Monkey Keys, I’ve noticed something.
“What?”
Well Non-talkative Key, I’ve noticed everyone secretly wants to be a badass.
“Like Shaft?” Shaft? That’s random even for you, Random Key. And no-thank-you for getting that song stuck in my head. “He’s a complicated man, but no one understands him like his woman.” Shaft…
Seventies folklore aside though, people love pretending they’re hardcore. I started thinking about it when I noticed the overabundance of manly terminology used throughout my workplace.
Fixing problems is referred to as “firefighting” by my coworkers at least 11ty times a day. We have software called Firefighter to do this. There are fire walls in place to protect our software. We even go through fire drills pretending there are fires to run from.
“Perhaps your place of employment is run by a pyromaniac?” Shut your mouth! “I’m only talkin’ about Shaft!”
There’s no denying it, firefighters are the manliest men ever to grace the earth. I can understand the obsession with fighting something as hardcore as a raging inferno, but digging through a thousand page log file to find the one missing colon in a program’s code is NOT the same thing. It’s not even in the same hemisphere as being a real firefighter; as in the same hemisphere of the Milky Way.
It doesn’t end there though. We have Six Sigma training (if you don’t know what this is, praise your nondenominational savior and don’t look back) that uses colors of karate belt to denote proficiency. Six Sigma is the stupidest, most non-badass thing in existence. To imagine a pencil pusher’s glee upon receiving a black belt in it though… Well I can assure you it’ll be the only black belt they EVER receive.
“Who’s the cat that won’t cop out when there’s causes of defects and errors in manufacturing and business processes all about?” Uh… Shaft? “Right on!”
Then we get into the little motivational speeches given on a day to day basis. Think of all the business clichés that have to do with being a sports superstar alone; ballpark figure, bring our ‘A’ game, drop the ball, touch base, raise the bar, game changer, step up to the plate, level the playing field, quick wins, showstopper, and anything with the word “team” in it. We get it! You wish you were Gladiator instead of a salesman for Aflac. Why does everyone in the meeting have to suffer through your full life crisis? They’re busy daydreaming about saving babies in the Battle of the Budge anyway.
To make matters worse, all those clichés are probably added on top of an already Freudian plot to the company meeting. I recall one meeting where making money for the fatherland was compared to climbing Everest. That’s right folks! The tallest mountain in the world, measuring in at over 29,000 feet above sea level, is now akin to making three percentage points more profit in fiscal year ‘09. I have to say, if climbing Everest is that mind-numbingly boring, I can’t fathom how more people don’t fall off the thing. I fell out of my chair at the meeting and that was only 3 feet above sea level.
“Who’s the man that would risk his neck for three percentage points more this fiscal year for his brother man?” I seriously doubt… “That’s right baby, Shaft!”
Even if I ignore everything people say, that doesn’t take away from the plethora of rubbish with the company logo on it depicting people doing things the employees wish they were doing. There are posters with people biking in the Tour de France with a tagline “we go for the gold.” No, poster. No we actually do not. We go for a menial raise every year if our performance objectives are far exceeded for the team. We do not ride up the Col de la Bonette with 190 angry riders in tow as the lactic acid reaches unbearable levels in our calves. We don’t get three quarters of a million dollars for winning, nor the admiration of the entire world. In fact, I don’t think by any stretch of the imagination the Tour de France is even remotely close to a single thing that has ever happened in an office environment!
“…” What? No witty Shaft retort? “Not in this economy.” AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
