The "Bob's"

During my thirty five years of working in "an office" there were many Bob's.  For the uninitiated anyone working in an office or a cubicle, an information worker per se, should watch Office Space.

As a manager I'd make my staff watch it at least once a year.

Whenever I was out of the office doing real things like getting my car repaired (which I should have done myself) or getting my Stihl chainsaw tuned up (which I should have done myself) or getting any one of several outboards/inboards tuned up (which I should have done myself) the people hired were doing real things.  That seemed special.  They did real things.  I worked with abstract ideas, forms, software platforms, switches, routers, etc., all of which were a bit difficult to explain to people doing real work.  Usually I'd get a question like "what?" or "do you work up a sweat doing that?" or "that does not seem like much of a job."

In hindsight it's possible that I may have been more of a "Bob" than I thought.  Never did I wear suspenders or a tie with a short sleeved shirt but the more I look at this image the more they look like people I worked with and the more I think they look like people I worked with the more I think I might have fit in at that table.

The last fourteen months have been an interesting perspective introspection and self-discovery <<<<GOOD GRIEF...the corporate cliche buzzer just went off.  During strategic planning sessions some of us would agree to play sort of a corporate cliche bingo game.  We prepared a list of corporate cliches, including the previous and others like "how does that resonate" and of course the standard collection of vision statement and mission statement issues and the never-ending debates about their definitions.  Anyway...we'd listen and participate attentively marking off the cliches on the list as we heard them or said them.  At some point if your bingo card or list were appropriately checked off you were bribed into shouting out "bingo."  There was some money involved in this because you might have to yell it in the middle of a presentation on the global financial market.  At the shout out everyone would look and of course you'd have to explain yourself coming up with some explanation like a recently diagnosed Turrets Syndrome case.

The previous was an attempt to deny any inclination, tendency or track record of being a "Bob."  I've failed.