[717] in Humor
HUMOR: Office Life
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Mon Feb 6 18:03:59 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 06 Feb 1995 17:55:49 EST
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
From: Connie_Kleinjans@Novell.COM (Connie Kleinjans)
From: "Jim Pellmann" <jgp@Rational.COM>
Office life source for humor
Love, war and work called great themes of life and literature
By Mark Leibovich, Mercury News Staff Writer
MEMO
TO: Office Dwellers
FROM: David Graulich, Office Anthropologist
RE: Complaining About Your Jobs
Don't worry, you are not alone.
It might be the shortest memo you receive all year. It's also a certainty.
People complain about their jobs, from CEOs on down. Call it a central tenet
of modern American employment: I work, therefore I complain about it.
"Even people who seem to kinda like their work complain about their jobs,"
says David Graulich, a commentator on the National Public Radio show
"Marketplace" and author of the recently published "Dial 9 To Get Out," a
collection of essays on professional life.
Graulich, a 40-year-old San Bruno resident, has spent much of his adult life
gathering tales from the office. Such a rich source, too: The office, he says,
contains "an inexhaustible supply of humor, sentiment and poignancy."
And, of course, carping. So what does it say about our species that we will
inevitably complain about the place we spend a third of our hours? "It says,"
says Graulich, "that psychologists and psychiatrists have a lot of money."
Graulich does not have a lot of money, but he's a dead-ringer for Microsoft's
Bill Gates, which should count for something. He has the trademark Gatesian
mop of brown hair, the wire-rim glasses and the pouty mouth. He's been
mistaken for Gates often enough to have contemplated mischief. "I should walk
into the First National Bank of Seattle and apply for a loan," Graulich says.
Graulich culled his workplace expertise from his own professional experiences:
in the buttoned-down offices of the Wall Street Journal (where he spent a year
as a reporter), Squibb Corp. (a pharmaceutical company) and McKinsey & Co. (a
management consulting firm). He also collects stories from other
office-dwellers, in a range of industries, low-tech to high-tech. He published
his findings last June.
In his book, Graulich quotes a friend: "There (are) three great themes in
human life -- love, war and work -- and . . . while artists, musicians and
writers have devoted immense energies to the first two, they had left the
third relatively untouched."
Until now.
Workplace pet peeves
Graulich writes on a variety of office phenomena, from the feared "off-site
meeting" to the dreaded "company picnic" to the despised "Rudolph the
Red-Nosed Fast-Tracker." He has his favorite workplace pet peeves, like the
distinctive catch-phrases adored by personnel managers. " `People are our most
important asset,' " he says, "should be banned from the English language."
Or the concept of the "office family" promoted by some corporations. "The
office and the family used to be separate," Graulich says. "But now, people
try to blur the distinction, and that's wrong." Think about it, he says.
"Your mom doesn't lay you off. She doesn't say, `We've had 30 great years
together, but it's time to let you go. We're downsizing the family.' "
"David has a great kind of aw-shucks eye for all this stuff," says Chris
Barnett, a San Francisco writer, whom Graulich calls his "professional
mentor." "I think he could emerge as one of the great writers in business
journalism."
So it's of some irony that David Graulich, office expert, does not actually
spend his days in an office. He works in the cramped den of his San Bruno
home, accompanied by Buddy, his 4-year-old bouvier des Flandres, who (as we'll
see later) sings a mean show tune.
Public relations consultant
When he's not commenting on NPR or culling office anecdotes for his next book,
Graulich consults corporations on public relations matters. But he's very much
an office animal, if not an office dweller. He spends a lot of time at the San
Francisco office of CSC Index, for whom he does consulting work. Chuck
Quenette, its Pacific Rim director of marketing, says Graulich arrives early
for his meetings so he can get in his requisite schmooze time.
It took Graulich a while to adjust to a life without co-workers. "Working
alone was a bit of a culture shock," Graulich says. "After all, you go to
work. You don't stumble down to work in your pajamas." He misses the jokes
most of all, the daily banter among co-workers. He first realized this in
1988, just after he left McKinsey and struck out on his own. "I missed out on
all the great political jokes of the 1988 presidential campaign," he says. "I
didn't start hearing the Lloyd Bentsen jokes until three years later." (Lloyd
Bentsen jokes?)
When the Federal Express man came to his house, Graulich would cling to his
leg, begging him to stay. "Getting a dog was key," he says. When he's not
playing with Buddy, Graulich procrastinates on his piano or on the Internet
(depending on his mood). His wife, Rebecca, is a supervisor at Genentech in
South San Francisco. They met in 1986 at a hot-tub party in Palo Alto.
"And I've been in hot water ever since," he jokes.
Corporate misfit
Graulich was never an ideal fit for corporate culture. He had the unfortunate
knack of falling asleep or laughing at inopportune moments. Graulich is an
avowed night owl. He stays up late, is a slow starter in the morning and
struggles in extended meetings. When he was working at McKinsey, Graulich once
dozed off in a meeting with "a high-level government type" and was duly "taken
to the woodshed."
When he was working for the Wall Street Journal, Graulich was interviewing a
guy who was marketing a soft-drink called "Yabba Dabba Dew." The product was
not doing well. "Here we were, two adults talking, and he's telling me about
this thing called `Yabba Dabba Dew' with a totally straight face," Graulich
recalls. "I just burst out laughing."
The Yabba Dabba Dew guy did not.
"Humor is my basic personality," Graulich says. "And in general, corporate
comedian is not the path to the corner office."
Which is just as well, given how well he's settled into the home-office
routine. No boss. No personnel department. No elevator buddy. Just Buddy.
About Buddy and the show tunes: Yes, Buddy sings them. Music from "Oklahoma."
"My Fair Lady." Whatever Graulich happens to be tapping out on the keyboard.
Buddy would make a great Stupid Pet Trick on David Letterman, but Graulich
doesn't want to fly him to New York. But he will demonstrate here.
While Graulich plays "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue" on the piano, Buddy,
sitting a few feet away, yelps forth at the appropriate moments. He hits all
the high notes flawlessly. As Graulich sings the lyrics "has anybody seen my
gal," Buddy harmonizes, an Art Garfunkel among canines. He brings the tune
home with a flurry, evoking wild applause from two guests in the living room.
Nice moment.
But alas, a caution: Do not try this at the office.
Published 2/01/95 in the San Jose Mercury News.
