Chris's Corner: The Workplace

Howdy folks, I haven't written here before, so I'll just present a brief little introduction before I launch my topic of "discussion" for today. My name is Chris, and I'll be acting as a guest columnist of sorts because heck, I've got my fair share of opinions on the content and impact of popular culture. I've been given a bit more freedom from the strictures of pre-defined topics, which means I'll probably be a little more aloof than my ambitious cohorts. So sit down, cross your legs, and join me in Chris's Corner.

Today I awoke from my third consecutive night of dreams involving working at Kmart to the idea for this post: the workplace mystique. There's something about work that has a certain intrigue, despite the general negative outlook the vast majority of people have towards jobs. Everyone has to work at some time or another; it's one of those universal bonds of humanity. As a result, it comes up rather frequently in popular culture.

Just stop and think for a second about the fictional portrayal of "work." I put the term in quotes because we all use that extremely generic language to describe a massive range of different things, from answering telephone calls to checking whether numbers add up properly. When I say "work," I simply mean that ambiguous place where people go almost every day. Most of the time, work goes more or less unnoticed in fiction. Typically I don't think, for instance, while watching an episode of House, that all these people are at work, doing their jobs. No, the focus is on whatever conflict the episode contains (aside: I don't watch much of House myself, but it struck me as a good example). I don't worry during Heroes about whether or not Matt Parkman is employed as a police officer anymore, either. And the same principle applies to school; to pick a particularly powerful example (in my opinion), for all of the thousands of pages making up the Harry Potter series, consider just how little we know about the class content and the homework at Hogwarts. It barely gets a mention, and yet it is an enormous plot device. The examples are numerous; I could go on for several more paragraphs.

I think we've all felt this way at one point or another

Of course, there are those instances in which special attention is paid to the workplace. Randall Graves may be the only one of us who stops to think about the individual contractors and construction workers aboard the Death Star, but sometimes the workplace is so prominent that we can't avoid thinking about it. How often is that presentation humorous? Almost always; I can think of one example where it more or less is not intended to be funny, but I'll get to that.

In movies like Clerks (and its sequel, Clerks II), and Office Space, and TV shows like The Office, we get a special treatment to some of the more specific aspects of working environments. Even in these, though, the nagging reality is present: apparently no one actually knows what goes on at work. At first, you might say to yourself, "That's just because if all they showed was work being done, it would be mind-numbingly boring." I agree wholeheartedly, but having now worked in both an office setting and a retail setting (pretty close to the characters in those pieces of fiction), I have realized another truth. I can describe to you just what my job requirements are, and I can tell amusing stories from work, but when I try to remember what I actually did at work, I come up completely blank. Maybe this is just me, but I suspect otherwise.

The workplace mystique is just that: for all the hours and hours I've put into working (and I not nearly as many as some people my age), I can boil most of it down to enough content to fit into a movie or several episodes of a television series. I have to give credit to the designers of The Sims. I don't know whether they realized it or not, but they captured the workplace mystique just beautifully. While jobs and career advancement are major focal elements of the games in the series, the actual work day flits by in artificially sped-up time, and we never get to see what goes on there at all. We only get snatches from the way the characters dress from work and the occasional bonus choices that crop up now and then.

For being so important to our lives, and for playing a large role in characterization, setting, and plot advancement in fiction, we really don't know a whole lot about the workplace. The next time you sit down to read a book, watch a movie or TV show, or even play The Sims, try to look at it with a critical eye in this regard, and I think you'll see just what I mean. And by the way, I recommend every title that I've mentioned above. If you haven't delved into any one of them, certainly do so; it's well worth your time.

-Chris