Recycled Writing

About a week ago, Mitch helped me order a new computer. Its pending arrival prodded me to review and weed old files. Here's an item I wrote (that I still like) when I read the great site Not My Desk regularly. I think I sent it to him; he might have quoted me - I don't remember.

“You don’t have to be crazy to work here – but it helps!”

Office mottoes. Cartoon figures, kittens hanging from branches, monkeys wearing little vests sitting atop a precarious pile of papers. You know the stuff. They’re one way permanent workers mark their territory and assert their “personality.”

Under the guise of humor, the crab can proclaim: “I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day, and tomorrow’s not looking too good, either.” The man with children who have a vague notion that “daddy likes golf” has many holidays-worth of plaques noting “I’d rather be golfing” or depicting cartoon men in knee pants with clubs wrapped around them.

Another staffer hung up the “Hang in there, baby, Friday’s comin’” in circa 1977, and, by never taking it down, was actually on the cutting edge of the whole 70s rival. Too bad that strategy didn’t work with those hair bands, honey.

Perhaps you have met the sassy, efficient secretary whose cross stitch reminds, “Of course I don’t look busy – I did it right the first time.”

And then there’s your supervisor. Does he proudly display the rowers in the sunset, with “teamwork” lettered across the sky? Does she have a snow-capped mountain peak labeled “success” even though you know she drives two miles to the café – that she never considers walking, much less mountain climbing?

One newly retired middle-manager of my acquaintance had an elegantly lettered version of the “Mushroom Theory of Management.” This treasure, she asserted, had been looked at, but not seen, by any number of higher-ups and miscellaneous prudes, for some ten years without their noting her implicit feeling that she had been “Kept in the dark and fed shit.”

The sad tragedy of office art is its sheer obviousness . Of course the manager who wants us to think outside of the box and who post “teamwork.” Isn’t the bitchy, I-have-no-time-for-you receptionist’s attitude clear without a pithy little message about the complaint department? And does she really want to highlight her piss poor attitude? And the dad with the golf ball shaped mug? I suspect he quit playing years ago, but his grow children continue to proffer theses trinkets because he has no other known interests.

Office mottoes: one more reason you should be glad to be a temp.