I am a cubicle-dweller. I push papers from one side of the cube to the other. Sometimes I load papers in UPS envelopes and a man in brown socks takes them from me and delivers them to other people in cubes.
We cubicle-dwellers are not people. We are resources or commodities. We have an internal value that must be extracted. Maybe that makes us like oranges.
Yes, we are oranges. We cubicle-dwellers are bright citrus fruit. And we are placed in these cubes, these juicers, in order that we might be squeezed and scrunched until all of the value within us, all of the juice, has been collected. We are then a mound of sticky pulp and rind.
I am a cubicle-dweller.
I had an executive named Kermit who used to always cite the proverb, "when ya squeeze an orange, you get orange juice!" It was his way of saying its easy for everyone to look like their an orange in an organization, but until you squeeze them and see what comes out you never really know who they are...do you get orange juice under pressure or just smelly water?
ReplyDeleteHow depressingly Marxist and yet altogether familiar.
ReplyDeleteI once read: "He [the laborer, cubicle-dweller, what have you] works that he may keep alive. He does not count the labor itself as a part of his life; it is rather a sacrifice of his life. It is a commodity that he has auctioned off to another."
It seems that perception is what elevates the cubicle-dweller. What are we sacrificing for? On this point, Pastor Mike is on to something. We are commodities when lost, when all we see is the "evil corporation" bearing down on us. But we're something else -- something more -- when we are found. Is He still God if He places you in that cubicle? The question posed another way: are you READY to be "squeezed" this week?...
i am ready for a way out of the juicer...
ReplyDelete-kyle