Community BlogThe truth about the office |
Oh, if you could only say what you wanted to, how things would be different.
Perhaps it was the red. It did not necessarily evoke anger and bitterness but rather a definitive confinement. Not a cubicle, per se, but a shield. And I stared. I stared at the red office divider, I stared at my watch, I stared at the book I nonchalantly tossed aside when my superiors would race past me. Perhaps nonchalant is the wrong word. In fact, it is the antithesis of what I want to say: I would fling my book down when superiors were circling, as they usually did. It was curious to note how an almost glide-like motion would terminate - foot dangling in the air - while my computer screen was scanned...all clear...and glide, two, three, four and exit two, three, four. It was truly something out of a 1980s exercise video.
Therein lay one of the first problems. Well, parsing the paragraph, I find that there are several: issue one is that of the superiors, something on which I will elaborate shortly. However, the predominant problem is that my desk is by a door. I, like most others, am a great fan of this architectural wonder but this happened to be the front door - the entrance to this cabin of monotonous clicks that weighed down on me like a rhino upon a flamingo (a curious relationship to be sure). It would be negligent of me not to describe this door. Where to begin?
Anxiety. The door, truth be told, was not the direct cause of this affliction. However, anxiety did exist within my frail constitution so when, and it is frequent, fellow-employees meander to the bathroom or just to frolic in the hallway, I have to conceal my dark secret: I am obsessed with curious symbols upon an altogether foreign medium...they call it the book. Unlike the card counters at casinos, I became a colleague counter. Perpetually monitoring who was in and who was out of the office and predicting who would come through the door next. This strategy was devised solely so my chapters were not unnecessarily interrupted. Whilst I would love to proclaim that I have devised a sound strategy, I have failed miserably and have been forced to conceal my book below the desk. Anne Frank jokes may be added here according to one's taste.
All is not lost. In the kitchen lies coffee. Free coffee. Not to mention tea and hot chocolate. In the refrigerator: free drinks. A cornucopia for the senses, one must proclaim. It is as though you have won the Golden Ticket. Indeed, the first weeks were spent rejoicing with several cups of coffee a day and a hot chocolate (with 200 free calories) in the late afternoon. But the novelty wears off: I don't really enjoy coffee.
I have reached a point with a red wall, an anxiety-provoking door and free substances that I now detest by sight and smell. I appreciate your pity and general empathy. However, let us discuss the employees of this happy place (something psychologists have advised I invoke when anxious).
Beyond my red wall there are glass cubicles. Unlike the zoo, which would usually include interesting reptiles slithering across a somewhat artificial looking branch (though I dare not test this hypothesis for pythons have a somewhat unsettling quality about them), lie the executives. This is the most rewarding part of the job for while I write a lengthy discourse on them, comparing them to slithering reptiles; they think I am actually being productive - more about office game theory later. They are the brains of the business. Perpetually bouncing ideas around in such a viciously prolific manner that I fear the glass will shatter and pierce the sarcastic smile of the secretary who occupies the desk behind the red wall. Thankfully the ideas are of the mundane variety. While much is said and discussed, it is usually of little substance. However, one should not tempt fate with the superiors. With a nod and a smile, a courteous, "Of course," while perhaps doing some Morris dancing is always a welcomed sign of subordination.
They pace the hallways (again, our animal relatives seem to be excellent parallels), as though they have something of increasing importance weighing on their fragile and brilliant minds. It is usually something related to making the e-mail provider more efficient - "How do I get more colour tabs for my e-mails? What a piece of...oh, it is under settings." Why the whole office has to be let in on this secret, I have yet to discover. Sometimes they will grace me with their presence. It starts as a small shadow and then they lean over. With the book hidden, I face the cruel tyrant. The lizard tongue flickers. Anxiety - go to your happy place. "Are you still busy with the list?" A smirk creeps across his face. I check my screen to ensure I was not still watching a lecture- all is safe there, I have a spreadsheet open - god knows what of. A tentative, "Yes, almost finished Jack." "Good." Hallelujah, the deed is done. Changing the spreadsheet for the next round of interrogation, I continue with my book.
Unfortunately, I have failed to master the look-busy-technique of working with which my peers seem overly adept. My superiors will thus pop over while I am gazing at a scientific lecture of sorts and ask me to do something. The something is usually so trivial that I feel as though it is an imposition to do it. Would you mind making a spreadsheet from the word document? In some parallel universe my answer would be something like: "Actually, now that you mention it, I think it will be easier if you do it...it really is rather simple and I'm in the middle of another enthralling chapter of my book." One day. Why don't I have a cubicle? Why am I not paid? Suffice it to say that I studied England from 1500 to 1850.
The morning continues in such a fashion. A wave and a smile conceals a, "f** you too" bubbling under the less than delighted face. It is interesting to note how meaningless greetings have been rendered. "Hi, how are you?" or the more colloquial "Hey, how you doing?" (Which makes me cringe violently, sometimes collapsing to the floor and appealing to Jesus to save me) has become more of a statement than a question. My response is generally of the standard variety, "I'm fine thank you, how are you?" Something is mumbled back and they walk away. I'd like to test the response, "I'm feeling quite suicidal, actually" or rather, "A finer day, I have not seen." One day. Feet drag, kettles boil, people complain that it is Monday and when it is not Monday, people complain at the thought of Monday, which lingers after Sunday and the summer has been simply atrocious. My superiors speak of the logistical challenges of the golf game on Wednesday: perhaps they will only manage nine holes. I type.
To my right, my colleague browses through social media - my good man, do you really need photographic confirmation of how intoxicated you were on Saturday? What is that in your mouth...my god. I look away. It is exhilarating to watch a co-worker's screen but perhaps that is just me. I enjoy walking away from my desk and then coming around the corner to see the rapid transition from an asinine video to a spreadsheet. His speed is quite remarkable. He has one of those web chat things...I sound as though I'm in the autumn of my life when really I am his age; evidently something went wrong with me somewhere. I like to speculate what he's talking about with such meteoric typing: the game on Saturday night? Dinner Friday? Wild sexual liaisons that never quite transpired but the potential, oh the potential was always present?
I get tired of the computer screen; I have reached the point where it actually angers me. Why should I stare at you? Of all the things in the world I must stare at this nonsense? I have yet to see the Grand Canyon, the Great Wall of China and Kilimanjaro and yet I remain fixated on a few thousand pixels. Some people have two screens: these are the impressive members of the office. In such a testosterone driven environment (and there are only two women out of approximately twenty-five employees), the double screen is symbolic of outstanding endowment. I have two computers. While I only use my own, I am sure to turn on the other one for surely it adds to the busy employee attitude? He must be working on something impressive if he cannot do it on a single computer.
The conference room is occupied. The noise is incessant: clients chatter and my superiors nod vigorously. I would like to read but I feel as though I would be committing treason by doing so in front of these foreigners. There is, in fact, a bookshelf above my desk. It includes such classics as, Helping People Through Corporate Change - enthralling. So I sit. I sit and focus in on my screen, raising my eyebrows as though reading something interesting and looking somewhat angered. I have generated an imaginary task in my head while I wait. Anger appears to be the best sign of productivity; a good roll of the eyes does not diminish the effect either. However, this can only last so long. A toilet break is in order.
The toilet is a curious place. The goal is simple: avoid interactions with co-workers at all costs. While wetting my face in the bathroom several times, only to dry it off seconds later so as to waste time by wetting it again, I realise that I don't need to make use of the facilities at this point in any case. Two colleagues come in through the door: I'll need to see the result of this and so I wet my face again. The urinals are their facilities of choice and they stand next to each other. The unzipping occurs and then, as though an outtake from a Twilight Zone episode, they begin a conversation. "How's the project going?" the one on the left asks. "I'm finding it difficult to make the initial sales" he says flippantly. Surprisingly, no water has been passed at this point - perhaps their stage fright is a product of insufficient screens. "Let me tell you about sales..." continues the other as I wait for an arm of solidarity to be placed on the shoulder of his new co-urinal friend. It is time to go.
Back in the office, not much has changed but I can smell something in the air. It can't be blood, sweat or tears so it must be food. It is lunchtime. I'm not particularly hungry but in solidarity with my peers I grab my bag of sandwiches and head downstairs. Colleague conversation is laboured for I really have nothing to say to them. Shall I discuss sports (a perennial favourite)? I know nothing of sports. Well, I will gracefully bow out and smile. Smiling works wonders for it is unsettling and makes one blend in with the proverbial furniture. By smiling, I am able to ponder over more pressing thoughts and issues while they think I'm listening. "Let's head down and eat guys!" Smile and nod.
Downstairs, the smell of grease makes me smile more. This time, the smile conceals my disdain at being forced to venture to this cold, filthy, vermin-infested hole on the second floor. Those around me look at the fare on offer and one can identify their strategizing: all the food looks sickening. The salad has...one, two, three flies on it and is thus the most suitable for consumption. Salad it is. I go to our usual table and gently remove the tinfoil from my sandwiches. The bread is soft and subtle in my hands; this is a welcomed surprise. Whilst I am done eating, they appear to savour each lettuce leaf. I watch the balsamic dressing drip from the lettuce leaf that must be three days old, all turns to slow-motion as the leaf is placed in his mouth then the next guy and the next. Then begins the crunching. I am going to go insane but I find a way to smile even more...isn't this just lovely? Lunch with my friends; lunch with my colleagues.
That's the thing, isn't it? The employee dynamic is interesting for while you are all in the same boat - one separated by red wall dividers and glass enclosures - you would not feel it a great injustice to throw one overboard and sail on. I perceive it as an opportunistic approach to retribution: all those meaningless little smiles. You could, in fact, smile as you did it, "How's the ocean? Pretty tumultuous? Have a good evening." Why don't you sacrifice your peers? After all, it is a competitive world. Well, you're all concealing a monstrous secret, aren't you? None of you actually do anything all day. Perhaps that is a stretch but that spreadsheet you made over the course of the day, in-between your wild Web surfing does not really count as a substantial chunk of rigorous work.
Is this apathy a product of pity? Imagine a working environment of people who are actually efficient; who actually get things done. Surely this would mean that fewer employees would be needed to achieve results and, as a result, a vast assemblage of you and your peers would be set to task on the inner-city streets. Is this office game theory? Everyone acts as a pigeon, doing nothing so as to avoid attention. There is an unspoken contract in the office: maintain the status quo. By working hard, you destroy the working dynamic and may force others to work hard, which would make many of you extraneous. Regardless of the true cause, apathy generates a disconnect between the employees and their work and, in doing so, separates the employee from him/herself, ala Marx.
Everything slows down in the afternoon. There is a calming silence. The keyboards are relatively quiet, the superiors are starting to leave (after all, the golf game lingers tomorrow and they have been in the office for two hours. Enough is, after all, enough) and people have shifted from typing to their friends to watching online videos. I feel myself dozing off. I have managed to sneak one hundred pages of reading in today and will save the rest for the evening. Now I face an onerous task: shall I wet my face yet again or shall I proceed to the basement to procure a chocolate? I look down at my stomach - the chocolate should be avoided, if possible. Thankfully, my MP3 player is close. Will the Beatles inspire me today? Clearly they empathise as, "I'm So Tired" pulses through my ears upon clicking the random button. It's 3 pm and we are into the final stretch. I decide to do both: you only live once, right? First I will enter the bathroom and then make my way downstairs. Let the calories do their worst!
The elevator is really rather exciting now. The journey from the fifth floor to "L" is short and yet I pace (provided the elevator is devoid of people who may be panicked, unnecessarily). Ding. That is certainly my favourite ding - especially in the afternoon. It is so authoritative - now your day starts, ding, now your day ends, ding. Wonderful. A short time later I must decide - do I go for the soft candy or the indulgent caramel milk chocolate? The ‘both' option would be inadvisable in this particular situation. I grab the drug of choice, pay the very sweet Chinese lady who owns the store and with a, "Thank you, have a nice day" (drawn out into a modified Southern drawl) and I return to my desk.
After an afternoon cup of tea, I feel as though the time has come. I pack my things up in a laboured fashion - it certainly has been a taxing day. And it has. The office environment is one of cunning and deception. It is one of mind games and psychological endurance. Who is able to out compete the person next to them? Who is able to reduce their actual work to a gentle trickle and thus do as much as they like of whatever they desire? It is a shame that there is little passion in the office and so we are all spinning, evading and sauntering around the central issue: work. The grindstone of the past has been concealed under a false aesthetic that is clung to by a new generation. The substantive work is replaced with the art of pretending. This is a new evolutionary environment: not one of genes but of memes. The place is festering with ideas and concepts applicable to people in the modern world, this world of visual stimulation and chewing gum for the mind. Mine is a generation driven by constant stimulation and instant gratification: a generation that has learned to embrace and accept the façade over the grindstone. Work has become a labour of guilt as opposed to a labour of love: forced to put in one's hours, concealing and slowly strangling one's passions behind a façade of dullness, of superficial pleasantries. It is unfortunate that these surface elements have become all that we are as humans. How dull it is to lose our depth to unsubstantiated prettiness.
I pick up my book, mark my page with a tissue and hear the last elevator ding of the day: joy. I walk to the subway and see those who are equally despondent, dragging their heels home. It is a glorious day out and this should not be the prevailing attitude. Why can no one smile? I suppose all their smiles were castoff in office superficialities. I smile and I feel alone. I also feel like a pervert for it appears to be a social faux pas to be happy - I persist anyway. The happiness is not a product of simply leaving a constrained environment, which to a large extent it is; it is the knowledge that I don't have to play the superficial games for the rest of the day. The pool awaits me, so too does a book and I am content. The smile I wear is a real smile and the questions I ask of my family and friends are substantive. However, I have a hunch that the superficial skin is not easily shed by all.
Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance had a very valid point: quality, in the form of humanity's relation to their work has been superseded with a lack of care and a replacement of artificial aesthetics. In the same way, human quality has been reduced. The office has not only alienated us from our work by providing mundane and unthinking tasks but has also alienated us from ourselves. The substance of man, the underlying search for meaning and our place in the world has been replaced with games and tactics - the art of conveying depth as a linear entity. From work to home, it is all too easy to maintain relationships that interact at the edges; that last on the frontiers. It appears as though the widely acknowledged insincere layer has subsumed the depth of human emotion and nature to reduce man to a two-dimensional object in Flatland; watch out for the pricks.
Marx elucidated the link between labour and life well. When one has to adapt to work, one should have to adapt one's life accordingly. However, there is a prevailing languor: a lack of rational gumption. When one's passion lies in nothing but artificial aesthetics, one cannot generate meaning and passion for work. Work requires the grindstone; it requires the labour of the mind and a perpetual exertion. Work has now become an aesthetic nicety and, as a result, lost its value. Life becomes a race to consume aesthetic pleasantries as opposed to finding meaning within relationships with others and your understanding of yourself. To the players in the show, it is as meaningful as it ever has been but it cannot be meaningful. My peers appear too engrossed in the now to listen to the past - to see the subtleties of history. What makes me different? Perhaps I'm not, but I hope that I have escaped their toil, their plight. Instant gratification is just that, instant. It is like comparing the joy of arriving at a destination with the anticipation and excitement of getting there.
Hopping on the subway, Rachmaninoff's third piano concerto playing at full volume, I smile and look around. I catch the glances of a few fellow-passengers and they look down. I look at my feet. Ding - one more note in the dozens that are present in the crescendo in my ear - and the subway doors open. I always take the stairs out of the subway for two reasons: the candy consumed earlier and the notion that I might as well walk while I am able. The park to my right, the hill home before me and I have a sudden infusion of energy. I flip through my music and come across a fitting song, YMCA indeed. Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World echoes through my head as I meander to rejoin myself - the real self and the union of reason, with underlying meaning, and aesthetic appreciation. This is life. As Coetzee explains, we are all imprisoned in some camp or social category, "Perhaps that is enough of an achievement, for the time being. How many people are there left who are neither locked up nor standing guard at the gate." Surely life is rendered more splendid when one discards the games and interacts with fellow-humans to generate both individual and collective understanding and empathy.
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