The Edge: Addendum
On the dark and deadly arts of office birthday party planning.
After my previous post, my Very Patient Wife observed that I was swimming into some deep water and might be losing sight of the shore.
Fair point.
That essay was another case of autodidactic mania: I have a thing that I need to explain to myself—a load-bearing concept I need to work out, so I can (hopefully) stop chewing on it and take a walk in the sunshine—and can’t do all the math in my head. I realize it won’t be useful or interesting (or even intelligible) for most readers; still, I need to write it out no matter what, so might as well run it up the flagpole in case somebody else finds it intriguing. Or entertaining, at the very least.
Nevertheless, I recognized I was getting close to the third rail of Conspiracy Theory at a time when there’s already plenty of that flying around. Conspiracy thinking has recently become politically coded in a way that seems strange to me, which I described briefly in my pre-election post. (Although maybe that’s shifting again, now that Democratic partisans are suddenly indulging in their own conspiracy theories with gay abandon.)
I tried to avoid making any specific truth claims about particular conspiracies. Instead, I wanted to paint a broader picture of an epistemic framework: a theory about how knowledge and beliefs are constructed.
The stereotypical conspiracy theorist, in my mind, is somebody who compulsively makes the jump from positive claims—“these are observable facts about how the world works”—to normative claims about what we need to do about it. People who end up with a terminal case of Conspiracy Brain, who go all the way over the Edge, are those who get obsessed with their pet theory and feel compelled to spread the gospel at every opportunity. It’s not hard to find people in the weirder corners of the Internet who believe that our world leaders are reptilians in human suits, or that the Illuminati is hiding coded messages on the cover of Vogue; we know who those people are, because they can’t stop trying to wrestle the rest of us into putting on the sunglasses.
As previously suggested, I can sympathize with that compulsion. It can be very destabilizing when you pull on one of these threads and the whole sweater starts to unravel. Makes it very difficult to go back to enjoying Netflix—or, for that matter, to sincerely engage with other people’s normative claims about what’s important and what needs to be done.
Just as a matter of social necessity, there’s only so much polite nodding you can do before your friends and family start to wonder why your eye is twitching so much. It gets to a point where you need to let them know where you’re at, just to ever-so-gently suggest that maybe, maybe there are other things to worry about. And suddenly Thanksgiving is ruined, everybody’s mad because you’ve been ranting about the Black Eagle Trust for twenty minutes, really harshing the vibe, and goddamn would it be nice to just drink a beer and watch some football like a normal person.
Those who haven’t been to the Edge themselves find it hard to entertain these suggestions, even as hypotheticals. Partly it’s emotional resistance: consciously or unconsciously, they recognize that people who go in that direction tend to come back socially damaged. Fair enough. As I wrote before: I don’t think anybody should be robbed of their optimism. Not everybody needs to put on the sunglasses. It’s not like we’re all going to get together and storm the Capitol and—well. Never mind.1
Part of this resistance is an appeal to authority. People want to believe their leaders (most of them, anyway) are good and honest. There’s no way to avoid a logical fallacy by applying this broadly: “The people in charge are morally incapable of conspiracies, because otherwise they wouldn’t be in charge.” This claim has to be continually tested on a case-by-case basis, which is why democracy requires unrestrained and oppositional investigative journalism. Otherwise, we end up with exactly the kind of shameless partisan hypocrisy we’re seeing now in the U.S.
But the niggling, frustrating, hard-to-let-go problem, as a social creature, is when people don’t recognize how their own assumptions about the world been shaped in ways they haven’t examined.
Don’t let me rob you of your optimism. Crack a cold one and put the game on, with my blessing. But try to keep in mind that you, too, have an epistemic framework—a theory about what kinds of things are possible to know—and it might be less comprehensive than it could be.
The thing that really sets me off is this little bit of anti-conspiracy folk wisdom: people are bad at keeping secrets, and therefore any secret of significant magnitude would eventually be exposed. If we haven’t already found out about it, there’s no truth to it. Anybody who believes in a cover-up is obviously crazy.
This is usually illustrated with some pithy little analogy about secrets in the workplace. If a modest corporate office can’t suppress rumors about upcoming layoffs, or a romantic affair between coworkers, or even the “surprise” birthday party for Bob in Accounting—how could something as insidious as a planned assassination stay hidden?
It’s absurd.
For starters, the analogy rests on the same logic that says a car is just a different kind of horse. It’s self-defeating from the jump. Taking this logic seriously—that the social and institutional mechanisms of the Dunder-Mifflin Paper Company are even distantly analogous to an international military-intelligence bureaucracy—demonstrates the exact kind of ignorance that would make a conspiracy possible. It’s a complete and surprisingly confident failure of imagination.
So let’s see if we can build out the analogy a bit.
Yes, an international criminal conspiracy is exactly the same as planning a surprise party in a corporate office, if we assume the following:
Imagine that the lovable characters pictured above are planning a surprise party for one of the guys down in the warehouse.
Already, we’re establishing differences in class and administrative capacity. The people doing the planning don’t usually interact with the target birthday boy, or anyone in his social circle. The warehouse gets information from the upstairs office on a need-to-know basis. If anybody from the warehouse hears a rumor about a surprise party and tries to confirm it, the planners can simply pull rank and say it’s not true—and more importantly, what are you doing wandering around up here, asking annoying questions? This is where the grown-ups work. We’re all very busy. Get back down in your hobbit hole with the rest of the peons, Daryl, or it’s your ass.
How many people are concerned enough about the surprise party to risk losing their livelihoods? Probably not many. Not their business. Not worth wasting a bunch of time riding the elevator up and down, only to get fired. Especially if it turns out to be nothing. The people in charge know what’s best, right?
But what’s to stop somebody inside the office from blowing the whistle?
Michael’s the mastermind behind the party planning. He’s a deep old file who’s been around longer than anybody else. His co-workers understand that, somehow, as far as the real power-brokers in Corporate are concerned, Michael walks on water. They’ve all heard legends about things he’s done that would get a mere mortal fired, if not jailed. Colossal fuck-ups. Drunkenness. Possible violence. Real heavy shit.
And yet there he sits, sipping his coffee. Watching. Listening.
Not only is he still in his office, unfired—he seems to have access to huge piles of cash. Nobody knows where it comes from. His Christmas bonuses are mind-boggling. Everybody remembers a time when an insurmountable obstacle popped up, only for Michael to whip out the money cannon and blow it away. He doesn’t seem concerned about getting audited. Never sweats about justifying his expenses to anybody. Is it his own private fortune? Or is there some slush fund up in the head office with Michael’s name on it? Nobody can say for sure.
What exactly is Michael plugged into, up there in the Asgardian heights of the C-Suites?
Michael is an enigma. And yet the office workers know two things:
First, if they want to climb the ranks—and, god, do they ever, to feel that raw power crackling out of their fists, the kind Michael seems to have—they need to keep things in the office running smoothly. Michael can’t live forever. It could be them sitting in the big chair someday. All roads lead to Rome; all those roads start on the other side of the venetian blinds he’s always peering out of. Best to assume that whatever Michael wants is what Corporate wants.
Second, the office workers know that Michael knows things. About them.
And Michael knows that they know he knows, you know?
Michael has been in the game a long time. The twilight world of paper supply is a dangerous place. Moral purity is for coddled civilians. He’s seen things you people wouldn’t believe. He’s done things he’s not proud of. He’s had to survive—but more than that, he’s sacrificed, so that a lesser man (or woman, or differently-gendered individual, Michael’s very progressive) doesn’t have to face the kind of tough calls he’s had to make. If Michael wasn’t guaranteeing prompt delivery of good-quality paper at a reasonable price—by God, the Chinese would have taken over the whole industry by now. Or the Russians. And then where would we be? America’s printers would be jammed with that flimsy 65gsm stuff, and paying twice the price for it. Whether you know it or not, deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want Michael in that office. You need Michael in that office.
Michael knows it’s a dirty, savage game, and ensuring his people’s survival requires constant vigilance. Vigilance, and discipline. One weak bolt could sink the whole ship. If the team in his office wasn’t ready to get ink on their shirts, to put their very souls in his care—every goddamn one of them—they should have stuck to selling Christmas cards at the fucking Hallmark Store. This is paper supply. They’re running with the real killers now. They don’t know how deep these shadows can be.
So Michael’s very diligent about background checks, and keeping tabs on his people. For their own safety. Has he bugged the phones in the office? Maybe. Does he collect rumors, tidbits, trivia, little nuggets of information he overhears? He might.
Jim’s drug habit. Oscar and Pam. Creed’s “volunteer work” in Thailand. Those scandalous photos of Stanley. The very special nightclub downtown that Andy visits. That time Dwight called him from a hotel room, high as God’s balls, covered in someone else’s blood, begging for help.
Does Michael keep these memos written up in some very thick manila folders, in a very secure place, with emergency back-ups in a separate location, and a deadman switch to release them if an accident should happen? Possibly. The point is, he knows the weaknesses of everyone on his team—even the ones they won’t admit to themselves—so their enemies can’t exploit them. For their own safety.
The office workers know that Michael knows things, but they don’t know exactly how much. And it never needs to be spoken out loud: if they don’t all hang together, they’ll hang separately.
So there’s Michael, wanting to plan this surprise party for the guy in the warehouse. And everybody’s on edge, because they all remember what happened the last time they planned a surprise party.
Poor Brian.
Everybody knew the paper game was too much for him. He was flaming out. Should have been reassigned. He had that breakdown in the break room, crying and yelling about how he couldn’t take the secrecy anymore, the lies and the secrecy, waking up in a cold sweat, lying in bed at night, thinking about all those tons of paper dropped on all those countries around the world.
(Who knows what Dwight was whispering in his ear before that, the snake.)
In the end, right before Brian was put on leave, he might have said something about never wanting to plan another surprise party. They couldn’t make him. And if they tried, he was going to ruin the surprise. He’d go down to the warehouse and tell everybody about all the birthday parties.
He was obviously in a bad place. Said some things he might not have meant. Maybe, in a few more days, he would have settled down. But the paper business isn’t for everybody. You need to have ice in your veins. Sometimes you just don’t have what it takes, and by the time you find out, it’s already too late.
It was a terrible tragedy. Brian cracked under the strain. He went on leave, for his health, and took a bunch of LSD, and jumped out the window of his hotel room on the thirteenth floor. Spilled his chili.
Since then, there have been whispers. Late at night, in the dark bars of Scranton, when they’re sure Michael isn’t listening (is he?) the office workers furtively compare notes. Somebody said Brian wasn’t alone in that hotel room. It was strange, how the police reports said he was still dressed and wearing his shoes at 2am, when he fell, or jumped, or whatever. Strange, the look on Michael’s face, when he made the announcement: “We don’t want this to happen to anyone else.”
The pressure’s on for this surprise party. Michael seems to want it done—but nobody knows for sure if this is coming from Corporate.
Not even Michael.
Official company policy is that birthday celebrations of any kind are prohibited. Michael has never received a direct order from the C-Suite to plan a surprise party. However—hasn’t he detected some meaningful glances from the honchos when the subject of the warehouse guy’s birthday has come up? Hasn’t he been led to believe that this particular birthday might be of some significance to his paymasters? Hasn’t it been something like, “Will no one throw a birthday party for this turbulent priest,” as Henry the II said of Thomas Becket?
Or has he been in the shit too long? Are his instincts failing him? Is this all just a delusion, that the greater good will be served by definitively and aggressively celebrating the anniversary of this man’s birth, by any means necessary? Have the pills finally eaten through his brain? Is that the chop of helicopter rotors he hears—or just the blades of the office fan, slicing through the air?
And then there’s Dwight.
Michael knows Dwight is working some angle. Probably gunning for his job. But is he freelancing, or is he a mole sent straight from Corporate? Perilous, perilous. If Michael’s got the smoke signals wrong, he could be handing over his own head on a silver platter for Dwight to serve up, reporting him for misuse of company funds and plotting an unauthorized birthday party. On the other hand—if he was meant to take the hint, and fails to act, Dwight will be running to the big office with news that old Mike has lost his nerve. Maybe there’s a double cross afoot, and Dwight expects him to have some unfortunate mishap: a crisis of leadership at a crucial juncture, the surprise party hanging in the balance, Dwight stepping into the breach just in time. But Dwight must know the dirt that Michael has on him. A game of chicken, then. Knives at each other’s throats. Like being back in the jungle. No time to show weakness. All ahead full.
Once the party’s over, it can all get swept under the rug. Michael’s got the cash. And if that doesn’t work, it only takes one manila folder and a phone call in the right place, to make sure his people are properly motivated to do what needs doing. They’ll do it for Brian, their fallen comrade, the humble hero who died protecting the paper needs of small- to medium-sized offices across the country—nay, the world. It’s what Brian would have wanted. Think of Brian, and the example he set. Remember Brian. Remember the things he taught us. We could all be more like Brian, as long as we maintain a proper work-life balance, so we don’t end up like Brian. Tragic. But also inspiring.
Fortunately, the team in the office is just handling logistics. Michael’s hired some caterers from Cuba to run the event. The Scranton team just needs to make sure nobody spills the beans (don’t think about chili) ahead of time. The guys from Cuba are party animals—but if something goes wrong, who’s going to be surprised? The catering company is from out of town. No connection to Scranton. This office has no loyalty to them. If the party goes sideways, Michael and his team can disavow any knowledge of any birthday-related surprises that may or may not have been planned. Everybody knows those Cubans are a bunch of pirates. For all we know, they’re just running all over the country, throwing birthday parties for whoever they bump into. It could happen to anyone.
Nobody can directly link the office team to the party. It’s all speculation. Spurious rumors. The warehouse? We don’t have anything to do with them except shipping and delivery. We’re too busy doing real work to be planning parties, which are clearly against company policy. If you’re not employed in this office, you’ll have to take up any further questions with Corporate’s legal team—and believe me, they will not be happy about any suggestion of a scandal. This is an honest, American, hardworking, God-fearing supplier of high-quality stationery products, the very foundation of the global economy. Warehouse parties are the kind of thing they get up to at those tinpot paper companies in the Third World. Not here. How dare you.
The office workers just need to make sure this thing goes smoothly. Then everything will go back to normal. They can keep their jobs—keep cashing those fat Christmas checks. Michael has to retire someday, if he doesn’t die of a heart attack at his desk first. Before long, somebody else will be in charge. Maybe one of them. A fresh start.
Maybe there won’t be any more surprise parties.
Maybe everybody can go back to selling paper, cash out, and move to a country that doesn’t extradite to the United States. Or get a job in the consulting industry. All the news companies are looking for in-house experts to report on the paper business. The pay’s pretty good. Respectable work, helping people understand the world in the right way. Good for the paper industry, and good for America, which is pretty much the same thing. And no parties to plan.
As long as nobody ruins the surprise this time.
It’s a good analogy. People really are terrible at keeping secrets. I’m sure we’re finding out everything we’re supposed to know. The United States is a democracy, after all. Nothing to worry about here.
Anyway. I hear the Chiefs are doing well this year. That Patrick Mahomes has got a hell of a throw.
Crack a cold one for me, and enjoy the game.
Just to further underline this for my NSA caseworker: I AM NOT SAYING ANYBODY SHOULD DO ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING. EVERYTHING IS FINE.