Work Daze

Get out your handkerchiefs, cube dwellers. This is going to be a weeper.

I’m in New York City on a business trip and in the middle of a day of bustle and hustle, I realized suddenly that a great cultural institution has virtually disappeared from the urban landscape. I had actually read about the phenomena, but had no personal experience with the acute pain and the loss of discovering that life has changed forever until when, at lunch time, I walked from East 57th Street all the way to West 34th Street without ever once finding a coffee shop.

It’s true! There were Starbucks and Subways and Quiznos and Blimpys, but no coffee shops. Not one. None. Zero.

The reason for the dearth of places to dunk a donut or order up a tuna sandwich was obvious. It was all those darn Starbucks and Subways and Quiznos and Blimpys. Retail tornados of uncaring franchise land barons have swept through Manhattan, buying up all the locations that once housed the friendly, neighborhood eateries where one could always count on a huge menu with endless selection that rivaled a cruise ship buffet in its scope. Where breakfast was served all day. Where there was always a baked apple to be had or a bowl of rice pudding. And where the service was fast – faster, usually, than the customer who sat on an uncomfortable tuffet of a stool, listening to the counter staff call back and forth with orders for the kitchen and general complaints on the unfairness of life.

[They were usually Greeks, these counter people. Where they have all gone, I have no idea, but I don’t think they’re serving up lattes and macchiatos. I do know this – the Seinfeld gang would have nowhere to hang out today. And the humor of the famous John Belushi bit on “Saturday Night Live,” where the counterman is eternally damned to repeat “cheeseburger-cheeseburger-cheeseburger,” would never be understood today. It would to be replaced with the new chant of “Frappichino-Frappichino-Frappichino.”]

The tale of the vanishing coffee shop reminded me that our cultural environment can change in ways that are just as sudden and surprising as what is happening to our weather [not that I believe in global warming, but here in Manhattan, it is raining frogs.] And that we really can take nothing for granted.

Consider your own work environment. If you think about it, you’ll discover many traditional landmarks of office life that have become extinct, or are heading in that direction. For example:

The office manager

Once upon a time the office manager job was given to uptight, agonizingly anal individuals who were too tightly wound to do any productive work, but could be counted on by management to obsess about every paperclip and treat each sheet of carbon paper as their own. Office managers, too emotionally explosive to deal with customers or clients, were given free range to supervise employees who they intimidated with threats of secret powers, little dictators who roamed the floor, hated by all and enjoying every minute of it.

Modern computer systems replaced the need for office managers, and now all these flawed, bitter, and punishing individuals have been given new assignments where their terror tactics can be put to good use. That’s right; they work in HR

The boss’s secretary

In the good old days, the boss had a secretary who answered his phone and kept his calendar – both jobs now performed by microchips. The boss’s secretary was invariably an older woman, preferably widowed, the better to project an image of virginal sanctity that made any idea of sexual relationship unthinkable. Yet, it was offered rumored that there had been a “warmer” relationship in earlier days.

Though grandmotherly and nurturing to the “young sprouts,” heaven help anyone who crossed the boss’s secretary. One word and you were dead meat. What happened to these women, history does not record. I think the majority now work as madams in fancy houses.

The sexy receptionist

In ancient days, businesses hired attractive young women to sit at the front desk, the better to project a youthful, appealing image. Today, of course, this is considered rank sexism and receptionists, if they even exist, have been replaced by security guards – dangerous looking corporate bouncers in generic uniforms who carry pagers and tasers and would happily beat you to a pulp if you even considered stealing one of the reception room’s dog-eared copies of Newsweek.

You

You mean you really didn’t know?