workingfortheman.com

Once upon a time, I worked as a computer programmer drone at the New York City Board of Education.

This was just before Mayor Bloomberg did the impossible and killed the board, subjugating its monstrous bureaucracy into a city department and simultaneously firing a load of fellow drones. Way to go Mike, here was something that was dreamed about by NYC Mayors for decades but was politically out of reach until Mr. Billionaire came to office.

The board was an antiquated and unorganized WWII style army supposedly supporting the needs of 1.2 million students in 1,200 schools. Can you get your head around these huge numbers? That's 650,000 lunches served every day -- more Salisbury steaks than you would need if you wanted to feed EVERY resident of the following US States: North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, Wyoming or the District of Columbia. Each day yellow buses in New York City transport 180,000 students. And the 30+ year old computer systems, band-aid patches, and new circumlocution that support this monolith were maintained by quite an impressive farm of several hundred cube-dweller drones.

To maximize proletariat efficiencies, rigorous procedures were in place to limit personal creativity and expression. Every male drone (and the majority of staff was male) had to wear a white shirt and tie every single day. That's white, not beige, ecru, or tope -- White. It really didn't matter what pants or shoes you wore, this wasn't a "white shoe" Wall Street firm, and most folks wore Dockers or cheap slacks with crappy shoes. The truth is that unless you are a hip-hop star or a pimp, men are pretty limited in their pants (khaki, olive, blue, black, brown, what am I missing?) and shoe choices (brown or black).

Two other strictures helped to emphasize the message, "you are easily exchanged with another white shirted drone so keep coding and shut up:" 1) the evil punch-card system and 2) prohibitive internet access. For our measly 7 hours of service we had to punch in, punch out for a mandatory non-paid 1 hour lunch, punch back in and punch out at the end of the day (oh, and the time was not flexible: 8:30 to 4:30). The rule was if you come in early or stay late to finish up something then good for you, but we won't pay you a penny more. However, if a drone punched in more than 4 minutes tardy they'd be dinged an entire 15 minute block. Once again, if you don't like it please help yourself to unemployment and daytime soaps, another white shirt is around the corner. And to make sure the job is harder and less satisfying we won't let you make any calls out of our area code and will limit your internet access to a few select computer programming sites such as CSharpToday.com (zzzz) and developerdex.com (where's the porn?).

One humid August day while I toiled away (I was making a flow chart of my favorite lunch places) the white-shirted IT gremlins set up the computer and files of a new next cube-over neighbor. His name plate said "Mr. Cool" and he was wearing a very loud and colorful Hawaiian print shirt! What the hell was going on? As I observed him for next 30 days (okay, I'm shy) I noticed that he punched in on no observable schedule -- I plugged the times and dates into my computer program and could discern no pattern! And he spent 90% of his time playing Doom on his computer and 10% of the time gabbing on the phone. Who was this mysterious tropical bird who landed in our little Alcatraz? How had he escaped the dictates and regulations of our drone class? Was he perhaps a mythical "Board" member, or just a guy who sneaked past security every day? Sandwich shop flow charts would have to wait, I had something new to fixate and speculate on with my co-workers over badly boiled coffee.

After months of speculation, I came up with a desperate and may I say daring plan to uncover the secrets behind this supernatural office figure. I decided to ask him.

So, I worked up the courage and went over and asked him, "Hey there guy, how come you don't have to wear the white shirt and tie?"

Months of conjecture, gossip, and rumor were about to be replaced with the truth. I held my breath with expectation and noticed a bead of sweat rolling down my back, no doubt visible on my thin white Today's Man shirt.

"Mr. Cool" considered my question and turned to me with little fanfare, "Oh, well I'm in the union."

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