Keeping The Gremlins At Bay

Although it seems a bit early this year; it’s the day before Thanksgiving, winter’s here and I’m already suffering from the twin winter-time gremlins of boredom and grouchiness. During the rest of the year I can usually find something to do to take my mind off annoying things that lead to the twins. In winter annoying things gang-up on me and I start driving me and anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck near me crazy. I have started cataloging annoying things in an effort to, hopefully, neutralize the gremlins.

We all know what lackeys are, right? Back in the day we’d call the lackeys of big shot bureaucrats, “horse-holders.” I have noticed lately there is a whole new class of horse-holder out there; although they don’t usually work for bureaucrats. They’re “hat handers,” the guy who hands the star (athlete, driver, whomever) the sponsor’s logo-bearing baseball cap(s). Just another opportunity to go-fer a celebrity!

Speaking of which; how demeaning are those sponsor’s logo-bearing baseball caps anyway? Imagine you just drove to victory in the Indianapolis 500, you’re standing on the podium to receive your justly deserved accolades but, before you can hold your latest trophy, you have to change hats six times. And make sure the logo on each, and on the beverage you’re consuming, is pointing camera-ward. It’s not like you didn’t just drive, on camera, 500 miles in a rolling billboard covered with the same logos.

Years ago I wrote a poem about how to successfully become an anonymous bureaucrat, something for which all bureaucrats strive:

The Bureaucrat

He dreams of having an office
And a telephone all of his own,
With a machine to answer it quickly
So the damn thing will leave him alone.

With all the pressure he’s under,
The stress and anxiety and such,
Each day brings another big crisis;
Just doing his job’s way too much.

Making those routine decisions
Is the most difficult thing that he does;
About a thousand and one stupid issues
To which he can’t say, “Just because. . .”

The answer he’ll give to your question
Will never be right or be wrong;
“I’m sorry,” he’ll say, “you’re mistaken
This isn’t where you belong.”

“Whatever you want we can’t help you
In this department at all;
For that you must go to the office,
Third door on the right, down the hall.”

For him no problem’s too difficult,
No question ever too trivial,
To refer to the office just mentioned;
Third door on the right, down the hall!

I recently re-read the poem and realized how obsolete it had become. When I wrote it I worked in an office where employees shared telephones; they were located in centralized “phone banks.” The phones, not the employees; they were located in cubicles. Nowadays everyone has a phone, and a computer, and any number of other devices to insure both anonymity and non-contactability.

Today, of course, there’s the phone menu. You know, “press 1 for . . . ad nauseum.” A system far more effective than even Beijing’s Forbidden City for eliminating unwanted attention. Talk about insulation; today’s bureaucrat can count on the phone menu, voice mail, e-mail, and security guards with metal detectors to keep the “customers” at bay! The personal computer and the receptionist rendered the secretary obsolete; soon all we’ll need is “virtual” bureaucrats. Who’ll know the difference?

Carroll G. Anderson