Napkins

So I get to the airport in Atlanta, which now has an acronym (HJAIA) that makes me think of fried clams and ice cream, and I have time for a quick bite before my flight. After I get my meal I sit down and realize I only have one napkin. I had grabbed it after being handed my drink, but before I was handed my food. While waiting I never grabbed more and after being given my food I got distracted while looking for some ketchup packets (there were none) and trying to find a seat (only two were available).

Why am I blogging this? Good question. Bear with me. I swear this is all leading somewhere.

Things I Think About While Eating

Well, when I sat down and realized I only had one napkin, I decided to see if I could eat my lunch and only use the one napkin. Why not just go back and grab more? Well, apparently I love Mother Earth much more than you do. At any rate, I decided to see if I could use just the one, and to my surprise I was able to get through the meal without needing more.

So, while eating I started to think about all the times I have grabbed many more napkins than necessary and simply tossed them in the trash when done. When I am out with my children I can be forgiven for grabbing some extras. But I should know how many I will need when eating by myself, right? Apparently I can eat a meal and only use the one. So how many trees have I brought down in all my previous years? Too many, probably.

If you are still reading this, thanks. I have a point, I promise. The point is that I realized if the napkins were rationed to me, i.e. if I was handed just the one and there was no napkin station for me, I would have been pissed. I would have been that guy who says “Hey! You there! Can I get me a couple more napkins, puh-lease?” But because I knew I had made the mistake, and then was curious to see if I would only need the one, somehow it was okay to give it a try. Why the difference? I guess because I was the one controlling the situation, and not having someone else decide for me.

Getting Closer to the Point

Now, what if they only gave me the one, and I knew they were only going to give me the one, even if I asked for more? Or that they would charge me for each napkin? What would I do then? Why, I would figure out a way to get more, either before my meal or during, depending on how much Mother Earth and I are getting along at the moment. I mean, if we love each other at the moment then I would not try to get more unless I really needed more, and then I would thank Mother Earth profusely by sacrificing bacon at the Temple of Jaeger for providing me with something to wipe the slop off of my face.

Still here? Great. All of those thoughts brought me to this one.

Charge backs.

For about a month now I have had it in my mind that one of the solutions to our current environment at work is to start instituting charge backs. For example, the next time a database grows 50Gb overnight, causing a host of issues, to which the only answer is to allocate more SAN space, we should be meticulous in tracking all those expenses for that work and charge it back to the unit that is responsible for causing the spike. After having been charged enough times it would start to force people to double check what they are doing and make certain they are doing things efficiently. Well, that is the hope, right? I know other companies use charge backs as a way to encourage efficiency, Microsoft is one example.

Why Charge Backs Could Be a Horrible Idea

Now, go back to what I wrote earlier. If I knew I was only going to be given one napkin, what would I do? Well, there is a chance I would try to find more on my own, for a lesser price of course. So, if I knew that the database was about to grow by 50Gb, what would I do then to avoid the charge back? Well, I might go down to Staples and buy an external drive and shove it under my desk and use that instead of paying all of the overhead associated with the allocation of additional SAN space.

And that is not the result we want.

If that was allowed to happen, then we would have a serious issue on our hands. And I am only talking about disk space right now, but I am certain you can imagine other situations where someone might look to just take matter into their own hands.

How about the most drastic…when the business decides that they would be better off if they simply outsourced all of IT? Yeah, it happens, usually at the point when they figure it would be cheaper to have someone provide a service (hello, IBM? Are you there?), and cheaper is more important at that moment than efficiency.

Inclusion is Always Better than Exclusion

So, how to avoid that situation? My best guess at this point is to make certain that everyone is brought into the conversation regarding why we will only be passing out one napkin. If everyone is a part of the discussion, then it may mitigate having people using toilet paper to wipe their mouths while sitting at the next table from me outside Popeye’s Fried Chicken and Biscuits in HJAIA Terminal B. Believe me, I would rather not be seeing that again anytime soon.

Of course, I want to be efficient and only hand out what is needed. Earlier today when we were discussing our dream home of a data center complete with virtual machines someone mentioned that “…you would rather give more memory than necessary, just in case…” Well, that is like saying we might as well give ten napkins, just in case they have an eating problem that rivals Ted Striker’s drinking problem. The most efficient thing would be to know, within a certain range, exactly how much memory is needed. Then, should more memory become necessary, we go back to discuss why that would be the case, and see if we can put some heads together just to make certain there is no other way to get the job done.

I can already hear the voices saying “but that will slow everything down”. Yeah, inclusion often does slow things down. But it should also lead to more stability, as you have more people working together, and less people operating in silos. But if you believe more memory is needed, and you also believe you know the answer without asking anyone else, then we can still do things quickly.

See, you can just pay for it, out of your budget, and we will ask fewer questions. But good luck to you the day your budget gets smaller, it will be much harder to learn to play nice with others if it is forced upon you due to market conditions and financial constraints. It would be much smarter (dare I say efficient?) if we started down that path now.