Punishing the B&NC Team, Part 2

So it’s raspberry berets for everyone. I had written each Being & Nothingness Cam Team member’s name as neatly as I could with a black Sharpie on the fold. I sat down with the Team for late-mid morning coffee and handed the berets out. Tom, Sia, and Phaye each took theirs, held them limply in their hands, and were quiet. They looked at me, waiting.

I told each of them that this was their work uniform and they would start wearing them now. They would pick their beret up on my desk when they came in and leave it there when they left. Tom and Sia pulled theirs on slowly, while Phaye, the annoyingly energetic 22 year-old, jumped up as she put hers on to go look in the bathroom mirror. She returned looking mournful.

I told them that while I understood that this job was not conventional, and it could feel like we were just sitting around looking at monitors and doing nothing, it was still a job and they must do what I asked. The would begin—or re-start—by writing the biographies we had discussed 5 weeks ago, and give them to me Monday: Tom was to write about Sia, Sia about Dirk, and Phaye about Tom, and I would have Phaye’s bio. I posted the bio Dirk wrote about me ages ago, and he wasn't even a B&NC Team member.

I sounded like a fossilized English teacher.

I had wanted everyone to look awful, and they did. They looked like raspberry-colored turds had landed on their heads. They looked like the Fierce & Fabulous Guardian Angel Team.

Punishing the B&NC Team, Part 1

What are the quintessential needs and characteristics of philosopher-types?

- Cigarettes

- Berets

- Dim lighting

- Coffee

- Bored faces with eyes fixed into middle space.

- Talk about philosophy. Discussing philosophers is optional; more likely to talk about own philosophy, which is also known as complaining.

Here are the Being & Nothingness Cam Team members:

- Only one of them smokes

- None of them wear berets

- I had to turn up the light because of the uneven wooden floors (not their fault)

- I still haven’t replaced our espresso machine

- They don’t seem particularly bored

- The philosopher talk has dwindled. They do some complaining.

A couple of months ago, I was in an upscale clothing consignment shop and they had a pile of reddish-pink berets. A PILE. I asked the owner what the deal was and she said a guy had come in with a big box of them. She said she wasn’t real keen on the berets, but took them anyway. What she did like was the fabulous puffy shirt and purple jacket he was wearing. He was short and black, with a long thin face and he looked like he was born to wear those clothes. She was wondering if he had others that he would be interested in putting on consignment, but he had such a cool, serious look that she was afraid to ask.

I bought five berets, because I thought I would give them to my staff one day as a bit of silliness. With my whining about my management style in mind, however, and this ongoing, quiet Team rebellion regarding a variety of my requests and concerns, these berets are about to become punishment.

Employee-Manager Relations

I’ve been going over my ability to oversee (a.k.a. manage) Tom, Sia, and Phaye, the Being & Nothingness Cam Team. I was thinking that I must have some sort of management skills, because I’ve had two jobs in which “manager” was part of the title. I was fired from both, but I hung on to each job for years.

Reviewing my unhappy jobs I remember my crappy behavior more than the managers’. I locked myself in the walk-in refrigerator at a deli job, furious about I-don’t-know-what. The assistant manager--a lovely woman--knocked on the door, and gently offered me some valium. When I was waitressing I locked myself in the bathroom which opened directly into the dining room. I was crying miserably about who-knows when the manager silently slid a magazine under the door. I thought he was sweet, trying to distract me, but another magazine followed, then another. He was trying to seal the bottom of the door, hoping that it would dampen the sound. I can say with certainty that I have cried at the workplace of every job I've had, so either I cry a lot or I choose bad jobs.

Looking at this from the B&NC Team’s perspective, I hired them, told them their work hours, and then told them I didn’t know what their job was beyond looking on monitors at live feeds from cameras that were somewhere in existence reflecting something about existence. The thing hinges on how well they can bear uncertainty. If the job market wasn’t so bad there wouldn't have been anyone to hire but stoners. I once took a job, however, the description of which boiled down to “Do what the manager says” and it worked out pretty well.

My job description here, if there was one, would be something along the lines of “Tolerate being in the dark.” So I’m pretty danged uncertain myself, but I'm going to have to cowboy up and say manager sort of things. Like, Your smoking is effecting your work, or, You aren't doing what I asked, or, Don’t leave in the middle of your shift, or, If a monkey bites you call someone or go to the E.R..

Mulling these things over, I have decided that tomorrow is, So You Think You're a Philosopher day.

Gophers and Disciplinary Action

Gopher
Not gopher

I mentioned to Dirk this afternoon—while he was gamely trying to get software working that we both know can never be fixed—that due to my poor management the members of the Being & Nothingness Cam Team don’t think I’ll do anything about their failure to submit their biographies (now 2-3 weeks overdue). I could say this to Dirk because he already knows that I’m not managing things well.

He told me that people will think that you’re as smart as a bag of gophers unless you prove them wrong. I don’t think that people assume others' are stupid, but I loved his turn of a phrase. I asked him if he thought that a bag of gophers shouldn’t be smarter than a single gopher, and he said, If a single gopher is stupid then more gophers aren’t going to be smarter. It’s like zero times twenty.

This gave me a good excuse to look for a photo of a gopher and to my delight both of the above photos came up to my gopher search request. The first is a pocket gopher. The second is not.

With Dirk’s philosophy in mind I have determined that I must not, however unlikely, be thought of by the Team members as a sack of gophers. I’ve decided that now I will use as punishment something I was going to do as a joke.

Being & Nothingness Cams Status

You can see for yourself that the B&NC-1* is up and purring along, just in case you've heard the rumors that it is gone and may have crossed over to the Being side.


On the other hand... here's B&NC-2 and we're pretty disappointed.

* For those who may have joined us recently I want to emphasize that we've designated these cameras "North" or 1 and "South" or 2. The truth is that we have no real confirmation that this is the case. We have to label things, though, since we are still only human.

The Masomenis Corporation

Meeting with Bethann the Accountant today I had to begin the story of how the Being & Nothingness Cam Project was born (even if I cannot explain how it exists). Bethann said that she didn’t have experience with budgeting grant funds, but she knew that there was oversight or reports or something, so she needed more information. So I started the story.

Sometime in July 2008 I saw an internet ad that I thought had to be fake. I never click on an ad for more information, because I’m sure that down that road is pain and ruin, either from whatever invades your computer or from what you end up charging on your Visa. This was an ad for a home defibrillator. Yes! A miniature version of the fabulous crash cart gotta-have that we so love from TV medical shows. Now, truly, who among us has not hollered “Clear!” or held imaginary paddles and made that “zzzt” sound? Maybe even done some flopping around after an imaginary shock? Who?

This ad was both hilarious and appalling. Someone could not legitimately be selling a home defibrillator, because if nothing else it opened the gate to the very heart of legal hell. How did an ad like this get placed? It’s like the translations that are so absurd that you can’t see how someone along the line didn’t say, Whoa, something’s wrong here (menu item: “Desktop bacteria rice” [courtesy Ondi & engrish.com]). Rather than pulling up the ad, I Googled the company name, clicked on its URL and got an actual street address. This was back in my real-job-not-sitting-at-home-in-my-jammies-until-noon days, but nevertheless I took the time to sit down and write a real letter to the Masomenis Corporation….