The Looking Glass- 12.21.07
Filed as The Looking Glass for week ending 12.21.07, for I have been lax- jlb
Clipboard
My friend R used to maintain that you could clean out an office of all it's important electronics in broad daylight with everyone present simply by donning some coveralls, wheeling around a hand truck, and carrying a clipboard with an official-looking document on it. Walk in during normal office hours, unplug the copier (document centers retail for about $16K) and load it onto the hand truck, then have the receptionist sign the document. If s/he asks questions, shrug and say you're with the delivery company and you don't know why it's being taken or where it's going. Please sign here. And here. Voilà! Free copier. Bonus points if you give them a differently-colored duplicate copy of the bogus document. He swore this would work. Ah, monkeywrenching, you are the blunt weapon of choice in the subtle mugging of a homogenized culture.
The point being that the simple act of carrying a clipboard wields a startling amount of power. I am reminded of this because I participated in a fire drill in our building this morning and some poor hapless woman in the lobby happened to be writing on a clipboard. I watched her for about five minutes as people streamed out of the stairwell, and almost every single person walked up to her as they entered the lobby. They were looking for someone to check in with, or someone that knew what was going on, or had more information than they did about this little hiccup in the routine of their daily lives. The poor woman had nothing to do with it and seemed a bit bewildered as to why people kept approaching her. It was a compounding problem, too: the more people clustered around her, the more people gravitated towards her. Myself, it's my job to be pals with the building engineer that was actually in charge (like the janitor in The Breakfast Club)- I said howdy to him, wished him a nice drill and went for a bagel.
In my time I've wielded many a clipboard (B.S. in Artist/Musician/Nonprofit/Cat Herding from the School of Life) and am familiar with this phenomenon. Most of the time I take my power seriously and don't take advantage of the people putting an enormous amount of faith in me by looking to me for direction. Most of the time. The imp of mischief must have her piece of the action. Fortunately most of those on my journey with me are down for a little mischief. Anyway it would be too easy to view the world at large (present company excepted, of course) as well-trained little monkeys that seek only to be told what to do and not to think (Allen, I'm looking at your sister) when it seems to me this is little more than totally natural pack behavior. Not all power struggles are vicious exercizes in ball-cutting, the bulk of them are simple trial and error of placing faith in one for the greater good of the herd in the name of efficiency. The trick is knowing when to push back against this reflex, stand up against the flow of the herd and ask the guy in the coveralls just where the hell he thinks he's going with that copier.
The Looking Glass is a weekly update written in a journalistic style, hopefully drawn with a more objective hand than my day-to-day blogtastic ramblings. Why? Why the hell not? Whose blog is this, anyway? As always, your feedback is appreciated- jlb
Clipboard
My friend R used to maintain that you could clean out an office of all it's important electronics in broad daylight with everyone present simply by donning some coveralls, wheeling around a hand truck, and carrying a clipboard with an official-looking document on it. Walk in during normal office hours, unplug the copier (document centers retail for about $16K) and load it onto the hand truck, then have the receptionist sign the document. If s/he asks questions, shrug and say you're with the delivery company and you don't know why it's being taken or where it's going. Please sign here. And here. Voilà! Free copier. Bonus points if you give them a differently-colored duplicate copy of the bogus document. He swore this would work. Ah, monkeywrenching, you are the blunt weapon of choice in the subtle mugging of a homogenized culture.
The point being that the simple act of carrying a clipboard wields a startling amount of power. I am reminded of this because I participated in a fire drill in our building this morning and some poor hapless woman in the lobby happened to be writing on a clipboard. I watched her for about five minutes as people streamed out of the stairwell, and almost every single person walked up to her as they entered the lobby. They were looking for someone to check in with, or someone that knew what was going on, or had more information than they did about this little hiccup in the routine of their daily lives. The poor woman had nothing to do with it and seemed a bit bewildered as to why people kept approaching her. It was a compounding problem, too: the more people clustered around her, the more people gravitated towards her. Myself, it's my job to be pals with the building engineer that was actually in charge (like the janitor in The Breakfast Club)- I said howdy to him, wished him a nice drill and went for a bagel.
In my time I've wielded many a clipboard (B.S. in Artist/Musician/Nonprofit/Cat Herding from the School of Life) and am familiar with this phenomenon. Most of the time I take my power seriously and don't take advantage of the people putting an enormous amount of faith in me by looking to me for direction. Most of the time. The imp of mischief must have her piece of the action. Fortunately most of those on my journey with me are down for a little mischief. Anyway it would be too easy to view the world at large (present company excepted, of course) as well-trained little monkeys that seek only to be told what to do and not to think (Allen, I'm looking at your sister) when it seems to me this is little more than totally natural pack behavior. Not all power struggles are vicious exercizes in ball-cutting, the bulk of them are simple trial and error of placing faith in one for the greater good of the herd in the name of efficiency. The trick is knowing when to push back against this reflex, stand up against the flow of the herd and ask the guy in the coveralls just where the hell he thinks he's going with that copier.
The Looking Glass is a weekly update written in a journalistic style, hopefully drawn with a more objective hand than my day-to-day blogtastic ramblings. Why? Why the hell not? Whose blog is this, anyway? As always, your feedback is appreciated- jlb