On Office Work

Dear All



Office work (or office-work as it has come to be called in more fashionable sectors of the labour market (or labour-market as it has come to be called in more parlours of the dilettantes and hyphen jockeys)) is perhaps one of the more misunderstood of career choices. In a recent survey of desirability it polled at number 387, positioning it between fluid retainer and Arts Minister of Albania. And yet it boasts a fine history of achievement with a surprising number of dignitaries working in its hallowed halls. Albert Einstein's Uncle Wolfgang, Bertrand Russell's second cousin Ernest and Orson Welle's labrador retriever, Sparky to name but a few. The latter headed up Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for 10 years during the Menzies era, a fact which is often forgotten when discussing Australia's primacy in the export of doggie treats and low-angle camera shots during the 1950s.

The dignity of office work derives from a purity of purpose which can only be obtained by the combination of two daily fifteen-minute coffee breaks (or coffee-breaks) and the application of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity to the dimensions of time sheets and office space. Members of the general public fail to discern the Zen aspects of the work, with its concentration on prolonged periods of meditation (with the unfortunate side effect of drastically elongating customer phone call queues) and mindfulness of daily experience, particularly which colleague has stolen the office stapler (or stapler as it is known in the Redundant Zen school of thought and thinking).

While it is well known that Einstein himself worked in a Swiss patent office, few would be aware that a large number of prominent physicists also worked down the hall. Erwin Schrodinger would often lock colleagues in a broom closet with a vial of poison and back issues of National Geographic in an attempt to demonstrate quantum entanglement. He was asked to leave the office after experimenting with a Geiger counter and entanglement with one of the secretaries from the typing pool. Also, Heisenberg worked for a time as a team supervisor but was chronically unable to make firm decisions. Neils Bohr worked on an early draft of his theory of the complementarity while acting as tea-lady. When questioned about his frequent absences from the office he would cite his dual nature whereby he might appear to be in the office or not but could exist in both states at the same time. When observed coming into the office the quantum wave would collapse and he would, indeed, exist in the workplace environment. In the end, his immediate supervisor encouraged him to take early retirement and a Nobel Prize in Physics. The disappearance of the company tea urn, however, have never adequately been explained and this may be part of the reason that Bohrs and Einstein fell out over the years.

In any event, office work has been the metaphorical smithy in which much of modern science has been forged. Lest we forget - many are cold-called, few are chosen.

Thank you for your time.