A well oiled machine: team work

Have you ever gone on a long journey with friends and also went on the same journey alone? Which would you say you find more enjoyable? If you're like me, you will agree that it's more fun when you travel with your friends.

The same thing also applies when working on a difficult task; it becomes easier when you work with a team of serious people and you all cooperate with each other. This is what I noticed when I went to work on a person's fish farm some days back.

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You guys remember I talked about how I have always wanted to be one of the reliable persons at my school's experimental fish farm just like my friend's @giaiom and @Methion, I finally got my chance a few days ago.

The farm manager usually sends my friends out to fish farms all over the city whenever there's a contract, and they usually get paid after completing the work. On Monday, I was called to the manager's office together with my friends and he said I will accompany them to a fish farm the next day.

I was excited when I heard the news but at the same time I was nervous because I have never done any work outside of the school, but there's always a first time for everything, right?

The manager explained that the work we are going to do is to sort fishes. What this simply means is that we are to sort the fishes according to their size: big and small. Then one of my friends asked "Sir, how many fishes are we sorting?" The manager replied, "They are about 7000". My heartbeat skipped when I heard that, they are a lot!

The number I was used to is usually less than 1000, that's what we usually work with when we want to sort in the school's fish farm but now I will be sorting 7 times what I am used to, and we are just 3.

My friends were not even helping matters, they started reminiscing how they went to sort fish in the same farm some months ago and they almost collapsed because only 2 of them sorted 5000 fishes.

I was speechless and just looking at them as they kept ranting about how it was very tough back then, but now we will be dealing with an even higher amount! I was already thinking of backing out but then, wasn't this what I said I want?

When I got home later that day, I started preparing for the incoming work because the manager said we have to leave home very early so we will get to the farm on time and start working before the sun comes out.

I know I will be very busy for most part of the day, so I started writing my article for Tuesday that Monday, then I know I will just have to publish it on Tuesday evening after I would have returned from the fish sorting.

Later in the evening, my friends and I were discussing the work we are to do the next day and as usual they kept teasing me that I won't remain the same after the work has ended. But I wasn't too bothered about it, I believed I will survive it since it's the same thing I already know how to do well at the school's farm, only thing is that it's on a large scale this time.

I told them I can just buy energy drinks and replenish my strength if I run out of energy, and they said I should probably buy the drinks now because I might not: be able to see where to buy them at the farm. So I went out to buy two energy drinks; predator and fearless.

The drinks were very cold, sooner than later I gave in to the temptation and drank one of them 😆 As we all know, most (or maybe all) energy drinks contain caffeine, and I ended up not being able to sleep that night!

I was supposed to sleep early so I can wake up at about 5am and start preparing to leave, but there I was at 2am with a body full of caffeine and eyes as bright as a torchlight; no trace of sleep whatsoever!

I was finally able to sleep after a while and I woke up later at exactly 5am; perfect timing. I drank coffee that morning to keep up the energy (more caffeine, right?) then I ate the leftover jollof rice from last night, then me and my friends left at about 6am.

We arrived the farm around 8am and I could already see the fish tanks from the gate; let the hell begin. We started working immediately and we harvested all the fish from one tank and combined it with another tank, there were fishes everywhere 😆

At first we were having fun with it, two of us just packing the fishes from water with a basket and then separating the small and big ones into different bowls, and then one person was outside the tank transferring the already sorted fish into separate tanks, making sure to count them.

Things got intense when the sun came out and everywhere was hot, luckily we were in water so we didn't feel the sun's effect that much, and also it got cloudy at different intervals so we weren't under the sun at long stretch of time.

We worked like a machine and everyone seem to know what he should be doing without even being told, the task was going smoothly and effortlessly. After sorting the first tank that had over 2000 fishes, I went to take the remaining energy drink and we got ready for the next tank.

The next tank had less than a thousand fish so it didn't take long and we finished sorting it, and then we moved to the next one and we haven't even complained of being tired! At one point we all took a break after giaiom kept complaining that he has ran out of blood sugar and he needs to replenish it with Coca-Cola 😆

After the food break, we returned and completed the next tank, then at last it was remaining just one tank! In my head I was thinking "I thought this guys said I will collapse before the end, this wasn't even so difficult", but the last tank looked like hell; it has the highest number of fishes!

There were fish everywhere and it felt like they were multiplying as we kept harvesting them. That's when I realised that a task starts looking difficult when we know we're almost getting to the end.

It's just like someone doing a marathon race, you might have no problem when the race started at first but as soon as you start seeing the finish line, it begins to feel like it keeps going farther as you continue to move towards it.

I decided I have to distract myself from thinking too much about completing the task, so I went in to get my earphones and I started listening to music. Before long, the tank was empty and we have finished sorting the otherwise herculean tank of fish

We are done! We started working at 8am and we finished around 2pm, which means we worked for straight 6 hours with a few minutes of break.

We were supposed to evenly distribute all the fishes into different tanks according to their size, but we couldn't do that because of the huge difference in their sizes, so some tanks had 700 fishes, while some have 650 and some others were even 450

We summed up those numbers and discovered there weren't 7000 fishes, they were 9000! Looks like I went way above my limit, the same limit that I placed on myself.

I noticed there was a tank that didn't have any fish in it and I remembered seeing Giaiom impounding water into it, and then I realized his intention; he was going to swim in it and he did! 😆 It looked fun, so I and @methion jumped in as well

After a while, we were all given our payment for the work we did and we went home. We got home at about 5pm, looks like I was right when I said I will be gone for most part of the day.

Conclusion

A task I thought was going to be so difficult to the extent that I might feel like dying ended up being fun and way below what I thought it will be.

That's because we worked as a team in carrying out the work and our actions were well synchronized with each person knowing what to do at a particular point without being told.

That's what team work should look like; each member of the team is a well-oiled machine that can also stand on its own as well as work with other parts to function efficiently.

That's exactly why the team members must be exceptionally good at what they do, so that they won't end up dragging the others behind and end up slowing down the entire work.

Ps: Sorry for not being active lately, my phone has been acting super crazy for some days now and I'm finally buying a new phone on Saturday.

Thanks for reading 💗💗💗

Thursday October 21, 2021.