A book called FISH

Karin came home from work with a motivational management book called Fish. The basic principle is creating a fun and exciting work environment and you’ll have a creative and productive work force. The idea sprang from the management style of a fish market tucked inside Pikes Place Market on the waterfront in Seattle, WA. To many the job of filling fish orders would be a cold, smelly, and boring career, but when you see the workers in action your drawn in by the electricity and enthusiasm they produce while fulfilling orders. The idea is to learn how to re-create that worker enthusiasm in your corporate office. I’ve actually visited Pike Place Market. Did I say visited? A more accurate way to say it is, I lived at Pike Place Market. I actually did – for about 2 weeks. I traveled to Seattle and ended up waiting there for my job for the North Slope Bureau to start up in Point Barrow Alaska. My first dorm was my uncle’s art studio up near the University. If you’ve ever lived with an artist you’d know right off this wasn’t a lasting situation, and sleeping in a bag on the studio floor amid wood shavings and paint fumes surely wasn’t my idea or his I’m sure of a convenient spot. We did have some fun however, he’d paint and I’d practice my guitar and drive him nuts. Some nights we’d head down to the gallery and I even got invited to a few “openings”- which I found out are not my “thing”. Did you know they really serve cheese and wine at those things? And all those corduroy jackets….. After a few weeks it was best that we separate a bit so I began to spend my days down in the market with the street musicians more and more. I’d help the piano player wheel his piano down the street and into position for his days concert and toss the bait buck into a guitar case of another friend. A few solid weeks of this and I became part of the family of people living on the fringe of norm and no longer felt that I stood out. I had found a home even if only for a while. I remember spending the nights on the park bench nearby drinking from a bottle passed to me by a homeless Indian. Waking up the next day as anyone else would and heading to work, only at my work I didn’t receive any pay. The only regular money came from me going to the blood bank and letting them spin my blood to get the platelets before pumping the unneeded blood back into me. After reading the book Karin brought home I found myself missing the wet streets, the music, the bustle, the early mornings as shop owners geared up for another day and the quiet hours spent drinking coffee watching the boats slip in and out of the Sound. I wonder if anyone else from MBNA who read the book is left with the same wistful thoughts of a youth well spent.