Amalgamation

The corporate experience is not complete without the threat of being downsized. I was convinced my job would be downsized when senior management decided to change the position of 'shadow experts' who work within many of the bank's departments.

'Shadow experts?' you ask. A fair question.

There are large departments for things like IT, human resources and communications. But in addition to these departments, there are also much smaller groups of IT or HR experts, sometimes just one or two individuals, working within functional departments like Finance, Compliance, Legal, and so on. These individuals are 'shadow' experts, as their work mirrors that of another full department, but on a much smaller scale. Sound complicated? That's why management wanted to change, by getting rid of these shadow experts and having absolutely everyone on HR issues, for example, report only to the actual HR department.

It's an amalgamation, in other words.

My colleague and I met with someone from Communications. He was new and we thought he just wanted to introduce himself. He had a serious air to him, and two minutes into the meeting he let us know that at his last job, for a British multinational, he was the chief communicator at a time when 5,000 staff were let go.

Well, isn't that a nice way to introduce yourself? Might as well change your name to Mr. Carpetbagger to ensure we all get the message.

My colleague and I sat there as Carpetbagger explained how his mandate was to look for synergies between communicators, which we understood immediately as an evil plot to fuck up our carefully constructed independence.

The meeting ended politely and we returned to our desks.

'What the hell was that about?' we asked each other, 'Was that the devil? Did you see any actual horns?'

This was just what I needed to keep my mind off work.

Quip as artform, III

Ye Olde Quipster

circa 1927

Quip as artform, II

The phone quip:


You're going to spill that coffee, jack-ass.


Much better, but can the person on the other end see the cup?

See Quip as artform for background and definitions.

Graffiti interlude

Quip as artform

Quip \ˈkwip\
– noun
1. a clever, witty remark; a cutting jest
2. quibble, equivocation
3. something strange, droll, curious, or eccentric
– verb (used without object)
4. to utter quips
sources: Random House, Merriam Webster

Survival in the office depends largely on the skilful and appropriate use of humour to, among others: draw attention to your strengths; camouflage your weaknesses; highlight, with subtlety, the failings of others; deter critique while inviting praise; and, at the far edge of the realm of the possible, to make friends.

To be precise, not all forms of humour are appropriate in the office environment. Slapstick, for example, unless carried out with the highest level of skill, would fall into mere corniness, and not win any favours.

There are, to be sure, many forms of wit. In my opinion, however, the highest level of workplace humour is the quip. If treated rightfully as an art, practiced, and eventually honed to a sharp verbal edge, the quip can, over time, advance, and perhaps make, your career. This holds true for all office-based professions. If you are a neurosurgeon of course you should focus more on your skill with a scalpel.

I work in a two-person team, and my colleague is a near-master of the quip. It is, in that respect, an honour to work with him. It would be banal to repeat here many of his best remarks, but I will provide a small canapé to whet the appetite:

> The scene: I arrive at work, wearing a dark taupe suit, solid black shirt and a flat, unadorned brown tie.
> Colleague (attired in conservative blue business suit, eyes on computer screen, mug of coffee in hand): "Hmm, fascist chic is back?"
> Me (looking down at shabby suit): "Ya, I was sort of going for the Italy-1930s-Il Duce look."

The comeback is irrelevant; the initial quip is the point of humour in this exchange. But as a non-expert in delivering the quip, it is not my place to advance your skills in the key verbal aspect. Merely, I would like to point out the often overlooked physical element that lies behind delivery of the cutting remark.

Office work is normally carried out at a desk, with a computer, keyboard, some paper arranged appropriately, and so on. As such, the quip is most often delivered while sitting down. The remark should be a rapid pronouncement, and eye contact with your subject is not necessary. In fact, as the sketch below suggests, it is indeed preferable that your gaze falls in neutral territory. Your computer screen is the obvious choice.

The reasons for this are: not looking at your subject reinforces the off-the-cuff, spur-of-the-moment element of the exchange; it helps remove you from involvement in any subsequent conversation; and, however crass to mention out loud, it affects a certain superiority over your subject that in the long run will reinforce your status as a wittician.*

The sketches highlight another aspect worth noting: the role of the coffee cup. The ability to deliver your verbal laceration just prior to taking a sip is, in the realm of quipdom, the master stroke. If you are calmly sipping your coffee or tea while others are laughing uproariously at your quip… well, need I say more?

The presence of a beverage is also the crucial component of the quip non plus ultra, but that awaits a future blog post. Next up: a discussion of failed and false quip postures that will reveal you as an amateur, and hence should be avoided.

Good technique:

Excellent technique:

* A person highly trained and/or highly skilled in delivering wit.

Trained monkeys

I used to joke with my colleague that we were the trained monkeys of the department. People come to us when new guidelines or instructions are developed for staff; if we can figure it out, then I guess everyone else can. Maybe we're the lowest common denominators on our floor.

In any case, I don't make the monkey joke anymore. Not after seeing what happens to the real monkeys who make our coffee.

"You know how it is,
they just give up after a while"

Soon after I started at the bank someone walked past my desk, bitterness evident on their face, holding a cup of coffee and muttering in disgust, "Bloody monkey screwed this one up."

I thought that was an odd turn of phrase, although I knew the coffee was very bad. It's just instant from a machine, though, so you wouldn't expect it to be good, would you?

I did notice that it was not uniformly awful, however. Some days it was almost palatable, other days less so. Then early one morning I made my selection on the machine – 'coffee, strong, with milk' – and I was greeted by what can only be described as hot, bitter piss-brew.

When others arrived at the office, I told them the machine was broken.

"Oh, that one probably needs changing," my colleague said in a somewhat distracted, nonchalant way. "It's about time anyway."

Someone called Building Services, and then everyone went back to their work. I waited quietly, to see what would happen. When a man with a large cart rolled down the corridor toward the coffee station, I followed him. I just had a feeling that watching him fix the machine would be interesting.

"Hullo," he nodded, when he saw me standing there.

I didn't feel out of place. This was after all my coffee station.

"Machine broken?" I inquired, making it look like I was waiting for a drink.

"Ach, you know how it is, they just give up after a while."

He whistled suddenly,
and tapped his finger on the panel

He shrugged like it was no big deal and then released a latch at the top of the coffee machine. The heavy front panel swung open.

The first thing I could see was the multiple stacks of plastic cups. The repairman refilled the empty rows and then leaned forward and peered into a dark space behind the second, inner panel.

Then he did something strange. He whistled suddenly, and tapped his finger on the panel.

Nothing.

He whistled again, and tapped a little harder.

And there it was: a very faint, intermittent hissing sound. I leaned forward as well, because the sound was somehow familiar to me. What was it exactly? I couldn't place it. But when the hissing became a little louder, a little sharper, it struck me that the noise, whatever its source, sounded like fear.

Fear.

The repairman had put gloves on now. He reached out quickly and opened the second panel with a snap. What I saw then was almost too much to believe.

"They think it's the caffeine"

Inside the back panel, in a small cage, was a monkey. It had panic on its face and it pressed itself as far as it could against the back wall of the enclosure, its arms outstretched and trembling.

I could not believe there was a monkey in the coffee machine.

"They think it's the caffeine that does it to them," the repairman said. "They just have sugar, coffee powder, milk powder, so… you know," and here he shrugged his shoulders, as the result was obvious.

"Some last for a while, but they all need changing in the end."

The repairman had no hesitation or concern in his manner when he opened the cage and grabbed the monkey by the scruff of its neck. The animal seemed to just give up, and it barely struggled as the man removed it from the machine.

"Do they go back to the company or something?" I asked.

The man paused for just a moment, and looked at me with some concern.

"No, once the caffeine gets to them, they're gone," he explained.

He seemed puzzled by my ignorance, but it didn't stop him from carrying out his work. The monkey was clinging to the man's arm with growing desperation, like it was trying to save itself. With one quick, sudden motion, the repairman snapped the animal's neck, the head twisting right around like a rag doll. For a split second the little black eyes were pointed straight at me. The body went limp immediately.

He threw the carcass in his big cart, and reached down to a curtain that shielded the tray at the bottom. He took out a new cage, with another, completely calm little monkey, cleaning itself without a care in the world. He opened the cage and the monkey obediently crawled into the coffee machine.

It looked very much at home, and even began to fiddle around with some of the many knobs and dials that stuck through the wires.

"You have to know

when to pick your battles"

The repairman replaced the containers of coffee, tea and milk powder, and then closed the front panel. To test the machine, he punched the selection code for 'coffee, with sugar, with milk.'

The machine leapt into action with no hesitation. A cup swung into place and hot dark liquid poured in with a familiar woosh sound. The repairman took the cup, blew on the hot liquid a few times, then took a sip. He nodded in approval, then grabbed the cart and pushed it back toward the service elevator.

I stood there for a while, then went back to my desk. I didn't drink any coffee that day, or the following day.

I thought a lot about my new workplace. Questions I hadn't pondered before, like if trained monkeys make our coffee, what controls the window blinds that go up and down automatically? And what the hell is running the computers?

I remembered something the boss told me shortly after I was hired. During our first meeting, when we were just getting to know each other, he said something unexpected:

"You know, working at this bank, you have to know when to pick your battles."

"In a company this big, you'll always come across things you don't like. But everyone is careful about their own work, or territory if you will. So if you run into any problems… just pick your battles carefully."

This seemed a melodramatic statement at the time. I really didn't know what to make of it. But the monkeys in the coffee machine were my first test, in that sense. I decided not to kick up a fuss, because no one else seemed concerned.

After considering the problem for a long while, here's what I did: I pack my own lunches, and I always have some fruit or vegetables. Just before leaving to go home, I stop at the coffee station and slide an apple slice or a carrot stick as far around the back of the machine as I can. I have relatively small hands, and I can just reach a little ledge near the inner panel.

And come morning time, low and behold, the little snack is always gone.

The perils of street photography

I'm peering into the viewfinder of a rather large camera when she surprises me.

"Do you take photos of people?"

I look up to see an extremely attractive young woman, face done up with a bit too much make-up, perched casually near my left shoulder. My camera was pointed at a purple wall, so I suppose it's a legitimate question. She's speaking in English, so I must look like the sophisticated international photographer of her dreams.

"I'm looking for someone to shoot my portfolio, do you take photos of people?"

"Uhh, ya, but street photos, I don't do glamour photography."

I didn't want to disappoint her, so I assured her that my network of contacts included some fashion photographers, and if she emailed I could put her in touch with someone good. She scribbled down my email and walked off. I returned to my work, trying to find the right shutter speed to catch the rapidly moving people traffic, with just a bit of motion blur.

I flubbed this one completely.

Those two are a marginally better. The girl never emailed, of course. The film shots weren't much better than these digital proofs. Not a great day, then, all things considered.

Catch me if you can.