Skyscrapers and Suits

Die Anchoress hat auf First Things einen herrlichen Kommentar zur Wussification (etwa: Verweichlichung) des Arbeitsplatzes geschrieben:

The men who built the Empire State Building stood on bare planks to work in the sky; paradoxically, they were grounded in reality, not theory. They did not have to concern themselves with tones and timbres; nor did the educated architects who dreamed up skyscrapers. One suspects that if either the man on the beam or the one with the blueprints had been approached by a tanning-booth-bronzed-and-manicured corporate bureaucrat, and asked to enumerate their “goals” as part of their “performance review” they both would have hooted at him in derision. “My goal,” the first would say, “is to not fall. It’s to stay alive so I can pick up my pay, have a beer with the wife, raise the kids and get into heaven a half-hour before the devil knows I’m dead.”

“My goal,” the architect would say dismissively, “is to make your jaw drop, and the drop it some more; I want to build a mystery!”

Very likely the bureaucrat–too timid to walk the sky, and too unimaginative to even conceive scraping it–would have found their answers vague, and given both of them low marks in team-building, professional comportment and attention to guidelines. He would recommend training meant to get them comfortable with thinking and living inside the approved boxes, “and at no point should such recklessly lighthearted men be considered for promotion,” he would write.

Ich empfehle auch die Lektüre der am Anfang des Artikels verlinkten Geschichte “Bullshit” Is One Word, “Performance Review” Two von Larry McCoy. Ich mußte unweigerlich und sofort an einen meiner Lieblings Cubicle-Filme denken: Office Space!