The Orchard Already Charged You

We took the family apple picking and I ate a Brooklyn Gala standing in the row. It’s a variety I’d never heard of, grown around here and not much of anywhere else. It tastes like a Gala that spent some time outdoors. Earthier. Like it knows what dirt is.

The bag I carried out was full of the reliable stuff. The apple I still remember is the one I ate before I paid for anything.

My daughters worked this out faster than I did. They didn’t want an apple. They wanted permission to take one bite and throw the rest into the grass, which they did, a few times, with the glee of tiny vandals.

The orchard knew that was coming. Tasting isn’t a leak in that business, it’s a line item. The price on the sign by the shed already covers the two apples I ate in the row and the four my kids pitched into the weeds. Nobody follows you down the rows. Nobody counts.

They priced the joy in before we got out of the car.

Most operations run the other way. Someone notices that people take a little of the work for themselves and files it under problem. So you get approval steps, and trackers, and a review cycle with three sets of initials on it, all built to protect something that was never actually going missing.

The policing costs more than the apples ever did.

I do positioning work for a living, and a while back I was deep in a project when a thought came loose that had nothing to do with the deliverable. It was about how people actually decide things. Good enough to use. Not close enough to the assignment to survive a review.

So I published it myself. (Not stolen, exactly… it grew in the row next to the work, which is where most of the good ones grow. Like the Brooklyn Gala)

The deliverable shipped on time. The odd thought got eaten standing up, in the field, by me.

That’s a manager’s move more than a worker’s…. A good one says out loud that you’re allowed to keep something from the work you do. Take the strange one. Try the variety you’d never buy a whole bag of. Nobody is going to weigh it on the way out.

Plenty of people never hear that from a manager, so you end up having to say it to yourself, which is harder, because it feels like something you were supposed to have outgrown.

The reason it matters isn’t morale… it’s supply.

Pickers who taste come back next fall, and they bring people with them. An orchard that puts cameras in the rows gets one clean season and then a very quiet parking lot.

My daughters ate maybe six bites of apple all afternoon and abandoned four whole ones in the grass. It was the happiest either of them had been all morning. The orchard planned on that, priced it, and made money anyway.

Stay Positive & Eat The Weird One