Everyone started working from home without so much as receiving a phonebook-sized manual from employers, detailing the infinite dos and don’ts (with a few cautionary no-he-didn’ts sprinkled in). After spending years in an office, how are you supposed to know that the casual slurping of scalding shark stew leaves a bad taste for colleagues unaccustomed to the sounds of lip whimpering with every last boiling bite? The time to examine your coin collection is off stage. It’s not like anyone can appreciate the luster of a Standing Liberty Quarter designed by the great sculptor and Queens resident, Hermon A. MacNeil, under poor lighting and pixilation. So why is it a shock that the transition from office to home office hasn’t resembled a shimmering silver dollar? In other words, the whole thing hasn’t been smooth.
We’re still finding our groove at the moment. You don’t expect a brand-new buccaneer, fresh off a menial job in a windowless factory, to find their sea legs right away. It takes swabbing the deck to gain essential experience – that of uncontrollable retching after a steady diet of spoiled salt-pork and scurvy-preventing citrus. Maybe you possessed superb balance on land, installing a pommel horse on your property for routine exercise. Some good that’ll do you now. Twirling and hurling your body about, envisioning how you’d slide across the parquet floors inside European palaces, surrounded by well-coiffed bon vivants, golf clapping at your every pivot. But many great dancers have been humbled by the cruelty of the sea. You can spend your whole life dancing on stages and in studios only to humiliate yourself with a single slip on a ship’s gangplank. It’s as if you’ve never really danced before. Because in a way, you haven’t. Not like this.
Some people aren’t born to dance. Let’s call the preternatural klutz in question, a truly exceptional schlemiel, and a literal schmuck, Joffrey Toobad. His name isn’t important, since that’s not really the story. But when the light turned on, he flopped like a bad Broadway show. With no plot, terrible acting and one memorable second act cameo that had everyone in the audience rolling their eyes and heading for the exits. To be frank, not everyone is equipped to withstand a public beating. Who among us would like to feel the massive flogging and judgmental grip from entire Fourth Estate?
Some want to show colleagues their true colors, hoping against hope that no one holds it against them. This is especially a problem for paid talking heads - those popular pundits swollen with pride and completely detached from the healthy body politic. They follow polls, rely on measuring sticks, and remain fearful of becoming a lightning rod for hate. Critics chafe at second chances, but all you need is a simple stroke of luck and maybe a little hard work to reenter the fold. Plus, no one's getting off scot-free here. Once a pillar of the community, always a pillar of the community. At least until someone razes to the occasion. To paraphrase Mike Corleon, "it's strictly business, not pleasure."
This is all a way of saying that some people should never be on camera. Why give your well-adjusted colleagues the shaft? They aren’t exactly there for a meet and greet. The reason to wear pants at all times is obvious – because it’s become a tired cliché not to. A writer should know better than to choose such a hacky send off. There are other, far more original ways to end your career.
Zoom out and zip up.
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