No More Complaining

It's easy to complain about our lot in corporate life.  The noisy, stuffy cubes.  The computer eyestrain.  The silly office rules.  The long, 8-hour days.  We are so on the short end of the dialectic.  Dilbert is our patron saint of business idiocy, Tim Ferris our beacon of the four-hour work week.

The Information Revolution is killing us, just as the Industrial Revolution killed our ancestors.

As proof, I offer the business rules of a Boston firm, circa 1872.  Enjoy.

1. Office employees each day will fill lamps, clean chimneys and trim wicks.  Wash windows once a week. 

2. Each clerk will bring in a bucket of water and scuttle of coal for the day's business.  

3. Make your pens carefully.  You may whittle nibs to your individual taste. 

4. Men employees will be given an evening off each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they go regularly to church. 

5. Every employee should lay aside from each pay day a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society. 

6. Any employee who smokes Spanish cigars, uses liquor in any form, or frequents pool and public halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop, will give good reason to suspect his worth, intentions, integrity and honesty. 

7. The employee who has performed his labor faithfully and without fault for five years, will be given an increase of five cents per day in his pay, providing profits from business permit it.

There you have it.  Put aside those Spanish cigars.  Go look up "scuttle" and "nib."  And don't let us catch you in a barber shop.

Life isn't so tough after all.  Happy weekend!

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

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