Politics (noun).—Any organized method of deciding how many inoffensive bystanders must die in order to keep or gain power for a privileged class. (A disorganized method is called a riot.)
MEMORANDUM.
To: All Employees
From: The President
Re: Ergonomics
All of us here at the Schenectady Small Arms & Biscuit Co., Inc., want to promote a productive work environment. I know that because I read it in a magazine in the dentist’s waiting room. My dentist has like a whole library in there, so every six months I get to catch up on my reading. So he had this magazine called Limited, the Magazine for the Smart Executive, and I thought, Hey, that’s me! And when I opened it up, the first article I came to was about this great new trend in work environments that makes them more productive, which it said is what everybody wants. A work environment is a place where people work. So like a job, but more environmental. This trend is called “ergonomics,” which looks like a big word, but it’s easy when you realize that it’s just made from two simple Greek words: ergo, which means “therefore,” and nomics, which means “stuff you eat.” I have no idea why it’s called “ergonomics,” because most of it isn’t about eating. But you should know about it, because it’s all about making the work environment better, and that’s what we all want.
I was only halfway through the article when the dental technician came to get me, but I got the gist of it. It’s basically about synergy, which is one of my favorite things. Last year for Boss’s Day my administrative assistant gave me a whole box of synergy. It looks like an empty box, but if you’re a smart executive you can see the synergy in it. Isn’t Mary Beth the best?
Anyway, the way ergonomics works is that you match the environment to the human beings who work in it. The article explained that people work better when the furniture around them matches the way their bodies are put together. It’s simple, really. Like, if you have to sit in a chair, that chair should have a shape that fits your body. And if you have to sit at a desk, then the things on the desk should be in the right positions for your arms to reach. The place you work and the shape of your body should fit together.
So when I got back to the office, I had Mary Beth do some numbers on that thing with the rectangles that she calls Extra Large (actually, she usually abbreviates it “XL”), and it turns out that it would cost a lot of money to make all our furniture fit our employees’ bodies. I mean, do you have any idea how many chairs there are just in the main building? So I said, “That’s a lot of money,” and she said, “Yeah, I suppose you’d think it was cheaper just to bend the employees around the furniture.”
See? This is why I say Mary Beth’s the best. I had her run the numbers (I don’t know why she kept saying “Please tell me you’re kidding” over and over again while she was doing it), and it turns out that her idea is surprisingly affordable, especially since my nephew Clyde is a chiropractor and he works cheap. So the immediate intent of this memo is to inform everyone to check your calendar to see when you’re scheduled for your upcoming appointment with Clyde. Together we can build the productive work environment that magazine says we all want.
With warmest regards,
J. Rutherford Pinckney,
President
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
WHAT SHALL WE DO?
What shall we do with the Hrothaloo?
It seems to eat too much.
It’s very bland to look at, and
It’s pinkish to the touch.
What shall we do with the Hrothaloo?
It takes up too much space.
It wears Pa’s skirts and tears his shirts
And chews up Mama’s lace.
What shall we do with the Hrothaloo?
It smells like clarinets.
The servants don’t; the children won’t;
It mystifies the pets.
What shall we do with the Hrothaloo?
We’ll paint its toenails red
And feed it ham with rhubarb jam,
And then we’ll go to bed.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR.
Sir: As a culture, we are dangerously shortsighted. We make no plans for the long term. We just waltz along, or sometimes Charleston along, whistling a carefree tune and trusting that the future will take care of itself. That is what our forefathers did before us, and look what happened. It is therefore the duty of every forward-looking citizen to point out looming catastrophes that will come crashing down on our descendants. Otherwise our civilization will march off every cliff and tumble into every crevasse.
This is why I am writing to you today: to point out that we are leaving a mess that will cause headaches and possibly indigestion and scalp itch for our children’s children. I am speaking, of course, of the matter of dates. In every way we use dates as one of the principal organizing principles of our affairs. Databases are sorted by date. Birth dates are the form of identification universally required in the health-care industry. Yet no one seems to have taken into account the fact, which one would have thought was obvious to a six-year-old, that, in only 7,975 years, the year will have five digits.
Fortunately, it is not too late. We have a little less than eight millennia to address the Y10K problem, but if we start early and put our backs into it we should be able to get the work done in time. We need to begin at once, however, because it is a titanic task. Every database on the planet must be migrated to a new system that has space for six digits. I say six because it is obvious that, if we added only one more digit, we would merely be buying ourselves a temporary reprieve.
Of course there will be pedantic types who will point out that, in 997,975 years, the year will have seven digits. But I think it is silly to worry about problems so far in the future, and we can dismiss those pedants as the cranks they are. —Sincerely, Dr. Marcus Wudge, Ph.D., Executive Director, Int’l Ass’n of Pedantic Cranks.
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: Right now I’m in college, but I’m worrying that by the time I get out, there won’t be any jobs left except in the garbage-collection industry, because everything else will be done by AI. So should I quit school now and take a job with the Department of Environmental Services? —Sincerely, A Sophomore at Duquesne.
Dear Sir or Madam: Even as late as a few months ago, Dr. Boli might have given you an affirmative answer. But he has been observing the progress of artificial intelligence in the workplace. More and more he sees lazy employees resorting to AI to try to get some assignment done with minimal effort. And then what happens? Someone else at the same company receives the assignment and says, “Oh—this was obviously done by AI. I’d better go over it with a fine-toothed comb.” More human employee-hours are spent dealing with the results of resorting to artificial intelligence than were formerly spent simply doing the jobs that have been turned over to AI. It turns out that, at almost every company, AI is the problem employee, the one in ten who takes up 90% of the management resources in dealing with his or her feckless incompetence. Go ahead and finish your degree. All over the world, positions are opening up for people who know how to deal with the messes AI is making every day.
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FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: A friend of ours died recently, and her family told us she had “donated her body to science.” We’ve never been STEM people, so we’re wondering if there are opportunities available to donate one’s body to philosophy or poetry or Portuguese literature. Do you know of any? —Sincerely, Mort Alcoil in Bridgeville.
Dear Sir: The problem with donating one’s body to poetry is that the poets usually want to give it back after they have moped over it for a while, and no one wants to deal with returns. Philosophers, on the other hand, will start arguing with your relatives while the said relatives are still lugging the body bag, which may encourage your heirs to think that dropping the package off a bridge would be a more expeditious method of disposal. As for Portuguese literature, it is underappreciated outside Portugal, and your heirs would probably have to buy a separate plane ticket for you if you are still mostly intact, thus substantially raising the cost of the donation.
If you are set on donating your body to the humanities, therefore, Dr. Boli would suggest that you consider donating it to conceptual art. If your local art museum does not know any current artists who would jump at the chance to make artistic use of your remains, then your local art museum simply does not know many current artists.