Bureaucrats who are able to leave the office in the evening or on a weekend typically have to spend time washing their working sets of blue shirts and brown pants (suits are usually reserved for Power-Point presentation days). But if a bureaucrat manages to find a few hours of leisure, she is likely to spend it reading a book with “cubicle” in the title. Cubicle Warfare, Pimp my Cubicle, Another Day in Cubicle Paradise, Quilts in My Cubicle, and The Cubicle are all worth reading (Escape from Cubicle Nation is inferior literature, suitable only for the ignorant, and not recommended). Recently Jay Giess’ Death By Cubicle has been named a finalist for the prestigious Putzer Prize. Giess’ novel is the first book with “cubicle” in the title to become a finalist for a Putzer.
Death By Cubicle is a romantic comedic murder mystery thriller. At the bureaucratic level, it represents the progress from six sigma bureaucratic business management strategy to seven sigma, and from 360-degree bureaucratic performance reviews to 720-degree (a highly experienced bureaucrat in the book explored 1080-degree reviews, but recommended against them). The Carnival of Bureaucrats’ literature reviewer declared that she felt profound personal anagnorisis from this passage in Death By Cubicle:
I turned on my computer and let my fingers go through the log-in process. They had done it enough times that they didn’t need me, but it didn’t work. I watched them as they went through it a second time. Everything was just right, but I couldn’t log in.
Automatic somatic performance and disassociation of sensibility profoundly unmask habitus of bureaucrats, our literature reviewer explained. Our assistant sub-editor said that this passage describes a recurring nightmare he has. I’ve got nightmares like that, too, said our associate managing editor. The only fate more horrifying than being terminated from your bureaucratic job is being terminated without going through the proper Human Resources Department protocol. You just can’t log in. Your access badge stops working. Nightmare! Possible psychiatric treatment: stay logged in, and don’t leave the office. But if you ever leave the office and have some leisure time, you would enjoy reading Jay Geiss’ excellent Death By Cubicle.
In other important bureaucratic news, this month is the 75th anniversary of the Carnival of Bureaucrats. According to the useful “Anniversary Color List for 1st to 75th Anniversary Party Themes,” the official color for this anniversary is diamond white. Each employee of the Carnival of Bureaucrats has accordingly received a diamond white service pin.
Bureaucratese is becoming an active scholarly field in the humanities. Recent research has discovered that the popular phrase “throw the bums out” originated with bureaucrats. U.S. Railway Post Office Mail Clerks (USPOMC) developed this and other now fashionable language:
The clerks adopted a fascinating shorthand language for their work, including the term “nixie” for an unsortable or misaddressed letter and “bum” for a damaged or empty mail sack. Before leaving the station, one clerk might yell “throw the bums out,” meaning to toss out the empty mailbags. Another could yell, “Seventy-six in the house,” noting that the mail from Trail #76 was on board. Since there was no time to read an entire mail label, clerks shortened them into nonsense phrases. Thus, the announcement of mail from the “New York and Pittsburgh Train 11, two, from Madison Square Station, New York, New York,” transformed into the cry “From the Madhouse with a two!”
To be on the forefront of linguistic fashion, mimic the modern-day descendants of USPOMC.
Recently we here at the Carnival of Bureaucrats have been studying “37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong.” Correctness is important to bureaucrats. Moreover, a list with 37 items is bureaucratically impressive. But the intellectual program of Less Wrong has serious weaknesses. In addition to its apparent low standards, it doesn’t respect established practice. “We’ve always done it this way” is key to identifying what will be regarded as correct. Analysis that doesn’t appreciate this fact isn’t empirically credible.
That’s all for this month’s Carnival of Bureaucrats. Enjoy previous bureaucratic carnivals here. Nominations of posts to be considered for inclusion in next month’s carnival should be submitted using Form 376: Application for Bureaucratic Recognition.