Paging Michael Scott. Michael Scott You’re Wanted In My Office.

by monty

Offices may be the single most dysfunctional organizational idea ever.  They make people stupid.   Take 12 very smart people, 3 semi-smart people, and 0ne moron, put them all in an office and by Friday you’ve got 16 people all operating in “moron mode”.  The smart people know they’re operating at a substandard level and they become bitter and jaded.  The semi-smart people know something’s amiss but can’t quite put their fingers on it… usually because they’re distracted by the greatness that is “Hawaiian Shirt Friday”.  The moron thinks everything is awesome.

Does anything really ever get done in an office?  I work in one.  We don’t do anything.  We support people who do stuff.  They work in offices too.  But they support people who don’t.  Those people actually do do (snicker) something.  Cancer will not be cured in an office.  Jesus didn’t have an office.  (Did he?)  The bigger the office, the bigger the stupid.  Washington DC is a city of offices.  The President hangs around in offices so much that he has an entire wing of them… and a big special ovular one for extra special thinking or celebrating what hasn’t actually been done. 

Are people born in offices?  Not usually.  Do people die in offices?  Sure.  Offices kill.

Want examples of why offices turn people stupider?  Check this out… I know you will.

Why is office paper rectangular?  People print out pages and pages of stuff.  They print stuff in portrait format.  They print stuff in landscape format.  (Those are those “left-right”, “up-down” settings on your printer.)  They pile it all together and if you try to read through something that mixes both formats you end up looking like you’re driving one of those little kid toy steering wheels with the squeaky horn.  Turn it left.  Turn it right.  Turn it right again.  Now it’s upside down.  Turn it left.  Where’s the paper clip gone?  Crap, now it’s on the floor.  Stupid.  It gets worse when you mix left handed people and right handed people together because there’s no agreement on which way it should be turned in the first place.  People just keep using rectangular paper because it’s the norm regardless of how little sense it makes.

Why not make paper square?  Make it 11 x 11.  Then there’s no turny problems.  You won’t have to reprint things anymore when you realize you forgot to change the setting.  No longer will business meetings look like a LAN party playing Need For Speed 5.  Square.  It doesn’t have to be so hard people.

Hey speaking of staples, why do people abandon them?  I’ve got two pieces of paper and I want them stuck together.  Sounds like a job for the stapler.  So why do I find paper clips involved?  The only thing paper clips are good for is making a little miniature bow and arrow device using a rubber band to fire that stick/brush thing from a White Out bottle across the room.  Paper clips always become detached from the papers.  The papers then become detached from themselves.  Papers get separated.  One page gets lost.  Mass hysteria.  Use the stapler.

Now I know what you’re thinking (because I’m pyschic)… what if you’ve got too many pieces of paper and the staple won’t go through.  Well you’re not hitting the stapler hard enough.  Wham it like there’s no tomorrow.  Punch four or five in on one side, flip the papers over and hit them from the other.  Pretend the papers are a vampire and the staples are little wooden stakes.  If the papers are too thick for that, go buy a binder and a three hole punch.  Do not use a binder clip.  That’s just a bigger version of the stupid paper clip which should only be used to make a bigger version of the office bow and arrow.  One that can fire a ruler, for example.

A long time ago, (no, not in a galaxy far far away… it happened right here) people used to go out and do things for a living.  Now, it seems, most people spend their careers in offices “supporting” the few remaining people who actually do things.  That seems unproductive and unfulfilling. 

I think tomorrow I’ll go get a job with a drill.

A big shout out to the readers in Iowa for today’s post idea.  Thanks for reading, suggesting, and corn.

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