life Balance

In a nutshell, WLB is a program which recognizes that an individual may do other things than work, and that this calls for some balance. WLB's main contributions are counseling sessions where comrades can discuss their troubles. Given that these opportunities were already available
to cavemen once  they learned how to build a fire and serve warm food, this is not much. Yet comrades are happy that WLB recognizes them as individuals, and for a rather naughty departure from orthodox marxism.

With verk and oververk quickly becoming a default way of getting things done, an update to WLB was needed and the labor union stepped in. Verk-Life Balance and Oververk-Life Balance had to be addressed in a serious and professional manner, even if most comrades were laughing
off any concern that there might be something unfair about these programs. The Ministry of Everything decided to employ cutting edge scientific methods in crafting these policies, and two committees were formed to deal with the issue. Here are the reports.

Logic model (executive summary)

At the outset we analyzed the concept of verk and understood it to be a mixture of work and other things. As the best approximation we assumed that these other things represent Life. Consequently, verk  is actually the embodiment of Work-Life Balance, and oververk embodies Verk-Life Balance. Over-oververk fullfils Oververk-Life Balance and so on through an infinite chain of labor practices and family-friendly policies. As long as the employee moves forward along this chain, he or she fulfills contractual obligations and is in compliance with the policies.

Quantum model (executive summary)

Work and Life, and potentially other things  are pure states in the quantum mechanical sense. On the other hand, Verk and Oververk are mixed states, and as such they  require a quantum version of Work-Life Balance. While Work-Life Balance is only an approximation of its quantum version, it is 5-sigma accurate  given the  mass of a typical employee. Furthermore, the amount of verk required to understand quantum version of WLB may be prohibitive, and purely conjecturally, actual work might be required as well.
Consequently, at the moment there is no need for a quantized version of WLB.

I can't say that these reports were well-received by the comrades, even though the recommendation was favorable.  The Logic Model was widely regarded as the work of an idiot, and the idea of using infinity to hide any semblance of common sense was viewed as deplorable. Some comrades were commenting that this is why we have a Botany Unit rather than a Logic Unit. The Party response was more muted and the memo included the phrase  “curse of dimensionality,” a term that scientists use when they are requested to build a spaceship using paper and scissors.

Quantum model also had its share of problems because committee members wanted to support the report with data. According to the theory, a mixed state, when observed, collapses to a pure state, and the committee got into a habit of watching verking comrades to document this phenomenon.  Somewhat surprisingly, as long as verkers were unaware, there was not much change. However, once they realized that they are being observed they would collapse into a state of prolonged verbal abuse. This marked the discovery of the third pure state that is neither Work nor Life, but in hindsight it was not worth the effort. “Quite different from electrons,“ commented a comrade serving on the committee and eating lunch alone in our canteen.

While these events were taking place, comrades were anxiously awaiting the chance to resume verk. The interruption, which was meant to help everybody, resulted in the possibility that, for the first time in a decade,  the Botany Unit might not make its performance quotas mandated by the Party.   It was the last moment to abandon dubious science and take matters into our hands. In the midst  of these proceedings the first signs of discontent started showing up. One day a big poster saying “We want verk!” greeted us by the entrance and soon the Ministry was embroiled in the controversy. Comrades started chanting “Verk and vine” at meetings,  and  greet each other by saying “Verkers of the world unite!” Older comrades felt like  they were back in times of revolution and class struggle. What a nonsense! Enough is enough!

Just before things got out of hand, the Party announced resumption of verk, and the doubling of the hourly quota.  This was greeted with thunderous applause and within minutes the Ministry’s building was nearly empty as everybody rushed to verk.

Continued here.