In Defense of Management
by Lazarus B. Danzig
"In my role as a puppetmaster, lounging in this blasé bureaucratic atmosphere virtually devoid of repercussions, any lack of diligence on my part shall only encourage if not excite my own profound negligence of everything."
"Lazarus B. Danzig" is a manager in an unnamed department at McMurdo Station, where he has spent numerous summers and a few winters.
(Part 1)
Burdened as the middle manager is with a pedigree of doubt, and trapped in a cubicled prison cell, suffering endlessly in like company, it behooves us to understand that these errant figures, tormented by perceptions of privation and suffering the frozen associations of life in Antarctica, should finally be granted their righteous due.
The vile rancor one naturally feels towards the mental dictums of middle management might be somewhat mitigated by a rational inquest into the work ethos of White Collar management as opposed to Blue Collar laborers. The separation of work ethics and values between the two camps is as great a gulf as between a Priest and an Atheist. I believe we must take a look at the mechanisms of mind, body and spirit exhibited by these two groups, their respective philosophies on the nature of accountability and achievement, as well as their fundamental differences in response to the physical environment they co-inhabit.
A pithy example of how managers inure themselves to creature comfort is their abject refusal to deal with the environment in which they live. The average manager in Antarctica insists on indoor temperatures that would call for air conditioning were they summering at home. And, while the outside temperatures might for months remain well below zero, they will wear clothing suitable to Sub Saharan Africa or perhaps Polynesia. Their flesh recoils from the refreshing bite of sub-zero air as would a vampire's when exposed to sunlight. Fearing any hint of exposure, they bundle themselves in the heaviest of parkas and dash from one indoor oasis of heat to the next. Their working experience of Antarctica might just as well occur in a windowless office at some home-and-garden depot in wintertime Peoria.
The indoor nature of the manager's work precludes any of the healthful benefits found in manual labor, especially those labors performed in outdoor Antarctica, with its fresh, crisp, and cleanest of all airs. Here an easy Blue Collar day outdoors provides more exercise than a month of inane managerial exertions. This lack of physical endeavors makes for a steady and inexorable decline in the health and fitness of our ignoble hero. The inevitable result is a sickly, enfeebled and impuissant specimen of humanity that glowers in envy at the jocular fitness of even a slothful Blue Collar worker. The physical prowess of the outdoor laborer radiates heath and vitality, and these qualities attract the attention of both sexes, occasionally dictating a laborer's summons to the office. This attraction only serves to illuminate by contrast the paunchy flaccidity of the managerial ranks, both to their own eyes and to those of the opposite sex. These feelings of inadequacy brew over the years in a seething cauldron of lustful animosity.
While the image of an indoor working manager slipping into obese decrepitude hardly engenders feelings of empathy, a manager really needs little if any physical strength. Rather, he flexes mental muscle and exercises discriminating faculties to do a proper job. A thick skin and a strong back hardly make for a nimble mind—a bounty far more difficult to display than a bulging bicep. The manager grasps this straw of truth tightly, just as he desperately grasps at the enduring image of the Blue Collar worker as a muscle-bound cretin. Unfortunately, as civilization has progressed, the luxury of public education has worked its magic so that, contrary to popular myth, the Blue Collar worker of the postmodern age is often an educated free-thinker, especially so in Antarctica. Many have thrown off the yoke of button-down collars while still in college, having realized that the health and monetary benefits of Blue Collar employment far exceed the perceived drudgery and lower social standing. And here our ambitious middle manager is chagrined to discover that the skills of the lowly laborers often command premiums that exceed his own expectations. This, along with the realization that years in the same trade dramatically increase the value of the skilled laborer, is like a hot needle in the eye. The life expectancy of a stagnated middle manager is measured in dog-years, and failure to advance steadily through the ranks leads to a life-sentence of cubical obscurity and impotent mechanizations. This disparity is the bitterest of pills to swallow, and further alienates the middle-manager from the happy-go-lucky plebeians under him, who frolic in childlike freedom from responsibility and organizational woes, prospering all the while.