Techies Thought Outside The Box. Then The Boss Decided To Take The Box Away

Who, Me? Another Monday has arrived, bringing with it the chance for work-in-progress meetings at which managers will recite corporate clichés with astounding sincerity. Which is why The Register always opens the week with a new edition of Who, Me? It’s the column in which you share stories of trying to meet your KPIs and somehow escaping when you don’t.

This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Hamish” who sent a story recalling a time when his company hired a temporary workspace for a project.

“It was a fairly old-style office with a glassed off inner office,” he told Who, Me?

This column has worked in similar environments, where such offices were derisively described as an “aquarium.”

Hamish and his colleagues quite liked the aquarium.

“We enjoyed its sound-proof interior,” he wrote.

It also made him mischievous.

“Working in a glass box gave me an idea,” he told Who, Me? “I printed off two signs. One read: ‘Thinking inside the box.’ The other read: ‘Thinking outside the box’.”

Hamish found some Blu Tack and put each sign on the appropriate side of the aquarium.

The joke went down well, and the signs stayed up for ages until they became a part of the furniture and people stopped noticing them.

Until one day some middle managers saw the aquarium, decided it was too good to be occupied by the likes of Hamish, and claimed the room to use for themselves.

Hamish watched as the bosses moved in, saw his signs, then tore them down promptly and with prejudice.

“I think the manager never knew who put up the signs, or perhaps he thought it was a personal insult,” Hamish told Who, Me? “But I will always remember the old office every time I hear that saying.”

Have you had fun with corporate clichés and ended up in strife? Actualize your experience and reach out to “Who, Me?” by clicking here to send us an email. We’ll try to operationalize your ideation in a future instalment of Who, Me? ®

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