If you watch enough old movies and TV shows you know how the office of a successful businessman was supposed to look. Wood paneling―perhaps mahogany―and heavy wood desk―perhaps teak. Shelves filled with Great Books, although he might be too much of a philistine to have actually read them. You almost always see a globe. There may be a replica statue as well, and certainly some serious art hanging on the wall.
I could go on, but my points are these: This is obviously an aspirational image. And it's an obsolete one. It's impossible to imagine an executive in the year 2022 spinning a globe, stopping it with one finger and saying, "Our new franchise will be opening here, in Tanzania."
The image of a successful go getter is now a man or sometimes a woman with a phone and a nice suit and a phone and not much else. They'll work on a plane flat surface, although that surface may be made of expensive stuff. The computer might just be a monitor, the CPU being carried in some case or bag. A corner office only means a better view of the dystopian landscape outside.
Our grand capitalist classes aren't preserving anything. They're nihilists.
2 comments:
That's also a fair description of Nero Wolfe's office, and you've made a realistic assessment besides of what I enjoy about old novels and movies.
Besides the status symbol aspect of the corner office I think there's something hopeful and life affirming when we see the crowded rooms where lots of workers sat typing or operating adding machines. There were factory floors, news bureaus, stock exchanges, crowded bus and train stations, restaurants, bars, department stores, shops, corner newspaper stands, and five and dimes. In other words you'd infer all the other places where people could mingle in a more humane time.
Hollywood has often oversimplified eras that weren't always easy or fair, but I remember the 50s and 60s well enough to say they were better times and people were friendlier and more relaxed than now. These days the successful executive spinning the globe is more likely to be Klaus Schwab saying, "You will own nothing and .." - the very definition of a nihilist.
Better days may come.
Nero Wolfe's office, at least the way I picture it, would be a good example. Even if he personally had some rough edges--what made him interesting--he still wanted his clients comfortable enough to speak freely. I initially meant to talk about the cover of Randy Newman's Born Again as well, but there's just too much going on there.
Yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? Christopher Lasch, borrowing the term from Ray Oldenburg, spoke of the importance of the "third place", somewhere aside from home and work that people could voluntarily gather. But for many now there isn't even much of a second place. And home can't be everything.
As a few people have pointed out, Klaus Schwab is something of a flimflammer. He doesn't really have the money, power, or know-how to do the things he says should be done, which is good because most would be awful. The trouble is that he is also an aspirational figure for some, given all the wealthy and glamorous people who flock to WEF.
I think better days can come, but not through the people or by the ways we've been told to trust.
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