I am not an important person in this company. I'm just a lowly cog in the machine.

My comments:

Cogs are essential parts of a machine. They’re wheels that work together to make machinery work their magic. Without cogs, machines and indeed the whole modern day industry would grind to a halt, or fail to grind at all. And so it is curious that cogs are considered unimportant.

And perhaps not so curious. Cogs are considered unimportant because they’re commonplace – in an assembly line, for instance, there are thousands and thousands of them.

Hence, and therefore, people who work mundane routines in an organization or business call themselves cogs.

And a lower cog is a low-ranking member on the staff.

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Go to Zhang Xin's column

本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin（張欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.