WFH? WTF!

About twenty years ago roadworks at a roundabout in my hometown forced traffic to drive anti-clockwise around it for a few days. Everything was clearly signed and managed so although it felt a bit weird, actually it was all very straightforward. Now, maybe I’ve got some mental health issues but I swear every time I use that roundabout, to this very day, I have to think twice about which way round I should go. My point is that seemingly insignificant disruptions in our daily routines can have a long, long lasting effect.

Is it any wonder then, that having forced people to stay in their homes, on and off for two years whilst paying them from the public purse for the occasional Zoom call, has created a culture of malaise. The western world has surely succumbed to a brain virus that whispers ‘why bother?’ at the very prospect of commuting back to the office. 

Normally experiments are conducted with a handful of guinea pigs, the results then extrapolated across the entire population. The WFH experiment, by contrast, was conducted the other way around by locking down the entire population of planet Earth and then waiting to see the effects. Well, the results are in and few could argue there’s been a rush to peak productivity. On the contrary, productivity has slumped since we were all taught how little our personal contribution makes to the economy, or even our own personal wealth for that matter, and is crawling along on its knees at levels much lower than pre 2008. Clearly, a kind of entitled malaise has seeped its way through our veins and up into our brains: an opiate that has turned us into rudderless drones for whom work is little more than an irritant that interferes with our busy lives on social media.

At a conference recently I listened to a high profile architect explain how personality and DNA tests could help sculpt the working environment of the future by adapting the room temperature, the colour of the walls, the lighting and the type of office plants for each employee’s individual requirements. My response was a tiny puke at the back of my throat. The thought that this level of corporate pampering and pandering is the future of work can only be a red flag for managed decline. Of course the working environment should be comfortable, but when mollycoddling culture gets to the point we have to bring in aspidistras for the new intern perhaps the pendulum has swung a little too far.

More to the point, have you noticed how the super-nice guy who makes a beeline for you on your first day always turns out to be the Judas? Interior design is just the same. Virtue signalling brands with bouncy castles in reception are often the most toxic places to work. (Ask anyone who works at Google). Colourful, cuddly receptions are sure to be hiding something deeply sinister, I reckon.

Take a poll of a thousand WFHers and I’m sure they’ll confirm that they’re even more productive than when they were made to turn up. But how many of us truly believe that the cogs are whirring away super-efficiently at the DVLA, the passport office or our local council now that they’re balancing work with Netflix?

Here’s an experiment that won’t happen: Take two creative agencies, Red and Green, then set them the same brief. Red agency staff are allowed to WFH as much as their little hearts desire. Green agency members, on the other hand, must turn up to the office on time every day, with team meetings, creative brainstorms, team lunches and evenings in the pub with all the argument, laughter, piss-taking and drama-queening you’d expect from a creative agency. Which agency will come up with the most inspiring solution?

We’ll never know, but my money is on the company that gets along socially, can have a laugh together and, more crucially, compete with each other for the most inspiring ideas. The adrenalin of competition drains away when you’re not in the same room. My experience in the agency world convinces me that I’m right of course, but hey, you guys go have your polite little ‘any other business?’ Zoom call and let’s see what you’ve come up with.

As a kind of corporate nomad I get to witness a fair few companies in office mode and it seems to me that contemporary culture has eroded many of the fundamental principles that once underpinned the modern workplace. Teamwork shouldn’t be all smiles, hugs and compliments. Productive teamwork demands a certain level of ribbing, sarcasm and healthy derision in order that everyone ups their game. People seem scared to speak up today. A polite round table with everyone on tenterhooks waiting to be offended is an NUT meeting not a brainstorm. The rough and tumble of office politics is absolutely central to its creativity. 

I had thought that clipped, overly cautious speech, laden with jargonese and void of any actual meaning had died along with bowler hatted civil servants back in the fifties. I fear I’m witnessing its rebirth only in modern garb. Tentative, tight lipped, vanilla soliloquies that dip into the buzzword lexicon like a chimp with a bag of candy are the order of the day: ‘inclusivity, diversity and sustainability’ literally litter every brainstorm I’ve been unlucky enough to be a part of recently, so help me god.

Those that constantly ask themselves if they’re happy at work are the same people who constantly ask themselves whether they’re happy in life. But the pursuit of perpetual happiness is for stupid people. Happiness is the fleeting dopamine tingle you feel when you receive unexpected good news, or when you get better exam grades than your best friend. If you have conventional body chemistry the feeling will subside as quickly as it arose. People who feel a constant sense of elation are called drug addicts. In reality, what most people are seeking is fulfilment and that’s the polar opposite of fleeting. Fulfilment is a slow process of fermentation which may take decades and is probably impossible for the Insta-gratification generation.

Since we abandoned the office, designers and architects have been tasked to come up with, what seem to me, desperate new ‘concepts’ to attract us back for more than a day a week. But hey, I’ve got an idea. How about just telling us? At my first job if I rolled up at three minutes past nine the boss would shout ‘thanks for coming in’ from his glass office. Today, of course, I could sue him for bullying and harassment due to the fact my tardiness is a symptom of acute TBS (time blindness syndrome) and ADHD. Such is progress.

Look, isn’t it obvious? Ships need engines, rudders and captains. Ships aren’t easy to control when powered, steered or captained remotely. Why do we even have to argue this?

Anyway, you don’t need a futurist to tell you that as AI takes over the mundane, the menial and a fair bit of the creative output, workspaces will morph into social hubs built for community, collaboration and competition. This way we’ll get FOMO if we’re not on board the ship.

Join me on X  @retailfuturist  for cherry picked proof that we’ve all lost the plot.

  Howard Saunders   Apr 26, 2024   culture, Future, technology, Uncategorized   0 Comment   Read More

PUPPY LOVE

Most trends born in California become diluted by the time they arrive on our damp and cynical shores: yoga, veganism, vegetable smoothies, poke, Botox and fillers, tooth whitening therapy, therapy, the whole athleisure-wear thing, boho-chic, hyper-gluteal augmentation, even the opioid crisis…all fade a little on their long journey across the Atlantic in order, perhaps, to acclimatise to life beneath our sullen skies. But there’s one trend that has surely been amplified en route from La La Land: canophilia, aka our obsession with dogs.

Unlike the Americans, we Brits have loved our pet dogs for over six millennia as dog culture really kicked off in 4000BC, just at the end of the stone age. So essentially, our relationship with our favourite pet rolled along perfectly happily for six thousand years…until something shifted post Covid. A cultural blip in the matrix perhaps, but today it’s impossible to go to a shop, a bar or a restaurant without a dog sniffing at your ankles.

Restaurants desperate for trade have caved. Perhaps in the name of inclusivity they hang ‘dog friendly’ signs in the window above a shiny bowl as if allowing dogs is the magic bullet they need to get back to profit. A couple of years ago I guess it looked kinda cute, but frankly it’s hard to walk down a local high street now without accidentally booting a tin bowl along the kerb. These are the places I vow never to visit, and I’m sure I can’t be alone.

Q. How does your dog smell? A. Terrible.

The age old joke wasn’t wrong. Owners who exclaim ‘My dog does not smell!’ have been inoculated with doggy stench daily over many years having never left Rover’s side. They even allow him to sleep on their bed for god’s sake. Polite customers, meanwhile, pretend it’s absolutely normal for a bear of a beast to be slumped beneath the next table even when the whiff of wet fur wafts across their creme brûlée. And if you feel an exploratory tongue douse the back of your hand at the bar you can be damn sure that it’s recently been intimate with a dog’s rear end, if not another’s then its own. Peculiarly, for a nation addicted to hand sanitiser we remain stumm. Non dog owners are mute onlookers as they watch their favourite places become, literally, dogged by mollycoddled mutts.

Cultures twist and turn but ultimately they settle by consensus. That’s why we don’t see ‘no bicycles’ signs outside bars and pubs. Culture has deemed it inappropriate to lean your muddy mountain bike alongside your table, so there’s no need to ban it. But since the ‘blip’ we must now endure legions of snapping, snarling, sneezing, yapping, gnashing, drooling, farting hounds in every establishment. And bikes don’t do any of that. Meanwhile, in crazy California where all this began, dogs are banned from restaurants and even stores that sell packaged food.

Hyper-anthropomorphism is hard to say, but nonetheless very real. Today’s dog lovers talk to their pets in cartoon baby voices, celebrate their birthdays (the day they arrived) buy them Puppucinos from Starbucks, doggy ice creams at the seaside, create Instagram pages for them, tie bibs around their necks at mealtimes and push them in doggy strollers when the poor darlings can’t keep up with the pace around Waitrose. They take up seats in restaurants, bars, buses and trains as if we must all accept that the ironically named ‘Charlie’ with the flappy tongue is simply one of us. It’s gone too far.

Clearly these beloved animals are the children we never had. It’s a dog’s job to be the child that never grows up and tells you to f*** off, basically. But they’re also living, breathing status symbols. In the countryside it’s not unusual for a family to rock up at the pub, fully Huntered and Barboured, accompanied by a brace of pony sized brutes as if to flaunt the fact that they can afford to buy steak every day of the week. They may as well drive their Range Rover into the bar. It would be less of a nuisance.

Back in the pre-gastro days it was heartwarming to see a local farmer nestled by the fire, his loyal Collie alert to any unusual comings or goings. But recently dog culture has morphed into an obsessive cult; a perverse display of narcissism that says ‘sod you, these are my true friends’. On a serious note, I believe it plays perfectly into the current phase of self loathing mankind is going through. We may love our kith and kin, but we despise humanity for everything that’s gone wrong on planet Earth. After all, no dog ever started a war.

We all know that teenage stabbings have become so commonplace the press is no longer interested. But leave a pooch in a car without the window ajar for more than fifteen minutes and you’ll be on the front of the Daily Mail beneath the word ‘MONSTER’ the next morning. Seriously, our priorities are way out of kilter.

I may not be a dog lover, but I’m no hater. I can more than appreciate the majesty of an Irish Setter bounding along a deserted beach in pursuit of a far flung stick of driftwood. I can even see it in slow motion as it shakes itself dry, water droplets glistening in the late afternoon sunshine. I simply ask that you don’t bring it sweating and panting into the pub to do that. That’s my point. Dog lovers, please spare a thought for those of us who don’t love your dog, but can definitely smell it. And restaurateurs, please be brave enough to say that your dog days are over.

Bone appetit!

Join me on X  @retailfuturist  for cherry picked proof that we’re all going crazy.

ps. Big thanks to Bing/Dall-E for all the imagery

  Howard Saunders   Feb 14, 2024   culture, Food, gourmet, pizza, Retail, Uncategorized   0 Comment   Read More

ALIGHT HERE FOR TOPSY-TURVIA

Looking back, it’s pretty clear that the planet flipped on its axis in January 2020. While we were distracted by videos of pedestrians falling like felled trees onto the pavements of Beijing and Bergamo our little blue planet swivelled upside down overnight, and slowly but surely the consequences are coming to light. We have already learnt that our great leaders who made up the draconian lockdown rules were busily engaged in a non-stop cheese and wine marathon while we were forced to attend Zoom funerals. Fully masked, of course. We will never forget.

Whether it’s education, the police, the health service, comedy, the news, sex, history…everything we understood as the very foundational pillars of twenty first century life have turned one-eighty. Welcome to Topsy-Turvia.

Funny that.

Only three short years ago, before the Big Flip, here in the smug West we celebrated free speech as the bedrock of liberal democracy. It was distant dictatorships who were the humourless tyrants hell bent on imprisoning those that didn’t follow the government line. It couldn’t happen here, we thought. But in Topsy-Turvia if you once uttered anything that might be deemed offensive today, by anyone, is now hate speech. This, obviously, marked the end of one of Britain’s greatest exports: comedy. Our overworked police force, sorry…service, barely has time to practice the Macarena now that this new law consumes more than 17% of its time (according to CMU statistics*). By contrast, in the new world, wielding a machete on the Northern Line is an understandable protest against systemic oppression, to be treated with a three week course in kindness and sympathy.

Boys will be Girls. Girls will be Boys.

In many ways Topsy-Turvia is a freer and easier place to live than the pre 2020 version. For instance, we can now switch genders on a whim without the need for hormone blockers or messy genital surgery. This is a huge leap forward for those of us who wake up feeling female but slowly descend into a grumpy middle aged male after a couple pints of Stella.

Underage Sex.

Our children have perhaps had to endure the biggest shift. Understandably, sex education and biology take up a far larger slice of the curriculum since the discovery of so many new genders. By any standard that’s an awful lot to learn, especially as our beloved offspring missed two years worth of lessons following the Big Flip. In TT-land it’s critical that our children learn about alternative sexual practices long before they hear about the conventional ones. And just imagine having to memorise one hundred different genders while spongey concrete chunks rain down around you. It must be beyond stressful.

Just Walk Out.

Shoplifting, once a rite of passage for a spotty adolescent has been hijacked and legitimised exclusively for gangs of the feral and the fatherless. This has deprived your average, healthy, teenage kleptomaniac of one of their last remaining urban thrills. No wonder a growing percentage of our poor little darlings wish to switch teams.

Anti-Racism becomes Racism.

Many of the issues we thought we’d put to bed pre 2020 have been disinterred for our new age. MLK’s dream of “not being judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” has been completely flipped too. Today, judging people by the colour of their skin is wholeheartedly encouraged in the name of Critical Race Theory, so get with it Daddy-O.

Hot versus Cold.

In Topsy-Turvia you must learn to understand things within a broader context. Old people may die in their droves because they can’t afford to heat their homes, but in twenty five years time our grandchildren will surely thank us for their over-sized radiators and the 200 metre sink hole in the back garden because they’ll have helped dodge global boiling. Currently ten times as many people die from the cold than from the heat, but that avoids the inevitable truth that very soon our elderly will literally be frying to death in their bedsits.

Lies are Truth. 

Even the BBC, previously the bow-tied bastion of British decency has embraced this upside down philosophy like a dodgy uncle freshly released from prison. Whether it’s the pandemic, vaccine efficacy, our overrun hospitals, excess deaths, the war in Ukraine or our pathetic British summers, the BBC has become so practiced at skewing facts in order to scare the bejesus out of us we can barely believe anything it says any more. Even Eastenders has confessed to letting the government’s nudge unit edit their scripts. Is nothing sacred?

The Big Cheese

The Big Flip, remember, coincided with a brand new leader of the free world. At first sight he seemed an odd choice being an elderly, straight white male. But as we learnt to enjoy our avuncular octogenarian’s cognitive mishaps we can see now how he’s the perfect Commander-in-Chief for a crazy new world logic.

WFH, WTF!

Pre 2020, cities used to be the engine rooms of the economy where gleaming glass skyscrapers, purpose built for pumping out a thousand emails a minute, looked down upon the rest of us as we waltzed along swinging our bags for life. But a clever plan, cooked up by the Mayor of London with help from the rail unions, has hopefully put a stop to this sort of disgusting privilege and corporate elitism. Topsy-Turvia’s glass towers now stand largely desolate, and emanate, not arrogance or hubris, but a sense of sadness across our city. It’s as if our capital knows that its fun-loving, swinging days are but a tiny blemish on the rearview mirror.  

London doesn’t just tax, fine and surveil us harder and smarter than ever before, it also takes every opportunity to tell us off. I can remember when seats would be given up voluntarily and doors held open with a tip of a hat for ovary owners and chest feeders of all ages. Here in TT-land by contrast, non-menstruators are constantly warned to ‘be kind’ with ‘Maaaate!’ warnings plastered across the city at every major intersection.

Sustainabullshit.

This new world never ceases to amaze me with its dazzlingly fresh logic. In retail, for example (I always get round to it eventually) we must accept that demolishing M&S’s iconic Marble Arch flagship: smashing apart all that concrete and asbestos, all that steel and stone, burying it in landfill and then rebuilding it, brick by brick, with brand new steel and bigger, shinier glass is ‘sustainable’. No need get all carbon-anxious over the excavators, the diggers, the towering cranes, the builder’s lorries and vans, the millions of diesel fuelled to-ing and fro-ing over three or four years, the hundreds of thousands of consultant journeys, the copper wiring, the lighting, the escalators, the new computers…I am assured that all this disruption is completely offset because rainwater flushes the bogs. Incredible, isn’t it? I’m sure some highly educated architect will explain the maths to me one day.

Heaven or Hell?

Enough of this wry, cartoon banter. Topsy-Turvia is hell incarnate. Indeed, some of our biggest and most influential celebrities, notably Madonna, Rihanna and Sam Smith make a deliberate show of worshipping wickedness and all round satanic behaviour at every opportunity. When our superstars start dressing head to toe in lipstick red rubber complete with horns, scorpion tails and tridents in order to entertain our children with mimes of group fornication and golden showers you know something has gone awry. But don’t blame them. Our most privileged idols and cultural icons cannot help but accentuate and celebrate their moral distance from you and your mainstream mundanity.

Make no mistake, Topsy-Turvia has been a resounding success. In less than three years it has overturned logic and reason in order to flatten pretty much everything we thought we’d built over the last century. Now that the ground has been cleared there’s only one small problem. It has absolutely no idea where to go next. 

Topsy-Turvia, you see, has zero vision.

*CMU Completely Made Up Statistics Inc.

Join me on X  @retailfuturist  for cherry picked proof that we’re all going crazy

  Howard Saunders   Sep 21, 2023   culture, Future, Retail, sustainability, Uncategorized, woke   1 Comment   Read More