The Rule Benders
Why is your boss a narcissist? asks the Guardian.
I’ve been wondering the same thing. But then I’m my own boss. Ahem.
No, really. When I read the news this week that WHSmith are finally ditching their scruffy and expensive high street stores, some old memories of being their teenage employee came to the surface. In particular, I remembered one of the Bosses, Tim, and how awful he was. He’d stride around self-importantly in his dismal black suit, lambasting his “team” of teenage students and retired old ladies. In the staff cloakroom one day, I found his cocaine, which explained at least some of his behaviour.
Once, he had me leafletting uselessly outside the shop because there was an unexplained error on my cash register — a single one in an audit roll of thousands of transactions — which he felt had eroded his trust in me to use such a complicated machine. I never found out what the error was.
I bet the inside of his car was filthy. Footwells filled with McDonalds cartons and scattered change.
Why was he such a narcissist? I asked myself. He was only the Assistant Manager of a WHSmith. What pride does he take in all this? I don’t mean to say one can’t take pride in the seamless running of a bookshop, but he wasn’t the type.
Well, according to the study presented in the Guardian today its because of the bullshit they put in the job ads for managers.
In the study, Gay and his colleagues divided language used in job ads into two categories: phrases that might attract “rule-followers” and phrases that might appeal to “rule-benders”. Postings seeking an applicant who is “grounded and collaborative”, “thinks methodically” and “communicates in a straightforward and accurate manner” went in the “rule-follower” category. Phrases like “ambitious and self-reliant”, “thinks outside the box” and “communicates in a tactical and persuasive manner” were filed under “rule-bender”.
It’s the “rule-bending”-type language that goes into ads for managerial jobs. And it’s narcissists who are most likely to find that sort of language appealing and actually apply for them.
Tim at WHSmith was awful but far worse was his boss Richard — a creeping mustachioed pervert who once said he wished he could do to us what Americans were doing, as it was announced that morning, in Abu Ghraib — and Tim’s equal Olwyn who died. When the news came around, one guy said “well, I wouldn’t have wished that on her.” And then there was Sally who was nice enough, but when I accidentally sold an embargoed copy of Shaggy’s “Angel” on CD, she said that “Shaggy’s people” had been in touch and weren’t happy.
Shaggy’s people indeed. What a bunch of rule-benders.
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Baudelaire
Baudelaire [elevated] idleness to the rank of a working method, of his very own method. We know that in many periods of his life he was not acquainted with, as it were, any worktable. It was by drifting that he fashioned and above all that he incessantly rearranged his verse.
Hooray, Baudelaire!
This comes from a piece of writing by Walter Benjamin, which was only recently translated into English. How can we only now be translating works — even minor ones — of Walter Benjamin? What a world.
Things we don’t know may already be known. In other languages. Apparently the biggest sci-fi franchise of all time isn’t my beloved Star Trek but some German thing. See also Fitzcaraldo Editions and Charco Press who, lately, have been bringing light to my reading not through new commisions but through translation.
Anyway, yes. Baudelaire. The idler’s poet. Benjamin’s piece goes further.
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