I don’t even know if Xerox make photocopiers any more, I’m
sure they do, but once they were synonymous with the process: “Can you Xerox me two copies of this, please?”
I can’t recall seeing a Xerox machine in decades; our Xerox is a Minolta. Anyway,
I did a load of photocopying this morning and as I did I observed how much like
communism it all was. Bear with me...
You see, the system is supposed to work like this: I want
photocopies done, I let the office girls know (this isn’t sexism, it’s just
that all our clerical staff are female – so shoot us) and they produce the
copies. The trouble is though, that I may have varying needs – 6 of that piece,
20 of another, this one double-sided, this one in booklet form, this set
stapled, this lot in plastic wallets, colour/no colour, enlarged, shrunk... the
permutations are, if not endless, considerable. It can take me longer to
explain what I want than to just do it myself.
So, I come in early to hog the communal facilities for
myself. Egalitarianism yes, but on a first-come, first served-basis. We all have
equal access to the two smart machines, but some manage to make their access
more equal than others. (I also know the keycode for full colour copying, but
don’t tell anybody about that.) Of course, the machine is out of paper, so I go
in search and discover the last box in the store room, load up a pack and stash
another pack in my office drawer because I know I need a load doing tomorrow
and we may run out. In this I only practice what everybody else does.
You see, the company is the politburo and they make the
rules and the rules are that they provide everything we need. But nobody is in
express charge of ordering photocopy paper, so it only gets ordered when it
runs out. The reason this doesn’t cause mass panic is because everybody notices
the shortage, informs the office of the need, but has little faith in the ability
to deliver on time, so hoards resources for their own use until such time as
normal supplies return.
It’s the same with company logo mugs, which we get
through at an alarming rate, dry-wipe markers, board rubbers, pens, staples,
paper clips, etc, etc, etc. A secret little barter economy operates in parallel
with the official supply routes and everybody is more or less happy. We’ve all
learned that to rely on the company to always be there is to be naively in
thrall to a system that relies on a level of communication and understanding that
is somewhat less than perfect and like all overloaded systems, occasionally
fails altogether.
Replicate! Replicate!
So, we play the dutiful employees and sing the company
song. We wear the uniform and bear the logo on our chests while all the time
playing our own little game of every man for himself. Occasionally we have
meetings at which we all faithfully agree to do all the right things and share
wat we have, but we then go back to doing everything exactly as before. Not because
we don’t care about doing our jobs well, but because we do. To entirely trust
other humans to whom we are not related is a folly and to believe otherwise is
to entirely misjudge the competence of humanity.
