As a CEO, I guess I’m supposed to be horrified by the inclination of some employees to rebel against my ways of doing things. This is the classic struggle, after all, between The Man (that’s me, suckers) and the grunts, the peeps, the hard-working stiffs who spend their days keepin’ it real.
Sit up straight! Tighten your tie! Where are my reports? You realize, of course, that we CEOs bark out all these orders just to make your lives more difficult. We don’t really need any of this done. The reports? Never read ‘em. The time sheets you filled out down to the painstaking detail? I use a dartboard to figure out the billings—so far, no one’s caught on.
I just make you do all that stuff because I can, and because you have to, and because I find the whole proposition freaking hilarious. You’ve always suspected that, of course, and since I’ve just confirmed it, I know you’ll be all the more determined to launch some sort of rebellion against me.
Now, I know I should care, but I don’t. What could be more American, after all, than a little rebellion? No one’s ever answered an important question or solved a deep mystery by following the rules. And anyone who’s ever dealt with me professionally knows I have little use for decorum and propriety myself.
So I get your game, and it’s cool. I don’t take it personally—and even if you do intend it personally, I still don’t care, because there’s no doubt in my mind that I’m way more awesome than you are.
But kids, if you’re going to rebel, rebel! Some of the rebellion I’ve seen has been so lame, it makes me wonder if you really have it in you. And that brings us to the martini shirt/flip-flops incident.
During a recent vacation, when I left my trusted long-time associate Lacey in charge of the company, a certain employee we’ll call “Kelly” saw her big opportunity to shove it in the face of The Man and take a stand for the overthrow of the republic. D.F. wasn’t around, after all, and that meant all the oppressive rules, all the quaint customs of yesteryear, all the unreasonable expectations of the Corporate Behemoth could be met with a big, wet raspberry.
So on the first day of my vacation, “Kelly” showed up for work clad in pink flip-flops, ankle-length, fairly tight jeans and a martini shirt.
Do you not know what a martini shirt is? I’ll explain. A martini shirt is a fairly tight t-shirt for females, with a relatively low neckline and a huge picture of a glass filled with a martini on it.
Now, when “Kelly” showed up at work wearing the outfit of rebellion, she was promptly sent home by Lacey to change. Forty-five minutes later, chastened by the striking down of her uprising, “Kelly” returned to work clad in proper professional attire.
Upon my return, I, The Man, was informed of this most serious of incidents, and as you can imagine, I was appalled. That’s because it’s hard to imagine a lamer rebellion.
Seriously, a martini shirt and flip-flops? This is how you rebel against my authority? I almost hate to deconstruct your little revolution, “Kelly,” since it’s never my intention to humiliate anyone. But then, it’s not hard to shoot fish in a barrel.
First, what’s the revolutionary message behind the martini shirt? “I like to go to the bar”? You rebel! You and about 50 million other twentysomething professionals handle life by self-medicating yourselves while listening to the kickin’ beat of Kelly Clarkson, and I’m supposed to be impressed?
And the flip-flops? Functional, if the rebellion of the proletariat-against-the-moneyed-interests happens to take place on a beach. The rest of you are going to be walking around with sand in your shoes while some derivatives trader pummels you in the head with his briefcase. “Kelly” will be ready. Otherwise, the flip-flops scream out rebellion to me like Donald Trump calls to mind the phrase “the natural look.”
There are ways to rebel that I can respect: Blow something up; break into my office and use the couch for something naughty; use the lobby for an impromptu tackle football game. These are all good. But a rebellion that amounts to little more than dressing for the bar while you’re still at work is about as impressive as most recent French military campaigns.
This concerns me because, as regular readers of this column will surely understand, I’m a rather ridiculous human being—and one of these days, someone is going to need to rise up and take me out for the good of all humanity. If this is the best the younger generation can come up with, I’m going to be hanging around, messing things up, for many decades to come.
Try again, rebels! Surely, you can do better than this.
