Thursday, April 22, 2004
How To Use Mob Mentality To Get What You Want
...will be the title of my next self-help book. I thought of it after seeing a sheepish woman clutching a copy of Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office 101, while standing in line during lunch.
This week is Employee Appreciation Week, and yesterday the higher-ups celebrated us by buying lunch. Don't get me wrong, Cha Cha Cha's some tasty shit, but I think most of them saw it as a way to rub elbows while patting themselves on the back for being superior. A chunk of attorneys here love totem polls and thrive on hierarchies. Of course, when you're popping 'roids, which I'm quite sure is the case for Super Lawyer: Friend of Lou Ferrigno, how can you not?? (Season 2 of The Office just came out on DVD, by the by).
Anyway, few people in our office have true friendships. For better or worse, they're the relationships formed by proximity. So whenever everyone comes together in a social setting, like our wild Christmas parties or uncontainable company picnics, nobody has much to say. It's pretty awkward. Yesterday, though, everyone got loud and ganged up on this one guy who made the gargantuan mistake of actually sharing something personal. Well, really he was talking to me, but someone overheard and chimed in, and the next thing I know the room's silence snowballed into full-on verbal assault. (In the mob's defense, he said he used a white board to clarify a point in an argument with his girlfriend).
It's really funny to me that people are that scared of not speaking. But it's probably also that some people just like to sound off about any given topic at any given time, if given the chance. At any rate, it ended up being the most talkative gathering we've had that didn't involve alcohol. We navigated through all kinds of waters -- marriage, basketball, LA restaurants, movies. And it culminated with me clearing out the room on a rant about how Dr. Phil is a self-aggrandizing jackass. (Apparently, Dr. Phil fans are the passive-aggressive type).
So the lesson here is, if put in an awkward situation where no one knows anyone, pick out someone's flaw and make fun of it, preferrably while nudging the person next to you.
...will be the title of my next self-help book. I thought of it after seeing a sheepish woman clutching a copy of Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office 101, while standing in line during lunch.
This week is Employee Appreciation Week, and yesterday the higher-ups celebrated us by buying lunch. Don't get me wrong, Cha Cha Cha's some tasty shit, but I think most of them saw it as a way to rub elbows while patting themselves on the back for being superior. A chunk of attorneys here love totem polls and thrive on hierarchies. Of course, when you're popping 'roids, which I'm quite sure is the case for Super Lawyer: Friend of Lou Ferrigno, how can you not?? (Season 2 of The Office just came out on DVD, by the by).
Anyway, few people in our office have true friendships. For better or worse, they're the relationships formed by proximity. So whenever everyone comes together in a social setting, like our wild Christmas parties or uncontainable company picnics, nobody has much to say. It's pretty awkward. Yesterday, though, everyone got loud and ganged up on this one guy who made the gargantuan mistake of actually sharing something personal. Well, really he was talking to me, but someone overheard and chimed in, and the next thing I know the room's silence snowballed into full-on verbal assault. (In the mob's defense, he said he used a white board to clarify a point in an argument with his girlfriend).
It's really funny to me that people are that scared of not speaking. But it's probably also that some people just like to sound off about any given topic at any given time, if given the chance. At any rate, it ended up being the most talkative gathering we've had that didn't involve alcohol. We navigated through all kinds of waters -- marriage, basketball, LA restaurants, movies. And it culminated with me clearing out the room on a rant about how Dr. Phil is a self-aggrandizing jackass. (Apparently, Dr. Phil fans are the passive-aggressive type).
So the lesson here is, if put in an awkward situation where no one knows anyone, pick out someone's flaw and make fun of it, preferrably while nudging the person next to you.
