Mencius Moldbugman

The boss explains that she feels the office energy isn’t high enough. Something needs to be done to help increase output. So she has a fun new initiative that will be “rolled out” immediately. Everyone must stand up for the rest of the day. No more sitting down.

She says she learnt this during her MBA at Wharton. The marketing girls scatter and drag everyone’s chairs away. You try to hold onto your chair but the marketing girl stares you down. “It’s better for your health anyway,” she says. “Sitting is the new smoking.”

You stand at your desk. Your hands cannot reach the keyboard so you hunch over to type. It hurts, but they told you that it’s healthy, so you don’t complain. You haven’t eaten alone all week. You promise yourself that today you will treat yourself to a nice burger... alone.

You have a meeting and are the first to arrive in the meeting room. Everyone else starts appearing ten minutes late. Even though ten minutes late, they all laugh and chat and say “Oops, forgot my coffee!” They leave to get coffee. They all looooooove their coffee!!!

The meeting starts 30 minutes later than scheduled. It’s a simple meeting. It shouldn’t take longer than 15 minutes. It’s simply to agree on the content of a new report. Yet there are 20 people in the meeting. Why? The organiser begins. She opens a PowerPoint. It has 70 slides

She reads through all 70 slides and it takes over an hour. She asks if there are any questions. A hand rises. “Should we really be using Helvetica font for this report?” says Jane from Finance. More hands rise. You never knew so many people had such strong opinions on fonts.

You don’t understand what is happening. You don’t understand the direction the meeting is taking. You don’t even understand why all these people are here - giving an opinion. Even Maria the Cleaner is here. She doesn’t even use a PC but thinks the report will be better in Arial.

Time passes. 2 camps have formed: the pro-Helvetica & the pro-Arial. Voices are raised. Jane from Finance is crying. She says she is PASSIONATE about Helvetica and that this is REALLY important to her. You look at the report. It’s all numbers in Excel. It won’t even use a font.