Working in the city

Is there any more dread announcement for staff - other than "the Christmas party will be at that new mud wrestling place this year"- than "we're moving to a new office in the city"?

Why? What did we do wrong? I just had my morning routine sorted, I can park near here, I even bought a house near here. Now you want to transfer me to Hell! I hope your credit card gets skimmed you miserable #/$*! I hope a part goes wrong in your car that has to be ordered from Pyongyang.

Unless you're one of the top six people in the company, you've just taken a minimum $200 per month salary cut; parking or bus tickets. But there is no parking so it’s all the dramas associated with public transport: late running, mumbling crazy guys on the bus, mumbling crazy guys driving the bus, concussion from "unscheduled stops" etc.

And city office space costs, so expect to be downgraded from cubicle to take away noodle box with so little room to move that you can only have earwax on a timeshare basis - and God help you if you don't lay your daily quota of eggs.

Cities are not built for people. You can't get there, you can't park and you can't get anything done for the crowds of other desperate, frustrated people. Even when you're so fed up and befuddled that buying the Ab Swinger Cruncher Super Pro seems like a good investment, you can't get out. There are blokes living under blankets in our CBDs that only went in to buy some shoes - twenty odd years ago.

So why are they? Cities, I mean.

To understand cities you need to understand people. Do you remember high school? Remember the biggest, loudest jock in the place? He's now a CEO and still needs people to know and admire how big he is - if you get my drift. So he builds a skyscraper hoping that we equate size with importance with size.

By the way, that’s the real reason for the glass ceiling. It’s not that women can’t run successful companies, it’s just that the engineering behind building fifty storey simulacra of female genitalia is way too complicated; and don’t get me started on trying to find the CEO’s office.

So the Jock-In-Chief now has his erection and his mates all want to be near him. In high school, it was in the hope that they’d get the next sexiest girl in line after “she” - who was always the purview of the JIC. Now his mates want reflected glory, and the next sexiest PA, so they build edifices near the JIC and coat them in that eye-blitzing mirror glass stuff.

Employees, in this little analogy, are like people getting picked for sports teams. The jocks take it in turns to pick players and the adult equivalent of the pimply kid gets to be Milton Waddams.*

 

 

Cities are not functional habitations for people. They are not eternal symbols of the glories of our civilization, they are the architectural equivalent of the football team photo. You know the one; captain in the middle of the front row, faces set in attitudes of chronic constipation and, for reasons that pass understanding, all their fists held tightly clenched on their knees.

 

And, like the high school football team, it only looks good in the photo. They always got their backsides handed to them on Saturday but “they weren’t disgraced”, according to the coach at assembly on Monday. Cities are ranked – and I use the word advisedly – in a “live-ability” index but it’s only to see which one gets to take home the wooden spoon; they are never going to be places you’d choose to spend your time.

* Milton Waddams is a character from "Office Space", one of the funniest movies since Life of Brian. If you haven't seen it, go out and do so - especially if you've just started back at work.

 

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