The conditions for uncritical and indifferent activity
“It is, I came to realize, the very user-friendliness of the bakery that may account in part for the confusion the people baking feel about themselves as bakers. In all forms of work, from sculpting to serving meals, people identify with tasks which challenge them, tasks which are difficult. But in this flexible workplace, with its polyglot workers coming and going irregularly, radically different orders coming in each day, the machinery is the only real standard of order, and so has to be easy for anyone, no matter who, to operate. Difficulty is counterproductive in a flexible regime. By a terrible paradox, when we diminish difficulty and resistance, we create the very conditions for uncritical and indifferent activity on the part of the users.”