Originally arising from this note: On the mimicry of uncertianty This note explores the notion of the anchor point within an essay. You will need to have read the above note if you want to make sense of my rereapting references to the washing machine

George Orwell

A good example, and one I think resonates strongly with what I'm calling an anchor point, comes from Orwell's essay “A Hanging” (1931). The essay is moving through questions of empire, punishment, power and death, but the entire moral weight of the piece pivots on a tiny observation: the condemned man steps aside to avoid a puddle on the way to the gallows.

It is a trivial act. Yet Orwell suddenly apprehends that this is not an abstract category called “a prisoner” but a living human being with a life of purposes and habits. The puddle becomes an “anchor point” from which the essay's moral perception unfolds.

The essay does not begin with a thesis about capital punishment. It begins with experience. The recognition emerges from attention. Similarly, in “Shooting an Elephant”, the elephant itself becomes an anchor point. Orwell is ostensibly discussing imperialism, but the essay turns on the concrete predicament of standing before the animal with a rifle while a crowd watches. The imperial system becomes legible through a single lived situation.

What is interesting for our purposes is that these early Orwell essays are full of what Essayism would probably regard as legitimate anchor points:

a puddle, an elephant, a cup of tea, a coal miner descending a shaft, a toad appearing in spring.

They are encountered things. The thought grows out of them. When I write about the washing machine, Ludwig Gann, Fagor and Mondragon, I believe I am doing something structurally very similar. I am not presenting evidence to support an existing argument. I am recording the point at which the world itself begins to disclose a connected thread. Where my critique of the “later” Orwell may emerge is that these anchor points gradually seem less capable of sponsoring possibility and more capable of sponsoring diagnosis.

To put it differently: Early Orwell: “This thing I have observed unsettles my assumptions.” Later Orwell: “This thing I have observed confirms my opinions.” That may be putting it too sharply, but I think it is close to the distinction that is now pacing the trackways in my thoughts.

In my note, the washing machine functions very much like Orwell's puddle in A Hanging. It is utterly mundane. Yet from it unfold questions of technology, co-operation, labour, memory, place, intellectual formation, cynicism and essayism itself. The difference is that my washing machine anchor point leads to an expansion of possibility and connection, whereas the argument I am beginning to formulate about AI and perhaps the later (Animal Farm) Orwell is that both exhibit a tendency toward closure. They arrive at the answer too quickly.

That, I think, is why the line in my note: It seemed entirely ordinary then. is important. It is the moment before the anchor point reveals itself as an anchor point. I would like to believe that sentence carries the same quality as Orwell noticing a man step around a puddle. The meaning has not yet arrived, but it is about to.

William Hazlitt

For me, personally as an Essayist, Hazlitt reveals more because Hazlitt's anchor points are often absurdly ordinary and personal. He does not begin with public questions and descend to experience. He begins in experience and discovers that it contains the world.

The classic example is “On Going a Journey.” The anchor point is simply walking. Not a philosophy of walking. Not a theory of solitude. Just setting out on a road. Everything else unfolds from that act. Hazlitt notices a signpost, a distant hill, an inn, a stream, a stretch of road. The essay's reflections on freedom, society, memory and consciousness arise from those encounters. The walk is not an illustration of the argument. The walk generates the argument. That feels very close to my washing machine passage.

Now as I think about this, I must report an observation of a friend: I suspect your own work is actually closer to Young than you sometimes admit. When you talk about writing as “walking the landscape in words”, that's not quite Hazlitt. Hazlitt's landscape often becomes a theatre for consciousness. Your landscape often has an independent reality that pushes back.

Hazlitt often begins with self. Young often begins with observation. Your Essayism seems to begin with a relationship between the two. Neither the Romantic tendency: What does this reveal about me? Nor the purely descriptive tendency: What is out there? But rather: What happens when an attentive mind encounters this thing? That is why the washing-machine passage works. It isn't really a memoir passage. It isn't really a descriptive passage. It is a record of an encounter. The machine leads to Gann. Gann leads to Leicester. Leicester leads to Mondragon. Mondragon leads to Orwell. Orwell leads to uncertainty. – OK I paraphrased his comments.

But to return to Hazlitt and his anchor points – Another excellent example is On the Pleasure of Hating. The anchor point is astonishingly small. He sits at a coach window watching people gather around a travelling show. From this observation of a crowd his thoughts begin ranging across politics, prejudice, conflict, partisanship and human nature. Again, the anchor point is concrete and observed.

Even closer to what I am trying to describe might be My First Acquaintance with Poets. The ostensible subject is literary, but the essay repeatedly anchors itself in specific remembered encounters: seeing Coleridge walk into a room, hearing him speak, the atmosphere of the place, the impressions of the young Hazlitt. The essay is not organised around a thesis concerning Romanticism. It is organised around recollected moments. What I see here for my developing notions areound Essayism is that Hazlitt's anchor points often remain open.

Orwell's puddle in A Hanging ultimately points toward a conclusion about capital punishment. Hazlitt's best anchor points often continue radiating associations long after they have performed their immediate function. Take the opening impulse of On Going a Journey. The walk never quite becomes reducible to a lesson. It remains a walk. The physical experience never entirely disappears beneath interpretation.

I'd like to believe that's close to what my washing machine is doing. The machine is not merely “evidence” for a proposition about essayism. It remains stubbornly itself: a machine, Ludwig Gann, Leicester, Fagor, Mondragon, ICOM, laundry before a flight. The associations accumulate, but none annihilates the reality of the thing itself.

In reviewing the washing machine a number of thing occur to me. It is much more Hazlittian anchor than an Orwellian one. Orwell's anchor points often become moral revelations. Hazlitt's anchor points become occasions for associative exploration. And I wrote it naturally, it was not a contrived device, it was the simple emergence of my disposition on to the page.

And there is perhaps a useful formulation lurking there for Essayism: An anchor point is an ordinary encounter that proves incapable of remaining ordinary. The puddle in Orwell. The road in Hazlitt. The washing machine in Montory. None is introduced as a symbol. Each becomes one only because prolonged attention reveals a network of relations hidden within the mind of the person perceiving it.

That, I suspect, is precisely what my AI critique is saying. The machine can imitate the shape of the anchor point, but it tends to arrive carrying the conclusion already folded inside it. Hazlitt, at his best, genuinely does not know where the road will lead when he sets out along it. The uncertainty is not decorative. It is generative.

Cranking on memories of the seventies & the experience of weggooi sonblomme

I’ve always been a roadie at heart, a term that, in cycling circles, describes those of us who swear by the sleek lines of a road bike over the rugged grit of a mountain bike. There’s something meditative about cranking away on tarred roads, the steady rhythm of pedals turning like a mantra that clears the mind. On a mountain bike, if you let your thoughts wander the same way, you’re liable to moer into a tree or end up in a sloot. But on the road? Ah, that’s where the magic happens. You can ponder life’s puzzles, soak in the sweeping views, or even carry on a conversation with the rider beside you without fearing for your life. The asphalt becomes your canvas, and the miles melt away as you experience equal parts therapy and adventure. Yes, I am a roadie, through and through.

On a crisp morning in the Magliesberg, I saddled up on eddy, my trusty yellow Alu Mega road bike, & released him onto the tar like a thoroughbred at the start of the July. The day started with a spectacle that nearly stole the show from the ride itself: half a dozen hot air balloons drifting lazily across the sky, their vibrant envelopes glowing against the dawn. The only sound breaking the silence was the occasional whoosh of their gas burners, a gentle roar that punctuated the peace. For a fleeting moment, I envied those passengers up there, suspended in quiet awe. Could anything top gliding through the air like that? Well, almost, until I remembered the pure joy of Eddy’s wheels humming beneath me.

As we pedaled on, the ride took an unexpected turn into auditory bliss. One fellow cyclist had a Bluetooth speaker strapped to his bike, blasting ABBA’s “Take a Chance on Me.” There I was, humming along to that infectious seventies rhythm, the lyrics weaving through my thoughts like an old friend. The kilometers rolled away effortlessly, the music turning the open road into my personal cathedral. ABBA provided the hymns, the wind the choir, and each pedal stroke a prayer of gratitude. It was perfection, simple, unadulterated joy on two wheels.

But this cycle held deeper layers, ones that intertwined the thrill of the ride with reflections on loss and legacy. Along the roadside, I spotted clusters of “weggooi sonblomme”, those wild sunflowers that sprout unbidden, blooming defiantly next to the tar. Just the day before, I’d virtually attended a memorial service for Tewie, a school classmate who’d tragically passed after hitting a pothole in a motor accident. The dominee’s sermon in the Grey Reunie Hall lingered in my mind, drawing a poignant parallel from those very flowers. He spoke of how they flourish for only about three weeks, a brief burst of yellow brilliance against the mundane. Yet, their story doesn’t end there. Seeds scatter to the earth, lying dormant until the next season, when they germinate anew, spreading life beyond their own fleeting existence.

It was a metaphor for human life, he said, including Tewie’s. We bloom for a short time, our petals vibrant but temporary. But the seeds we plant in others? Those endure. A teacher’s fleeting word of encouragement might reshape a student’s path forever. A friend’s kindness could ripple through generations. Tewie, with his infectious energy and quiet wisdom, had sown countless seeds in the lives he touched, acts of generosity, moments of laughter, lessons in resilience that now live on in us, his students, friends and family.

As the ride neared its end, we approached a wetland fringed with reeds, alive with the cacophony of red bishops and mousebirds darting about in a symphony of chirps and flutters. While the others attacked the final hills, zooming past in a blur of determination, I pulled over. I stopped, breathed in the earthy scent of the marsh, let the noise wash over me like a benediction. It was my moment of prayer, a quiet communion with the world. Those sunflowers by the road, once mere roadside weeds, now symbolized something profound. I’ll never view them the same again, they’re reminders of brevity, beauty, and the enduring impact we leave behind, even after our own bloom fades.

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

The reason why I do it

In Ratatouille, there’s that perfect moment when Anton Ego, the Grim Eater himself—the man who built an empire on tearing other people’s dreams to shreds—finally tastes Remy’s dish and is undone by it. He writes something in his review that has lived rent-free in my head ever since:

“Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere… The bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.”

He’s right. There are too few Remys in the world and far, far too many Antons. I decided a long time ago I didn’t want to be another Anton.

So I write for the same reason Remy cooked: because I have to make something. Not for applause, not for likes, not even to be read. I write because the act of turning memory into words is the closest thing I have to magic—taking the raw, messy ore of a Sunday morning and refining it into something solid I can hold in my hand years later when the details have otherwise rusted away. The page doesn’t care if I’m brilliant. It only asks that I show up and leave something behind that actually exists.

Criticism is easy. Creation is hard. And creation wins.

A Perfectly Ordinary Sunday

This last Sunday I wheeled the fixed and repaired mountain bike out of the house. I did it all myself. Everything that could be tightened, greased, bled or trued had been. She felt eager under me as I cruised past Nirox, the way a good bike does when it knows it’s about to be properly used.

I took the slow, beautiful route out to the caves—to the rock church where I stopped for a flat white. Sitting on the wall was a French triathlete in emerald-green kit, all long legs and quiet confidence. We talked about nothing and everything for ten minutes. I was halfway to inventing an entire future with her when she casually mentioned her partner was learning French so they could move back to Normandy together. Ah well. Smitten for exactly six and a half minutes. A personal best.

On the way back I fell in beside two old geezers on loaded touring bikes, both running Rohloff Speedhubs—those glorious, bomb-proof, fourteen-speed internal gearboxes that cost more than most people’s entire bikes and basically never break. Ever. The cycling equivalent of a Rolex that you can actually take into the trenches. I told them they were bad-ass. They pretended not to be flattered. We all knew the truth. I’d abandon my current stead at the drop of a hat for one of those. But definitely not eddy…

Back at Bidon I parked myself at the table next to them. I ordered the Brekkie Bun and two orange juices. One of the geezers looked at my plate, looked at the menu, and ordered exactly the same thing. There’s some strange gravitational pull in the universe that makes people order identical food. When I work it out, I’ll write a story. We moaned in unison about Fourways Mall—how it’s grown like Ron Weasley’s house, the Burrow: floors and extensions and chimneys added willy-nilly until the whole structure looks like it defies physics and good taste in equal measure. One day it will almost certainly collapse under the weight of its own pretension. We can only hope we’re there to watch.

Earlier, on the drive to the Cradle, I’d pulled into the fuel station and found myself parked next to a Ford Anglia—the exact model that flies away with Harry and Ron in Chamber of Secrets. Two old boys were inside demolishing muffins like it was the sixties. I stared. One of them caught me staring and gave me a little salute with his muffin. You cannot script these interactions. As they left the Anglia was over revving as it moved on down the road. Like any old car, I imagined that a few kms down the road, they’d have the bonnet open and looking for loose plates or badly fitted hoses.

Back at the car park after brekkie, I noticed that Ferrari-red Fiat 500 (photo at the top) had pulled in next to me. Instant recognition. Megs has been in love with those little cars since forever. I’ve promised her that when my ship finally docks—one of these days, sale, lottery, deal, Bitcoin, bank robbery, whatever—I’m buying myself a white BMW 530d, and her that exact Fiat in which ever colour she wants. We’ll look ridiculous and magnificent. Even if the ship never comes in, it’s a damn good story to keep telling.

I peeled off my cycling shoes, and promptly stood barefoot on a bee.

The pain was instant and biblical—a red-hot poker jammed straight through the sole of my foot. Right there, in front of the Fiat and its two gorgeous occupants who were chatting to friends, I performed the greatest act of nonchalance in my life: smiled, nodded, leaned casually against the car as if I were simply admiring the scenery while internally screaming every curse word I knew in Afrikaans.

I did not hop. I did not swear. I did not cry.

Dignity: preserved. Manhood: intact.

I drove home with the window down, breeze blowing, clouds dancing, foot throbbing in time with Sweet Caroline, grinning like an idiot.

This week I’ve done 80km on the road and I’m discovering parts of my body I haven’t met for a while. I was tired but of the good type, not the exhausted with life type. Later on in the arvie, I took a nap. Like the blissful ones we would always have on a Sunday arvie in the Grey hostel. The ones that revitalize.

These are the days I write down. Not the big ones. The small, ridiculous, perfect ones. Because one day I’ll open this and remember that once, on an ordinary Sunday, I rode a bike that finally worked properly, flirted badly with a French triathlete, worshipped at the church of Rohloff, saw the actual flying Ford Anglia, got stung by a bee, and still managed to look cool doing it.

And I’ll think: have some more of these fucking stories…

And this video that appears to be a mash up of the Italian Job, Officer and a Gentleman and Scent of a Woman. Out there in the world there is another writer, another kindred spirit, Sláinte!

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

Know your God

In shadows deep where ox-wagons creaked, A boy from Natal chased the sun’s gold gleam, From Maritz kin, through dust and rivers bleak, Came willow plates, a trekker’s dream.

A godmother, with eyes like flame, Bestowed a watch, gold-ticked from distant shore, One hundred fifty years to chant the name, American heart in every chime it bore.

From Bruyns’ hearth, ‘neath the dragon mountain’s throne, A Spode service, blue as Italy’s wave, Dishes that whispered of the winds they’ve known, Heirlooms that danced from cradle to the grave.

Dad unearthed from attic gloom, A German train, clockwork from trenches’ roar, Just after Great War’s thunder shook the tomb, It chugged through peace on iron tracks once more.

Then youth awoke on Eddy Merckx’s steed, Through Argus miles around the Cape he flew, The bicycle that crowned his burning need, With sweat and glory, victory gleaming true.

To Ireland’s cliffs, where Waterford glass sang, Champagne flutes caught the foam of emerald seas, In toasts to lovers, wild and bittersweet, They sparkled bright as captured memories.

Black Forest pines, where cuckoos carved their call, He traded coin for time in wooden wing, That clock would herald joy, or mark the fall, Of hours fleeing on relentless spring.

Margerite, with paintbrush dipped in light, Gave Dutch girl portrait, cheeks like ripened peach, Her eyes held homelands lost to endless night, A canvas bridge no ocean could impeach.

In Mexico’s sierras, under sombrero’s brim, A hat he won from bandits in the fray, It shaded quests through canyons wild and grim, A trophy bold from freedom’s fierce array.

Oh, treasures gleam, they warm the fleeting breast, Yet hearts grow cold ‘neath gold and crystal’s fire! What joy in dust, what peace in iron chest? True riches burn in heaven’s pure desire!

The years rolled on like trains without a track, Sailing through storms, through love’s unyielding gale, Amassed a hoard, yet something pulls back— An empty ache no trophy could assuage.

One thunderous night, as pain racked the body’s frame, The treasures circled ‘round the bed, Watch ticked its dirge, the cuckoo wailed the name, The bicycle stood sentinel o’erhead. The willow cracked, the Spode in shards did weep, Flutes shattered shrill, the painting tore in twain, Train derailed in silence, cold and deep, Mexican hat blew lost in howling rain.

“What worth your gold?” a voice cried, “These chains of earth that bind the wandering soul? They sparkled once, but now in darkness died— Seek light eternal, make the spirit whole!”

Kneeling in ruin, treasures turned to rust, And whispered prayers to reach beyond the stars, “Forgive my chase through glory’s hollow dust, I know Thee now— my heart forever Thine!” A peace descended, sweeter than the wine In Waterford’s lost flutes, or victory’s crown; No watch could measure love so pure, divine— Smiling: “I’m happy, come down!”

Oh, treasures fade, they warm the fleeting breast, But your own God alone the frozen heart revives! In knowing, all wanderings find rest— Eternal joy where true fulfillment thrives!

~Roald Bartholomew

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

Creation

Every summer, when the highveld heat starts to shimmer above the Witwatersrand, they come. Thousands upon thousands of Belenois aurota, the brown-veined whites, rising out of the south west like a living prayer. They pour over the Magaliesberg in pale rivers, drifting across the tar roads, settling on the dirt and trees, lifting again in scattered slow-motion clouds that catch the light and turn it into something almost holy.

No one stops. Vehicles hiss past without slowing. Cyclists hammer by in their bright jerseys, eyes fixed on power meters and heart-rate straps. Hikers stride along the trails staring at their boots or their phones. The butterflies swirl around them all, brushing cheeks and handlebars like gentle ghosts, and no one looks up.

But I do.

I pull over on eddy, feet on the ground, sweat cooling on my back, and I just watch. They move without hurry, without noise, without ego. Small, fragile-looking creatures that have out-survived everything. They were here when the first hominids stumbled out of these very valleys, blinking at the same sun. They were here when the giant reptiles shook the earth, when the Karoo was a vast green forest, when the continents themselves were still deciding where to settle. Dinosaurs rose and fell; the butterflies kept flying.

We think we’re the pinnacle. The late-arriving masters. Yet here, in the Cradle of Humankind itself, these delicate beings remind me how temporary we are. They carry the memory of deep time in their wings. When the last human voice has gone silent, when our cities have crumbled back into grass, K’aalógii will still be drifting across this landscape on warm summer winds.

The Navajo knew. They placed the butterfly in the sky first. K’aalógii, before Coyote got impatient and flung the rest of the stars into chaos. A single, perfect constellation to say: this is where life begins, in quiet transformation, in fragile strength.

I stand there on the side of the road, a lone man with a bicycle, surrounded by a storm of white wings, and I feel something ancient acknowledge me. Not the other way around. They were here long before us. They will be here long after.

Time slows like it did in the beginning and I can feel creation.

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

Fresh Produce Supply Chain: From Wholesale Markets to Commercial Kitchens

Fresh fruit and vegetables go through several stages before reaching a restaurant kitchen. From growers and wholesale markets to storage facilities, distributors and final delivery, every stage plays an important role in maintaining product quality and availability.

For restaurants, hotels, cafés and catering businesses, having access to fresh produce is essential. Chefs depend on consistent ingredients to prepare meals, maintain menu standards and deliver a good customer experience. However, fresh produce is perishable, which means delays, unsuitable handling and poor storage can affect its quality before it reaches the kitchen.

A well-managed fresh produce supply chain connects suppliers, wholesalers, transport providers and hospitality businesses through an organised purchasing and distribution process. Understanding how this process works can help restaurant managers make better sourcing decisions, reduce avoidable waste and maintain a more reliable supply of ingredients.

What Is a Fresh Produce Supply Chain?

A fresh produce supply chain is the network of activities involved in sourcing, handling, storing, transporting and delivering fruit and vegetables from their place of production to the final customer.

In hospitality, this process usually begins with growers or importers and continues through wholesalers, distributors and commercial buyers.

A typical fresh produce supply chain may include:

1. Growing and harvesting: Fruit and vegetables are cultivated and collected when ready.
2. Initial sorting and grading: Produce is checked for quality, size, condition and suitability.
3. Wholesale sourcing: Products are purchased, consolidated and prepared for distribution.
4. Storage and handling: Produce is kept under appropriate conditions to maintain quality.
5. Transportation: Orders are moved from suppliers or wholesale markets to distribution points and customer locations.
6. Commercial delivery: Restaurants, hotels and catering kitchens receive and inspect their orders.
7. Kitchen storage and preparation: Ingredients are stored, prepared and used according to operational requirements.

Each stage affects the condition, availability and final purchasing cost of fresh produce.

Why Fresh Produce Supply Chain Management Matters

Fresh fruit and vegetables require more attention than many non-perishable products. Their condition can change during storage and transportation, and different products have different handling requirements.

For hospitality businesses, supply chain management is therefore about more than receiving an order. It involves ensuring that the right products arrive in the right quantities, at the right time and in a suitable condition.

1. Maintaining Freshness and Product Quality

Freshness is one of the most important considerations when buying fruit and vegetables for commercial kitchens.

Poor handling, unsuitable storage temperatures, excessive delays and physical damage can reduce product quality. Leafy vegetables may lose their crispness, berries can become damaged and delicate herbs may deteriorate quickly.

A reliable supply chain considers product requirements at every stage, from harvesting and grading to packing and delivery.

Restaurant buyers should establish clear quality specifications with suppliers so that deliveries meet the kitchen's expectations.

2. Improving Supply Reliability

A restaurant cannot easily maintain its menu if essential ingredients are unavailable.

Shortages of tomatoes, potatoes, onions, salad leaves or other frequently used ingredients can disrupt food preparation and create pressure on kitchen staff.

Reliable suppliers and organised delivery schedules help businesses plan their purchases and reduce the risk of unexpected shortages.

For products that are particularly important to daily operations, having suitable alternative suppliers can provide additional security.

3. Controlling Purchasing and Distribution Costs

Fresh produce passes through several stages before reaching a commercial kitchen. Handling, storage, packaging, transportation and intermediary services can all contribute to the final price.

Restaurants should therefore look beyond the quoted product price when evaluating suppliers.

Delivery charges, minimum order quantities, product quality, usable yield and potential spoilage all influence the actual cost of purchasing.

Reviewing the complete supply arrangement helps hospitality businesses make more informed procurement decisions.

4. Reducing Product Damage and Waste

Fresh produce can be damaged by rough handling, unsuitable packaging, poor stacking or excessive storage periods.

These problems may result in rejected deliveries, reduced usable quantities and unnecessary replacement orders.

Good handling procedures help protect products throughout the supply chain. Suppliers and hospitality buyers should also communicate clearly about packaging requirements, delivery conditions and acceptable product standards.

Reducing avoidable damage can help businesses get better value from every order.

From Growers to Wholesale Markets: How Fresh Produce Is Sourced

The journey of fresh produce often starts with farmers, growers or importers.

Growers harvest products according to their maturity and intended market requirements. Some produce is sold through wholesale markets, while other products move through specialist distributors or direct supplier arrangements.

Wholesale markets play an important role because they bring together different products, suppliers and buyers in one trading environment.

For hospitality businesses, wholesale suppliers can provide access to a wider selection of fruit and vegetables without requiring individual restaurants to purchase directly from numerous growers.

The Importance of Grading and Quality Selection

Not all produce is suitable for every commercial kitchen.

A restaurant preparing premium salads may require visually consistent salad leaves, tomatoes and cucumbers. A kitchen producing soups, sauces or cooked vegetable dishes may have different size and appearance requirements.

Grading helps classify produce according to relevant quality characteristics, including:

• Product size and consistency.
• Ripeness and maturity.
• Appearance and physical condition.
• Freshness and firmness.
• Suitability for the intended use.

Clear specifications help suppliers understand what buyers require and reduce misunderstandings when orders are fulfilled.

Choosing the Right Wholesale Supplier

A suitable wholesale produce supplier should understand the needs of commercial kitchens.

Restaurant buyers should consider product range, sourcing arrangements, delivery reliability, order flexibility, communication and quality control.

A supplier that offers a wide selection of fruit, vegetables, herbs, chillies, garlic and salad products may help businesses coordinate more of their fresh produce purchasing through one relationship.

However, businesses should always assess whether the supplier can meet their actual volume, quality and delivery requirements.

Fresh Produce Handling and Storage Before Delivery

Once produce has been sourced, careful handling becomes essential.

Fruit and vegetables can deteriorate if they are exposed to unsuitable conditions or handled incorrectly. Some products are particularly sensitive to temperature changes, moisture loss and physical pressure.

Appropriate Temperature Management

Different fruits and vegetables have different storage requirements. Some leafy vegetables benefit from refrigeration, while certain tropical products can suffer chilling injury if stored too cold.

A suitable storage process should take account of the product type, maturity, intended storage period and supplier guidance.

Businesses should avoid assuming that every fresh produce item can be stored at the same temperature.

Proper Packaging and Handling

Packaging helps protect produce during storage and transportation. Suitable crates, cartons and containers can reduce crushing, contamination and physical damage.

Products should be packed and stacked according to their characteristics. Delicate berries, for example, need more protection than firm root vegetables.

Careful loading and unloading are also important because repeated handling can increase the risk of bruising and damage.

Managing Ripeness and Shelf Life

Not every fruit or vegetable should be purchased at the same stage of ripeness.

Some products may need to be ready for immediate use, while others can be purchased slightly earlier in their ripening process, depending on the kitchen's requirements and storage arrangements.

Restaurant buyers should consider expected consumption, delivery frequency and remaining shelf life when placing orders.

This helps avoid purchasing quantities that cannot be used before quality declines.

Transportation and Distribution: Getting Produce to Commercial Kitchens

Transportation is one of the most important parts of the fresh produce supply chain.

Even high-quality produce can lose value if it is transported under unsuitable conditions or delivered too late.

Suppliers and distributors need to coordinate vehicles, delivery routes, loading procedures and customer schedules.

Temperature-Controlled Transportation

Some fresh produce requires temperature-controlled transportation to help maintain quality during transit.

Vehicles should be appropriate for the products being carried, and loading arrangements should reduce unnecessary exposure to unsuitable temperatures.

It is also important to recognise that different products may have different temperature requirements. A single temperature setting is not suitable for every fruit and vegetable.

Delivery Scheduling

Restaurants often work with limited storage space and fixed kitchen preparation schedules.

Receiving produce too early can create storage pressure, while late deliveries may delay preparation and service.

Suppliers should coordinate delivery windows with the customer's operational requirements.

For example, a restaurant that prepares ingredients early in the morning may need its produce delivered before kitchen preparation begins.

Clear ordering deadlines and regular communication can make these arrangements easier to manage.

Last-Mile Delivery

The final stage of distribution involves transporting produce from the supplier or distribution facility directly to the restaurant or hotel.

This stage is particularly important because it connects the supply chain with the actual kitchen operation.

Accurate order picking, suitable packaging, careful loading and reliable arrival times all contribute to a successful delivery.

A well-coordinated last-mile process helps ensure that the products received match the quantities and specifications requested by the customer.

How Restaurants Can Manage Fresh Produce Deliveries

Hospitality businesses also have responsibilities once the produce arrives.

A structured receiving process helps identify problems early and ensures that stock records remain accurate.

Check Product Quality on Arrival

Staff should inspect deliveries for visible damage, freshness, ripeness and suitability for the intended use.

For example, salad leaves should be checked for signs of wilting or deterioration, while berries should be inspected for crushing and spoilage.

Compare Deliveries With Purchase Orders

The delivery should be checked against the original order to confirm that the correct products, pack sizes and quantities have arrived.

Missing items, incorrect substitutions and damaged products should be reported to the supplier promptly.

Store Products Correctly

Once accepted, produce should be transferred to appropriate storage areas without unnecessary delay.

Staff should follow product-specific storage guidance and maintain clean, organised refrigeration and dry-storage areas.

Maintain Stock Rotation

A suitable stock rotation system helps kitchens use older stock before newer deliveries where appropriate.

Regular stock checks also help managers identify products that need to be used quickly and adjust upcoming orders accordingly.

These simple procedures can improve inventory control and reduce avoidable produce waste.

Common Challenges in the Fresh Produce Supply Chain

Fresh produce procurement involves several challenges that hospitality businesses should consider.

Seasonal availability: Certain fruits and vegetables may become harder to source at different times of the year. Restaurants should remain flexible and discuss suitable alternatives with suppliers.

Price fluctuations: Weather conditions, harvest volumes, transport costs and market demand can influence wholesale prices. Regular price reviews help buyers understand changes.

Supply interruptions: Transport delays, crop problems and supplier shortages can affect availability. Alternative sourcing arrangements can reduce dependence on a single supply route.

Inconsistent quality: Differences in grading, ripeness and product specifications can lead to rejected deliveries or additional preparation work. Clear product requirements help address these issues.

Delivery coordination: Poor communication between buyers and suppliers can result in incorrect quantities, missed delivery windows and unnecessary urgent orders.

Addressing these challenges requires cooperation between suppliers, wholesalers, distributors and hospitality purchasing teams.

How Technology Can Improve Fresh Produce Supply Chain Management

Digital tools can help businesses organise purchasing information and improve communication across the supply chain.

Depending on the system, restaurants and suppliers may use digital platforms to manage:

• Purchase orders and delivery schedules.
• Supplier details and product specifications.
• Current prices and order histories.
• Inventory levels and replenishment requirements.
• Delivery confirmations and discrepancies.
• Purchasing expenditure and supplier performance.

For example, a restaurant manager can use purchasing records to identify which ingredients are ordered most frequently and whether delivery quantities match actual kitchen consumption.

Better information can help businesses plan orders more accurately and communicate requirements more clearly.

Technology is most useful when records are kept up to date and employees follow consistent procedures.

The Role of Fresh Produce Wholesalers in Hospitality Procurement

Fresh produce wholesalers connect commercial kitchens with a wider network of growers, importers and distribution services.

They help hospitality businesses source different types of produce, coordinate purchasing requirements and arrange regular deliveries.

For restaurants, hotels, cafés and catering businesses, working with a suitable wholesale supplier can simplify purchasing and reduce the need to manage numerous individual sourcing relationships.

When choosing a wholesale partner, businesses should assess:

• The range of fresh fruit and vegetables available.
• Product quality and grading standards.
• Sourcing transparency and product origin information.
• Delivery frequency and geographical coverage.
• Order accuracy and flexibility.
• Communication and issue-resolution procedures.

The right supplier relationship should support the kitchen's operational requirements while providing dependable access to suitable fresh produce.

How ES Connect Supports Fresh Produce Procurement

Managing fresh produce sourcing involves more than finding products at wholesale prices. Hospitality businesses need to consider supplier reliability, product specifications, delivery arrangements, quality and overall purchasing value.

A structured procurement approach can help businesses review these requirements and organise their supplier relationships more effectively.

ES Connect's fruit and vegetable wholesale sourcing for hospitality businesses is relevant to restaurants, hotels, cafés and other hospitality operators looking to manage their fresh produce purchasing.

By focusing on supplier sourcing, purchasing requirements and supply chain coordination, hospitality businesses can work towards a more reliable process for obtaining the ingredients their kitchens need.

Conclusion

The fresh produce supply chain involves several connected stages, from growing and harvesting to wholesale sourcing, handling, storage, transportation and final delivery.

Every stage can influence product quality, availability and purchasing costs. For restaurants and other hospitality businesses, understanding this process makes it easier to identify potential problems and work with suppliers more effectively.

By choosing suitable wholesale partners, establishing clear product specifications, coordinating deliveries and managing kitchen stock carefully, businesses can improve the way they purchase and use fresh fruit and vegetables.

A reliable supply chain is not simply about moving produce from one location to another. It is about ensuring that suitable ingredients reach commercial kitchens in the right condition, quantity and timeframe to support consistent hospitality operations.

Washing dried, flight over, sat at my desk in a different location carrying the seeds of a different stance, I re-read the piece I wrote above.

I have written before on Defining Sentences that device that literary critics (and AI too now it seems) love to use; to identify a phrase or a sentence to which they can point and declare “this is what the story, essay, polemic, whatever, revolves around. And I have explained my own rebellious nature and how I seek to de-focus this. Because it is one thing to be focussed in the written expression of the thought. But that does not mean that the thought itself is focussed. And that very lack of focus needs to be protected. There is frequently a reason for it. Even now I know there is another note destined to follow this on “Anchor Points”.

Never-the-less I am nothing if not an essayist and must confirm that the first person educated (if I may use the word) by my writing, is me. So today I walked back through the note on “the mimicry of uncertainty” and here is what I found:

The note is not about AI trawling my work, but about intellectual honesty and the apparent performance of it. That's why Orwell entered my head so readily, occupying my attention because he represents a competing account of what intellectual honesty looks like when confronted by disappointment.

Orwell has been much on my mind lately, not because I disagree with his commitment to honesty, but because I am increasingly persuaded that disappointment can masquerade as honesty. To lose faith in a possibility because one has witnessed its failure is not necessarily realism. It may simply be another form of injury. An essayist must remain open to what remains unresolved. As I have written elsewhere there is always value in negative results

The whole piece seems to revolve around this: It remains an unresolved ache. The whole piece appears to turn on that idea. Elsewhere I say ...to endure a life of open wound and not collapse into cynicism. That feels like one of the underlying propositions of Essayism. The cynic closes the wound. The essayist keeps it open. Not because suffering is noble, but because closure too quickly becomes blindness. The essayist remains susceptible to surprise, disappointment, contradiction, wonder and connection. There is a cost to that susceptibility, but there is also insight.

The machine cannot live with an unresolved ache. The road-layer must pave it. The formulaic essay must convert it into a takeaway. The cynic must explain it away. The essayist, by contrast, carries it forward.

That's why I suspect Orwell and the AI essay ultimately occupy the same place in my argument. Both are, in different ways, examples of the urge to escape uncertainty. One escapes through disenchantment, the other through optimisation. The essayist's task is to remain present to it.

Overall, the note reveals something rather interesting: my criticism of AI is not primarily technological. It is ontological. The machine's failure is not that it lacks information. It lacks a lived history through which one thing unexpectedly becomes another thing. It cannot stand beside a washing machine and find Leicester, Mondragon, worker ownership, Orwell and the nature of essayism already waiting there.

That, I think, is the deeper argument beginning to emerge beneath the surface of this possible essay.

So the Notebook is becoming more than the sum of its parts. (Now my brain is off exploring the quintessential. STOP! Get back to the task in hand.)

When I began, I was simply looking for a friction-free surface where I might assemble a few notes on Essayism, in public. The first reason was that, after more than a decade or two of essaying, I had finally given myself permission to describe my disposition publically, as that of an essayist. The second was that there is a peculiar accountability in sharing one's thoughts with others. I “own” them. I become much more attentive to the care with which I express them. It sharpens my performance of good faith. The words chosen better represent the thought than the sloppy scribble in a Moleskine while sitting at the back of a bus.

In the early days, I found my posts attracting three or four readers. So I did not distress myself when I returned to a note to amend it or add an addendum. It did not seem significant. Now it has become a habit. And I was about to make a significant amendment to an early post when I noticed that my posts now receive anything between 150 and 200 readers. Should the quantity of readers matter? Probably not. But the notion of repeatedly presenting an incomplete thought has nagged at me a little. So, some changes.

1: There is now a FAQ. If you have arrived here recently, you can now take a look at a few short paragraphs that I hope address the inquiries of curious minds as to what I am doing here.

2: I've created a Google search box. The menu item for it sits both in the header, alongside the FAQ, and in the footer. At the moment, the search incorporates both this site, The Essayist's Notebook, and the wider Essayism.org. At some point in the near future I may have to separate them. But the point is that, for now, you can type in a keyword, a concept, or a fragment of a title and probably find something somewhere across the two sites.

3: Amendments and Updates. This is a significant structural change, and the search option facilitates it well. Rather than add to, or silently expand, an existing note, I will create a new note that links to the original. It will flow into the wider broadcast mechanism and readers such as yourself will be alerted: there has been an update to the thought.

That's it. A bit of housekeeping that shows some courtesy to you, the reader, whom I have to thank for providing the accountability I was seeking.

It's been a while, and it's also been a recurring theme in my life recently. It seems I am very good at starting things, but then I lose interest in them after a short while. Maybe my mind is just like that: starting new things, but never finishing them.

I do want to do better here and keep writing what's on my mind. However, maybe not make it a daily thing, or try to convince myself it should be. Putting pressure on myself for things that make no sense to pressure myself for is senseless, if you think about it.

This isn't only something I am dealing with in writing, but also in a lot of other aspects of life. I pick up hobbies it seems like every single week, but then I never see them through. I lose interest almost just as fast as I gain it. Learning to play guitar, a new language, some AI coding stuff, or an idea that pops in my head. Been there, done that, a million times.

I must not be the only one dealing with this, though; I guess in today’s day and age, it’s also very easy to get constantly distracted by something new and shiny. Then, after a couple of days, something new and shiny pops up again, and the cycle continues.

Living in the Cradle of Humankind

Vredefort Dome

Two billion years ago an asteroid streaked into my neighbourhood and created an impact crater stretching two hundred and fifty kilometres across, known as the Vredefort Dome. Today, much of that crater has been eroded and not much is left as evidence except the melted and distorted rocks that indicated the voracity of the event. We lived in blissful ignorance of its existence until around the time I was born when pictures from space provided clues. I live on the edge of that impact crater in an area known as the Witwatersrand. This region has been core to the history of our planet. A region that gained its name from the colour of the water flowing over its northern edges.

This was by far the biggest event in the entire history of the area but there were several other significant events that shaped South Africa, one being the Anglo-Boer war and the years proceeding them. The region was being expanded and the conversion of the main transport from ox-wagon to railway was in progress when gold was discovered in the Witwatersrand. The gold deposits on the edge of asteroid impact zone were available in seams that could be mined. This triggered an attempt by a British imperialist who wanted to expropriate these by force. His name was Cecil John Rhodes who had made a commercial killing from the diamond mining in Kimberly. The attempt was repealed but would be a significant contributing factor to the Anglo-Boer war that followed.

Rhodes became rich mining diamonds in Kimberly. Such was the desire for the stones in this location, that men dug into the earth and created the largest man-made hole. The hole started as a hill and only once every diamond was extracted, did they stop.

Rinderpest

Shortly after the Cecil John Rhodes caper to the Witwatersrand, known as The Jamison Raid, the whole continent was struck by an outbreak of the Rinderpest. Large herds of cattle died or were culled, and the railway became a key resource and influence.

Albert Gielink, Herman’s father had holdings of cattle and sugar cane. He lost his herds to the Rinderpest and it impacted him badly even though he had several farms, and the sugar cane crops were still viable. His son Herman would use those farms and supplement them with wattle plantations. Wattle was required as a resultant demand from the expanded mining activities within the Witwatersrand.

However, Albert could not come to terms with the loss of his cattle. He committed suicide in the bedroom of his farmhouse. He slit his own throat and the blood soaked the linen of the bed. His daughter then washed the blood from the linen, and he was buried outside the boundary of the cemetery at the Lilienthal church. The Christians deemed that those who committed suicide were not worthy of being interned in the same cemetery as other members of the congregation.

Herman unexpected death in the car crash occurred after the outbreak of war in the world. The region was relatively unaffected by the war which devastated large parts of Europe but for the so-called Spanish flu that arrived with the returning soldiers from the war caused a crisis. The flu spread rapidly around the country via the rail system which the returning soldiers used to go back home after disembarking at Cape Town. Herman and his family survived the flu which devastated many communities but then succumbed to the horrific train accident. The fact that the two sisters survived, abate with bad injuries was incredible as the car was dragged several hundred yards by the train.

More than a hundred years later we are experiencing another pandemic, COVID. It is having the same devastating consequences on people's lives.

The Witwatersrand region is the most important contributor to humankind. This is the area where humanoids of various species first evolved to create humans. Over three hundred thousand years ago we had humanoids in the grasslands of the area that developed due to an optimal climate, neither too cold nor too hot. There was antelope in abundance with lightning creating spontaneous fires that could be exploited. The antelope herds were millions of creatures large and a herd would take days to pass by a specific location. Hunting was easier than a McDonald’s drive through!

Fake news

This history would be discovered when the settlers in the Witwatersrand started growing crops to feed the miners who streamed in when gold was discovered. The farms required lime which they mined from accessible caves in the area. Strange bones were discovered but it was only when an Australian anthropologist looked at them that their significance was realized. This discovery happened soon after the traumatic train accident that my grandmother was involved in.

However, the discovery by the Australian anthropologist mentioned above, Raymond Dart was suppressed by one of the biggest instances of scientific fraud ever published. In Britain, a group of individuals conspired to create the fake Piltdown man. Their inherent bigotry could not process the idea that Europe or even Asia was not the epicentre of the birth of humankind but rather Africa. It would be many decades and only after the Second World War that the Piltdown man hoax was exposed.

In many parts of the world hoax theory is still prevalent over rational thought and this is having been in full and open hysterical progress during the COVID-19 pandemic. In places like the United States the President shunned scientific input and rather supported political expediency. They have also driven an agenda of what is termed as fake news. This labelling has nothing to do with fact but is a blurring of editorial and opinion to discredit legitimised journalism. This is a common totalitarian strategy to discredit major factual based reporting organizations and influence people in a polluted nest of conspiracy theories. The primary example of his distortion is the latest presidential elections in the United States.

Eddy Merckx

In the Witwatersrand we are still discovering important history which includes human ancestors and separate races of humanoids. All these caves and discoveries are all withing cycling distance of my home. I have a yellow Eddy Merckx road bike. I acquired it when I was still at Madge Networks and it has been one of my main bicycles through the years. It accompanies me riding round the Cradle of Humankind.

Eddy Merckx is a Belgian considered to be the greatest pro-cyclist ever and was born as the Second World War was being wrapped up. He sells his own line of bicycles and I mine is a prized position. It dominated and won the Argus Cycle tour in the year following democracy in South Africa. He is one of my heroes and his never-equalled domination while cycling led to his nickname, when the daughter of one French racer said, “That Belgian guy, he doesn’t even leave you the crumbs. He’s a real cannibal.” The French magazine Vélo described Merckx as “the most accomplished rider that cycling has ever known.” Merckx, who turned professional in before I was born, won the World Championship thrice, the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia five times each, and the Vuelta a España once.

South Africa is full of quirks. In the middle of our winter, along the east coast we have a sardine run. It occurs from May through July when billions of sardines – or more specifically the Southern African pilchard Sardinops sagax – spawns in the cool waters of the Agulhas Bank and move northward along the east coast. Their sheer numbers create a feeding frenzy along the coastline. Why? No-one knows. When we do it will be like looking at those pictures of the Vredefort Dome from space? My dad told me that many people its life lived that way. They never saw the bigger picture. They are picking at the bones and miss seeing the skeleton. He would say this when we discussed my deviant cousin’s Christian beliefs.

Along the same coast we have the Coelacanth, commonly known as olde four legs. This the most ancient of fish is still alive on planet Earth. It lives at great depths and was assumed to have become extinct 65 million years ago. Then year my mom was born this South African popped out of the depths to tell us different.

Evolution

In the minds of some extreme Christian there is a belief of creation based on biblical interpretations of Genesis, which assume we have only been around seven thousand years. This is one of the fundamental beliefs of the Kwasizbantu cult. Notwithstanding our existences as humanoid based life in this area of the Witwatersrand for three hundred thousand years and the legacy of the millions of years of the Coelacanth, and the billions of years of the Vredefort Dome, there are those groups of fundamentalist Christians who disparage it as fake. This is a view not based on scientific observation or deductive reasoning but irrational belief. I am not a part of the Christian grouping and yet even though I have an affinity for the tradition and moral messaging, I always feel alienated as a result. The binary decisions to be called a Christian based on myths are unpalatable as invariable any admittance to acceptable of rational science is viewed as being a heretic.

I am a heretic.

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

Today S, T and I Planned to play the new overwatch drives. We got hard shit on every single game. We changed roles. We changed heroes everything. We ended up like two wins eight losses. S finally called it and got off to go to bed, and then T and I went on an eight game win streak. S wasn’t doing bad at all, it is honestly pure luck and we kept playing with the same people and we had really good synergy, but it’s so fucking funny to me.

An American Conference Game.

My Friday's game of choice finds the (3-4) Tulane Green Wave football team traveling to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte to play the (1-6) Charlotte 49ers in an American Conference game scheduled to start at 6:00 PM CT. I should be able to listen to at least the first half, and maybe the whole game before sleep takes me away.

And the adventure continues.

Meer en meer zijn het Graaiend in afvalbakken Ieder blikje telt.

i didnt write yesterday because i have a big surprise to tell you, well, if im being honest. ive always come up with random surprises that shock us both. but this one is rather unexpected. i’ve fixed my sleep schedule. yes. you read that correctly. my sleep schedule. fixed. im just as surprised as you are, believe me. its quite amusing when i think about it. a few days ago, i was here complaining about insomnia, then sleeping at nine in the morning and waking up somewhere around seven in the evening, generally behaving like a creature that has no business being awake during daylight. id spend the night staring at the ceiling, then spend the day sleeping through whatever unfortunate responsibilities i had. a rather impressive arrangement, really. one id been committed to for quite some time. but now? gone. fixed. usually, fixing my sleep schedule requires more effort than im willing to put into most things. but, miracles do happen. actually, now that ive written it down, im less excited about it. thats disappointing. i had this lovely little surprise sitting in my head, and now that ive spilled it all over this page, it feels rather ordinary. maybe i should have kept my mouth.. well, in that case. my hands shut. a rare much rare opportunity wasted on an audience that doesnt even pay admission. anyway, i guess thats enough writing for today. i have nothing left to report.

Sincerely, Who might ruin his sleep after this.

For as long as automation has had a sales pitch, the pitch has been the same. The machines will take the drudgery. They will fill in the forms, file the reports, chase the invoices and reconcile the spreadsheets, and in doing so they will hand back to human beings the parts of work that are interesting, creative and their own. Strategy, design, ideas. The good stuff.

A paper presented at the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, held in Barcelona from 13 to 17 April, suggests that the pitch may have the order of events backwards. Its title asks the question bluntly: “Are We Automating the Joy Out of Work? Designing AI to Augment Work, Not Meaning”. Its authors are Jaspreet Ranjit and Swabha Swayamdipta of the University of Southern California, Ke Zhou of Nokia Bell Labs and the University of Nottingham, and Daniele Quercia of Nokia Bell Labs and the Politecnico di Torino. Their central finding, in the words of the abstract, is this: “Worryingly, we find that tasks that workers associate with a sense of agency or happiness may be disproportionately exposed to AI.”

Not the tedious tasks. The ones people like.

The authors go further. A central risk of AI, they argue, is not mass unemployment but what they call mass demoralisation: “a loss of meaning and ownership in day-to-day work”. As models generate more of the early-stage output, they write, the visible creative steps can start to feel machine-made, while the human contribution becomes rushed, under-resourced and difficult to see.

That is a different kind of warning from the one that has dominated the debate about AI and jobs. It is not about whether people will have work. It is about what work will be like for the people who keep it. And it raises two questions that most organisations deploying AI have not yet seriously asked. What happens to a person's relationship with their craft when the parts of the job they found most fulfilling are the first to be handed to a machine, and what is left is the emotional and relational upkeep? And if the danger is demoralisation rather than displacement, who should decide which parts of a job get automated?

How the researchers mapped meaning onto ten thousand tasks

The study starts with the US Department of Labor's Occupational Information Network, known as O*NET, which breaks every American occupation into short task statements. The researchers narrowed this universe to tasks performed mainly on a computer, carried out daily or weekly, and ones that workers on the research platform Prolific were highly familiar with. That produced a representative sample of 171 tasks across 22 occupations.

They then surveyed two groups. The first was 202 workers who actually performed those tasks. Each rated their tasks against dimensions drawn from a scoping review of research on meaningful work: whether a task felt pointless or valuable, whether it called for novel ideas, gave them freedom or made them happy, and whether it built relationships or required emotional awareness or in-person contact. The second group was 197 developers who build AI systems, who were asked what traits they would design into an AI tool for each task.

To scale the analysis beyond 171 tasks, the team prompted language models to simulate the ratings, checked how closely the simulated ratings matched the human ones, and, finding reasonable agreement, generated annotations for 10,131 tasks across 512 occupations and 19 sectors. They report that only 0.87 per cent of tasks showed a large gap, of two points or more on a five-point scale, between model and human ratings, and that their main patterns held when they reran the analysis using only the human ratings.

To decide which tasks counted as “exposed” to AI, the researchers used a patent-based measure developed by Ali Akbar Septiandri, Marios Constantinides and Quercia, published in PNAS Nexus in 2024, which matched descriptions of tens of thousands of AI patents filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office against O*NET task statements. Tasks above a threshold on that measure were classed as likely to be exposed. Restricting the analysis to computer-based work left 3,179 tasks in the likely-to-be-exposed group and 2,349 in the comparison group.

The parts of the job that machines reach first

The comparison between those two groups is where the paper becomes uncomfortable. Tasks likely to be exposed to AI were more strongly associated by workers with novelty and creativity, with positive feelings and with autonomy. The researchers say directly that this “challenges the usual narrative that automation mainly targets routine tasks”. Tasks less likely to be exposed were associated with emotional awareness, in-person interaction, relationship building and social connection.

The sector picture sharpens the point. The heaviest exposure of creative, high-agency work fell in Arts, Architecture and Engineering, Computer and Mathematics, and the Life, Physical and Social Sciences. The examples the paper draws from O*NET are telling: an art director “formulating basic layout design”; an actuary “constructing probability tables for natural disasters”. These are first passes, the authors note, of the kind that models can now credibly generate, with humans refining the output afterwards. Meanwhile, in Education, Sales, Community and Social Services and Healthcare, the work that remained less exposed involved activities such as guiding students through tangled academic and personal problems, or “presenting offers while preserving relationships”.

The authors read this as a reversal of the expected trajectory. Generative systems, they observe, already draft text, suggest layouts, start campaigns, run simulations and infer likely emotional responses. In their data, these uses line up with tasks that workers describe as meaningful precisely because they reflect taste and authorship. AI is not confined to chores. It is becoming entangled with the moments where people feel they add something of themselves.

There is a second finding that matters for anyone building the tools. Workers and developers disagreed about what an AI system should be like. Workers wanted systems that were straightforward, tolerant and practical. Developers said they would design systems that were polite, strict and imaginative. The single biggest gap was between straightforwardness and politeness, and it was widest in Production, Architecture and Engineering, and the sciences, where vagueness can mean wasted materials or flawed data. “In high-risk contexts,” the authors write, “the ethical choice may well be the blunt one, and the useful thing to say may be short.” Developers, they suggest, tend to romanticise creativity as a frontier capability, while many workers in structured, routine jobs simply want a tool that spots anomalies and sticks to the rules.

Put the two findings together and the problem comes into focus. The AI that is arriving is being built to be imaginative, and it is landing on the imaginative parts of the job.

Why exposure is not the same as replacement

It is worth being precise about what the study measures. “Exposure” does not mean a task has been automated, or even that it will be. The authors define it as tasks that current or near-term AI could plausibly perform or substantially speed up. It is a statement about technological reach, not about deployment decisions inside any particular firm, and the paper separates automation, where AI performs a task end to end, from augmentation, where humans keep primary responsibility.

The researchers are also candid about their limitations. The study covers only US occupational tasks. Prolific participants tend to be more technologically literate than average, so low-wage and non-digital work may be underrepresented. O*NET task statements are short summaries that different workers may picture differently. The scaling to 10,131 tasks relies on language-model ratings, which the authors treat as an approximation of human responses rather than as ground truth, and which they found to be more uniform and optimistic in some sectors. Even the creativity finding has a wrinkle. When the analysis was rerun on human ratings of the original 171 tasks alone, humans and models agreed on six of the seven significant dimensions; the exception was “requires novel ideas or creativity”, where the authors suggest human annotators tended to underestimate the novelty of tasks.

None of this undoes the core pattern. But the study is best read as a map of where pressure is likely to fall, not a ledger of what has already been lost. What actually happens to people's work is decided later, by managers, vendors and product teams.

From mass unemployment to mass demoralisation

Why should the location of the pressure matter so much? Because meaning in work is not spread evenly across a job. It clusters.

The sociologist Richard Sennett, in his 2008 book The Craftsman, described craftsmanship as the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake, and argued that this impulse extends far beyond the workshop, to programmers, doctors and artists. Craft, in that sense, lives in the moments of making: the first sketch, the opening paragraph, the elegant solution to a modelling problem.

If those moments are exactly where AI exposure is concentrated, then a job can be automated in a peculiar way. The worker keeps the job title, the salary and most of the hours. What disappears is the part that made them want the job in the first place. In the paper's own examples, the basic layout and the first probability table are precisely the drafts a model can now produce; what is left to the human is refinement. This is the scenario Ranjit and her colleagues have in mind when they describe a loss of ownership. The creative steps that others can see now appear to come from the machine, while the human's contribution moves into the background, squeezed for time and harder for anyone to credit.

There is already experimental evidence that this dynamic has psychological costs. In a 2025 paper in Scientific Reports, Suqing Wu, Yukun Liu, Mengqi Ruan, Siyu Chen and Xiao-Yun Xie of the School of Management at Zhejiang University reported four online experiments with a total of 3,562 participants. Working with generative AI improved immediate performance on professional tasks. But that performance boost did not carry over when people subsequently worked alone, and the switch from AI collaboration to solo work was accompanied by significant decreases in intrinsic motivation and increases in boredom, even as participants' sense of control rose. The authors' summary is succinct: collaboration with generative AI “enhances immediate task performance but can undermine long-term psychological experiences of human workers.”

Creative workers are already reporting effects outside the laboratory. A survey by the Society of Authors, the UK trade union for writers, illustrators and translators, received 787 responses in early 2024. A quarter of illustrators, 26 per cent, and more than a third of translators, 36 per cent, said they had already lost work to generative AI. The survey was self-reported and drawn from a membership sample, so it cannot measure the market as a whole. But it captures the sense, among people whose identities are bound up with a craft, that the craft itself is being lifted out of their hands.

What the remaining work asks of people

If the creative core of a job is thinned out, what is left? According to the CHI study, the tasks least exposed to AI are those built on emotional awareness, in-person presence and relationship building. That might sound like a reassuring residue. Machines draft, humans connect. But it is worth looking at what those remaining tasks involve.

In 1983, the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild of the University of California, Berkeley, published The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, which introduced the idea of emotional labour. Studying flight attendants and bill collectors, she described public-facing jobs in which managing feelings was part of what the employer was paying for. Flight attendants had to be, in the phrase used by her publisher, “nicer than natural”; bill collectors had to be “nastier than natural”. Hochschild's concern was that this kind of work, done for commercial purposes, could estrange people from their own feelings.

Relational work is not inherently draining. For many teachers, nurses, social workers and salespeople, the relationships are the point of the job, and the CHI data suggest that workers do regard these tasks as meaningful. The danger lies in the mix. A job that once combined making things with tending to people can become one that is mostly tending to people, with the making delegated. The remaining human work then has a distinctive profile: smoothing over the AI's output with clients, absorbing complaints, reassuring colleagues, maintaining relationships that the automated parts of the workflow no longer support. That is emotional labour, and much of it is invisible in the way that a finished design or a well-built model is not.

The Stanford University researchers behind the WORKBank database, Yijia Shao, Humishka Zope, Yucheng Jiang, Jiaxin Pei, David Nguyen, Erik Brynjolfsson and Diyi Yang, found a related signal in a 2025 study of 1,500 workers across 844 tasks in 104 occupations. Their results, they wrote, offer early signals that AI agents may reshape core human competencies, “shifting from information-focused skills to interpersonal ones.” The CHI paper adds a warning that this shift may not be benign. Among its design examples is the risk that teachers, managers and clinicians who use AI for canned replies and templated feedback end up making their communication with students, staff or patients feel more generic. If AI pushes people towards relational work while also hollowing out that relational work with templates, the worker is squeezed from both sides.

When the most fulfilling parts of a job are automated first, then, a person's relationship with their craft is put at risk in two ways. They lose authorship of the work that once expressed their skill and taste. And they are left with a larger share of work whose value is real but less visible and more emotionally costly. Whether that produces demoralisation depends on what else changes, and here a very different body of evidence becomes useful.

Lessons from people who stopped working

In September 2026, four researchers at Google DeepMind, Stephanie C.Y. Chan, Adam Bales, Katherine L. Hermann and Iason Gabriel, posted a review titled “Work, Wellbeing, and Choice: Empirical Lessons for AI Futures”. Their question was not what AI does to work, but what decades of research reveal about people who live without it. They drew on psychological, sociological and economic studies of the unemployed, retirees, lottery winners, financially dependent spouses and citizens of Gulf states with guaranteed public-sector employment, covering OECD countries, China, India and the Gulf.

Their findings are stark in places. Involuntary job loss harms life satisfaction, mental health, physical health and even mortality, and the damage can last: some studies find psychological “scarring” that persists for years after people find work again. Yet the vast majority of lottery winners, between 85 and 89 per cent across studies of American and Swedish winners, keep working, typically using their windfall to buy flexibility rather than to quit. And retirees, who are also not working, often report high and sustained wellbeing.

The authors draw on the work of the social psychologist Marie Jahoda, whose 1982 book Employment and Unemployment, published by Cambridge University Press, argued that a job provides “latent” benefits alongside its “manifest” purpose of earning a living. Jahoda identified time structure, social contact, status and identity, regular activity and collective purpose. The DeepMind review finds that both income and some of these latent benefits matter, and adds cognitive health: retirement has been causally linked to declines in cognitive ability.

To explain why the unemployed and the retired fare so differently, the review identifies three factors that mediate the relationship between work status and wellbeing. The first is agency and choice: whether the exit from work was voluntary, and whether people retain agency over the long term. The second is the availability of alternative sources of work's latent benefits, such as volunteering, hobbies or state-provided employment. The third is social and systemic context, including cultural norms around work and the strength of safety nets.

The evidence on each is striking. Between 20 and 30 per cent of retirees perceive their retirement as forced, and across countries those who retired voluntarily report significantly better physical and mental wellbeing than those who did not, even after controlling for health, income and other factors. Volunteering confers benefits at remarkably low doses, with gains for older adults observable from about one hour a week. One study cited in the review found that plant closures produced an almost four-fold greater increase in depression among American workers than among European workers, who have stronger safety nets. And the psychological cost of losing work tends to fall harder on men, which the authors attribute to stronger social pressure to conform to norms about working.

“Many policy discussions about AI futures focus on the availability of work or the availability of resources,” the authors write. “However, these discussions overlook the fact that it matters deeply whether people get to choose their path.” Their summary of the policy lesson is equally direct: purely material interventions such as universal basic income “are valuable but highly insufficient”.

Applying the exit evidence inside the job

The DeepMind review is about people who leave work altogether. But its three factors translate remarkably well to what happens when people stay in work and lose part of it. Demoralisation, in the CHI paper's sense, is a kind of partial exit: a withdrawal not from employment but from the meaningful core of a role. Read that way, the review's factors become a diagnostic for when task automation is likely to hurt.

Start with agency. A critical determinant of wellbeing in the review is not whether people work, but whether they chose their situation. Inside a job, the equivalent question is whether workers chose which of their tasks were handed to AI. The Society of Authors survey hints at the distinction: alongside those who chose to use generative AI, 5 per cent of illustrators and 8 per cent of translators said they had used it because their publisher or commissioning organisation asked them to. The CHI paper notes that, in practice, managers, vendors and technical teams, not workers, usually decide which tasks are exposed to AI and how far automation goes. “Managers, vendors, and technical teams make these decisions before workers can consent or take part, especially in roles with low bargaining power,” the authors write. That is the workplace version of involuntary exit.

Next, alternatives. Retirees do well when they find other sources of structure, status and purpose. Workers who lose the creative core of their job need somewhere else for those things to come from: new responsibilities with real authorship, protected time for the work they value, recognition for the judgement involved in steering and correcting AI output. If the time freed by automation is simply filled with more volume, the latent benefits drain away without replacement.

Finally, context and safety nets. The review shows that the same loss lands very differently depending on norms and institutional support. Inside an organisation, the analogue is culture and protection: whether people who push back on a deployment are heard or penalised, whether those whose roles shrink are offered retraining or redeployment, and whether the organisation measures anything other than throughput.

This is an analogy, not a finding. Neither paper tested it, and evidence about the unemployed cannot be transplanted wholesale onto people still in work. But the convergence is hard to ignore. Working from inside jobs, one paper finds that agency, ownership and meaning matter; working from outside, the other finds that choice, alternatives and context matter. Both suggest the damage depends less on what is taken away than on how.

Workers already say what they want automated

The good news is that workers are not, in general, opposed to automation. They are opposed to the wrong automation.

The WORKBank study asked its 1,500 workers which of their tasks they would like AI agents to take on. For 46.1 per cent of tasks, workers expressed positive attitudes towards automation, even after being prompted to reflect on job loss and on how much they enjoyed the work. Their main motivation was to free up time for higher-value work. The researchers then compared those desires with experts' assessments of what AI could currently do, sorting tasks into four zones: a “Green Light” zone where workers wanted automation and the technology could deliver it; a “Red Light” zone where the technology was capable but workers did not want it; an R&D opportunity zone where workers wanted help that the technology could not yet provide; and a low-priority zone.

Their most pointed finding concerned where the money was going. Mapping the tasks targeted by Y Combinator start-ups, they found that 41.0 per cent of company-task mappings were concentrated in the Low Priority and “Red Light” zones. A large share of the industry's effort, in other words, was aimed at tasks workers either did not care about or actively wanted to keep.

Combined with the CHI paper's developer-worker mismatch, the pattern is clear. Workers do not resist AI. Their preferences are simply rarely the input that shapes what gets built.

A test for choosing which task clusters to automate

If the risk is demoralisation, then the usual test for automation, which asks whether a task can be done faster or cheaper by a machine, is incomplete. It needs a second question: what does this task mean to the people who do it? Drawing on the two papers and the evidence around them, an organisation could reasonably weigh at least four considerations before automating a cluster of tasks.

The first is meaning. Ask the people who do the work which tasks they find meaningful, enjoyable or expressive of their skill, and which they find pointless. The CHI study shows that this can be measured at scale with straightforward survey instruments. WORKBank shows that workers can distinguish clearly between tasks they want help with and tasks they want to keep. Tasks that workers rate low on meaning and high on tedium are the obvious first candidates. Tasks rated high on creativity, autonomy and happiness deserve a heavier burden of justification.

The second is order. The CHI authors propose that, for creative work, the sequence matters as much as the division of labour. Their design heuristics include starting creative fields empty, so that a human sketch, prompt or outline exists before AI suggestions appear; offering several alternatives rather than a single finished replacement; letting workers accept or reject AI content sentence by sentence rather than through a single “replace all”; and allowing a worker to tick a box marked “I want to do this part myself”. The question for an organisation is not simply whether AI touches a creative task, but whether the human still makes the first move.

The third is what replaces the time saved. The DeepMind review's evidence on alternative sources of meaning suggests that automation which frees time is only beneficial if that time goes somewhere that sustains structure, status and purpose. For relational work, the CHI paper suggests using AI to prepare briefs and summaries so the human arrives better informed, assigning it to silent roles such as note-taking during live interactions, and reserving protected time for direct human engagement. Its proposed measures of success are telling: workers reporting that AI helps them “show up prepared” rather than “speak for me”, and that it does not “take away the good parts” of the job.

The fourth is measurement. The CHI authors recommend tracking, during deployment, whether workers still feel in control and whether the output “still feels like my work”, alongside conventional measures of speed and quality. They also suggest logging the level of assistance AI provides, from suggestion to draft to execution, and recording who made the final decision. Over time, they argue, workers' self-reported skills and confidence in their core craft should remain stable or improve. If those indicators fall while productivity rises, the organisation has learned something its dashboards would otherwise hide.

None of this means creative tasks should never be automated. Some workers will welcome help with the very tasks others prize, and the CHI data show wide variation between sectors. The point is that meaning should be treated as a real cost in the decision, not as a sentimental afterthought.

Giving workers a binding say

That leaves the second half of the question: what voice should workers have? The CHI paper's answer is explicit. Beyond designing interfaces that let individuals retain control within a task, the authors argue that organisations should give workers some say over which task clusters are candidates for automation. Without such mechanisms, they warn, “AI exposure risks deepening existing power imbalances.” They point to remedies from research on algorithmic management: direct involvement of workers and their representatives through formal consultation and collective bargaining over AI deployments, worker or union technology representatives with access to information about how systems allocate and evaluate work, and transparency tools that help workers understand and contest automated decisions.

There are working precedents. The most prominent came from Hollywood. The 2023 Minimum Basic Agreement between the Writers Guild of America and the major studios established that AI cannot be considered a writer and that material it produces cannot be treated as literary material. Under its terms, a writer may choose to use AI with the company's consent, but the guild's own summary states plainly that “the company can't require the writer to use AI software (e.g., ChatGPT) when performing writing services.” Companies must disclose when material given to a writer was generated by AI. In effect, the writers bargained over which parts of their craft would remain theirs. That agreement has since been succeeded by the 2026 contract, ratified on 24 April 2026 with 90.38% of votes in favour and running to 1 May 2030, which “preserves all of the protections negotiated in 2023”. It adds one more: companies must give the guild written notice when they license writers' work to train a commercial generative AI system, after which the guild can request a discussion about the licence, including any payment to writers. It does not establish payment for training.

European law offers a thinner but broader floor. Article 26(7) of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, adopted in 2024, requires that, before a high-risk AI system is put into service or used at the workplace, “deployers who are employers shall inform workers' representatives and the affected workers” that they will be subject to it. That is a duty to inform, not to consult or obtain consent, and it applies only to systems classed as high-risk. It is also not yet in force for most workplace tools: the Digital Omnibus on AI, Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, which took effect on 27 July 2026, deferred the high-risk obligations for Annex III systems, a category that includes employment and worker management, from 2 August 2026 to 2 December 2027. In Germany, works councils have long held co-determination rights over the introduction of technical systems capable of monitoring employees' behaviour or performance, a provision that lawyers widely expect to cover many AI tools. The limits are visible too: in January 2024, the Hamburg Labour Court rejected a works council's application concerning employees' use of ChatGPT, partly because staff used it voluntarily through private accounts in a web browser rather than as an employer-installed system.

These mechanisms share a weakness when it comes to demoralisation. Most were designed to address surveillance, pay or credit, not meaning. The EU provision is triggered by risk classification, not by what a task means to the person who does it. The German right is anchored in monitoring. Even the WGA's protections, including the 2026 notice requirement on training licences, focus on credit and compensation, although by keeping AI out of the definition of a writer, they also protect authorship. A workplace that took the CHI findings seriously would go further: it would give workers a formal role in deciding which task clusters are automated, informed by evidence about which tasks they find meaningful, with a right to revisit the decision once the effects are known.

That voice matters most precisely where it is weakest. The CHI authors note that the decisions about exposure are made before workers can consent, especially in roles with little bargaining power. The DeepMind review cites evidence that, where safety nets are weak, pre-existing wealth becomes a key buffer against the shock of job loss. A model of AI deployment that consults only those with strong unions would protect screenwriters and leave behind most of the people whose tasks appear in the CHI data.

What a craft needs to survive

It is tempting to treat all of this as a soft concern, a matter of morale to be fixed with a workshop. The evidence suggests otherwise. Meaning is not a perk attached to work; it is part of what makes people willing to invest skill and care, and part of what keeps them well. The DeepMind review shows how much is at stake when people lose work altogether. The CHI paper suggests a quieter version of that loss may already be underway inside jobs that look perfectly secure.

The two papers point to the same remedy from opposite directions. What protects people is not the absence of change but the ability to shape it: to choose, to find meaning somewhere else when the old sources move, and to be supported while they do. For organisations, that means treating which tasks to automate as a decision with human costs, made with the people who bear them, rather than a technical question settled by whatever a vendor's model can do.

Ranjit and her co-authors end on a note of possibility. The outcome they describe, they stress, is shaped by design choices, which can in principle be revised: systems could speed up exploration and drafting while people keep authorship, make the final judgements and sustain the relationships that make work meaningful. That is a more humane division of labour than the current pitch implies. But it will not arrive by default. Left to the logic of capability alone, AI will keep flowing towards the tasks it can reach, and those turn out to be the ones people love. Keeping the spark in work will take a deliberate decision about who gets to say which parts of a craft stay human.

References and Sources

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2. Chan, Stephanie C.Y.; Bales, Adam; Hermann, Katherine L.; Gabriel, Iason. “Work, Wellbeing, and Choice: Empirical Lessons for AI Futures.” Google DeepMind. arXiv:2609.11019, 10 September 2026. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.11019 (full text: https://arxiv.org/html/2609.11019)
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18. Writers Guild of America. “Summary of the 2026 WGA MBA.” https://www.wga.org/contracts/contracts/mba/summary-of-the-2026-wga-mba
19. Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 amending Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (Digital Omnibus on AI), in force 27 July 2026. https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/ai-act-explorer/digital-omnibus/

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

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