The fluorescent light above the mahogany table flickered precisely 6 times before I realized I’d drawn blood. It happened in that specific, agonizing microsecond where my teeth collided with the side of my tongue, right as the chief legal counsel for the transit authority slid a 106-page document toward me. The metallic tang of blood filled my mouth, a sharp, grounding contrast to the sanitized scent of lemon furniture polish and the stale, 46-minute-old coffee sitting in front of me. I didn’t flinch. In this room, any movement that isn’t calculated is a liability. I simply swallowed the blood and stared at the man who thought that ‘alignment’ was something you could buy with a 6 percent cost-of-living adjustment and a handful of patronizing smiles.

Alignment: The Cult of Silence

Everyone in the corporate world is obsessed with the idea of alignment. They treat it like a holy grail, a state of grace where everyone is pulling the oars in the same direction, humming the same corporate anthem, and smiling through the fatigue. But after 16 years of sitting at tables like this one, negotiating for 236 different labor groups across the tri-state area, I’ve come to realize that alignment is usually just a fancy word for silence.

When people say they want ‘alignment,’ what they really mean is they want the friction to stop. They want the inconvenient voices to lower their volume. They want the messy, jagged edges of human reality to be sanded down until everything fits into a neat, predictable spreadsheet.

The Value Generated by Collision

The Geometry of Disagreement

Consider the 236 workers I’m currently representing. They aren’t interested in being ‘aligned’ with a management team that hasn’t stepped foot on a workshop floor in 6 years. They want a contract that reflects the reality of their 46-hour workweeks and the physical toll of the job. Management, on the other hand, wants the workers to be ‘aligned’ with the shareholders’ expectations of a 16 percent increase in quarterly dividends. These two positions are not meant to be aligned. They are meant to collide. And in that collision, we find the actual value of the enterprise. We find what is truly sustainable and what is merely a polished facade.

I told him that a machine without friction is a machine that isn’t doing any work. Friction is what allows the wheels to grip the road. Without it, you’re just spinning your tires in the mud, going nowhere while the engine burns out.

The Energy of Confrontation

I’ve made plenty of mistakes in this career. I once settled a strike in 6 hours because I was afraid of the media coverage. I thought I was being a hero by bringing ‘peace’ to the city. Within 6 months, the workers were more miserable than ever because the underlying issues-the real, gritty points of friction-had been ignored in favor of a quick, ‘aligned’ solution. I’d rather sit in this room for another 16 days and bleed from every part of my mouth than sign a document that prioritizes comfort over justice.

But I find the opposite to be true [about stress]. When you stop trying to mask the differences between people, you free up a massive amount of cognitive energy. You no longer have to manage the ‘alignment’-you can just manage the reality. It’s the difference between trying to hold a dozen beach balls underwater and just letting them float.

Quantifying Human Cost

Thompson wants to cut the break times by 6 minutes. He thinks that 6 minutes across 236 workers adds up to a significant productivity gain. He isn’t wrong about the math, but he’s dead wrong about the humanity. Those 6 minutes are the only time these people have to breathe. If I ‘align’ with his math, I betray their humanity.

The Final Stance

We are currently 86 percent of the way through this negotiation. The lawyer is sweating, and I’m still tasting copper. He’s just offered a compromise on the retirement age, moving it from 66 down to 62, provided we give up the overtime cap. It’s a classic move-give with one hand, take with the other. He thinks he’s found the ‘alignment’ point. He hasn’t. He’s just found another place to fight.

The moment we stop fighting is the moment we stop caring. If you aren’t willing to be the friction in the machine, you’re just part of the grease. And grease is only useful for things that are already sliding away. I’m not here to slide. I’m here to grip.