Career days, office predators
Today, on mcsweeneys.net, a homerun from Mike Richardson-Bryan:
TAKE A BAG OF FERAL CATS TO WORK DAY—This one is a real stumper. Whatever the original purpose was, it surely must have been miscommunicated or misinterpreted somewhere along the line.
It set me to thinking. The logic behind “Take our Daughters/Children to Work Day” has always puzzled me, in that I can’t imagine inflicting my job on anyone I love, especially on an excitable small child or bored teenager. The rewards of a career in software are completely opaque to anyone who’s not already grown up, and by the time your children have grown up, taking them to work can only endanger them: they may be mistaken for interns.
Richardson-Bryan’s premise reminds me of a proposal I once drafted to bring a population of human-eating carnivores into the office. The idea is that we’re always approaching our merely professional problems as if they’re life-and-death, so being in constant danger of predation would ensure that we’d keep a realistic perspective. I never got around to sending that memo to HR, which is probably for the best, as we’re getting low on cubicle space anyway. A family of wolves would need at least two six-by-eights with a large doggy door between them. We’re out of doggy doors in the supply area, and I can’t see getting one into the Q2 budget at this point. Adult male saltwater crocodiles can grow to be sixteen feet long, so they’d be terribly uncomfortable in any cube. Also, we’d run out of salt. A very small tiger could probably live in the false ceiling, stalking the plenum spaces and pouncing onto unwary employees. My allergies, though, make me hesitant to recommend a feline.
And hippopotami, though undeniably effective killers, are bad for office morale. As you can see, they’re always on the phone with their friends, eating hay and watching the clock.
Maybe wolves in Q4, or a salty in a conference room Q1 2007?
BDEaston:
Reminds me of a sketch in The Kids in the Hall (episode 202) entitled “Trapper.” Kevin McDonald and Dave Foley play French trappers who canoe around an office trapping businessmen for their suits. At one point they encounter a trap (think cartoon bear trap) with only a human leg in it and one-legged man is hopping away. The trappers have to decide whether or not to follw him:
Kevin: Should I go after him Jacques?
28 February 2006, 10:42 amDave: No Francois, let that one go, he has spirit. Some day he may be vice-president.
Colin:
hee!
Unfortunately, trapping is tightly restricted here in California:
So sadly, no cartoon bear traps. And given our tight cubicle situation, box traps seem impractical. The rest of the regulations are complex enough that I think Legal would veto the “most dangerous game” option.
28 February 2006, 3:40 pmIanEaston:
Have you given thought to wasps or killer bees? They’re compact, lethal, and make their own space. Perfect for the small office on a budget.
28 February 2006, 6:56 pmColin:
I’ve been thinking about the prohibition against trapping “for the purposes of recreation or commerce in fur,” and it occurred to me that there’s a troubling ambiguity in that phrase - one which never would have troubled me were it not for the existence of the Intar Webs. Ah, for my lost innocence.
Ian - When (in casual conversation) I mentioned the wolves, who only have five or six pups, the HR folks were skeptical enough. They probably won’t sign off on social insects, as the medical coverage costs for 40,000 children would be crushing. On the other hand, you’re right about killer bees creating their own space. They might also be persuaded to help us make new cubes on the (currently underused) ceiling, which would be nice. Maybe I could get the Facilities crew behind the idea?
28 February 2006, 8:10 pmBDEaston:
And here I thought you might end up talking about the trapping of “bears.”
1 March 2006, 1:10 pm