coxswain

I like the coxswain analogy because it raises the question of why the coxswain is typically paid orders of magnitude more than the rowers.

In a racing shell, everyone pulls together and the boat moves forward on the coxswain's call.

If one of the rowers decides that she doesn't like the direction the coxswain is steering and starts to row in the other direction, it tends to annoy the other rowers.

If she can't change the coxswain's mind it's better for both her and the rest of the crew for her to find another rowboat.

It only takes a few seconds to look up the etymology, which comes from coxswain -- the person in charge of steering a boat.

Joke aside, the term comes from the navy, the place where the cockswain/coxswain, the person in charge of a boat, is.

But it doesn’t have to be - people don’t need to row in sync down to the millisecond, but without a coxswain there’s no hope.

Some people have chauffeurs, others have a boat and coxswain...

They might eventually be able to cut costs a little by automating the job of the helmsman (coxswain) in confined waterways where there are few navigational hazards.

All the boatswain books from coxswain to engineman.

Heck, my older son had a feature phone until just two years ago, when he absolutely needed a smartphone for tools required for his position as a coxswain on his rowing team.

Tangentially related, when I was on the rowing team in college the coxswain commonly replaced ‘seven’ (the only two syllable number in the 1-10 range) with ‘save’, to maintain a smooth cadence for counting 10 strokes.

This exploits cop/crim rule by putting the crim alone on a bank and thus "freeing" up the cop's capacity as a coxswain to get the boy over.

I used to coxswain crew boats past his summer home.) I would be quite amused if young "Microsofties" suddenly decided to co-opt "Micro$haft" but with a Richard Roundtree vibe.

"Colonel" ain't got nothin' on "boatswain" and "coxswain".