The catch 22 in the office.

Here’s a catch 22.

We’re told by those anti tobacco Nazis that our habit is costing the public purse billions year in treating smoking related illness.

They say this, then change hats and crack their Malthusian shit about how the earth can’t sustain so many people living so long and blah fucking blah. See the logic of ten year shorter life expectancies?

I do. Come inside, the water’s warm.

Perhaps this isn’t a real catch 22. A real catch 22 is a mind wrecking logic bind with no apparent solution. My solution to the tobacco problem is to blow smoke at those sandal wearers.

A real catch 22 is the kind of problem that needs solving, but anything you do will just fuck it up even worse, or fuck something else up just as bad. Sooner or later you’re sitting on your hands, knowing that a poorly timed twitch in any direction could send the whole nasty thing to an uncharted area of destroyed.

You think you can deal with this, but not in any way that wouldn’t give you a nightmare. You can choose which consequences you’d prefer today, eg “Hmm, I think today I’m in the mood for...unmitigated disaster with the Finance people.”

This is typical for anybody who works in an organisation where the word “Stakeholder” is mentioned at all. Everybody is a stakeholder. The Director is a stakeholder. The fellow who comes around, empties the bins and presumably doesn’t steal loose things from unattended desks is a stakeholder. Any given day can be ruined by any number of players in any number of ways.

A stakeholder can be anybody you want, but most of the time it’s everybody you don’t want. It is customary for two of them to want things that are mutually exclusive, but that doesn’t matter because the boss has made a rule prohibiting both.

There is a way out of this, but normally it involves drinking and not giving a shit. You need a healthy level of cynicism. The obstructive rule is only there so that a certain practice is seen to be controlled, or seen to be taken seriously. All you need to play this game is be seen to obey the rule.

Likewise, you don’t have to please everybody. Find out who the kingmakers are and give them
what they really want. Use the backing of your new friends to threaten common enemies. Above all, have fun with it.

If all that doesn’t work, simply turn your back, wave and shut the door while conspicuously pulling your hip flask from your suit jacket. Any problem that can't be solved must at least be left in an awe inspiring mess for the next guy.