It was roughly ten years ago that a crack team of bureaucrats and behavioral therapists declared me constitutionally unfit for office duty. Owing to a handful of sins against community - neglecting
to lid my Beefaroni before reheating it, refusing to make small talk about the winter cold/spring pollen/summer
heat/autumn pleasantness - I was blacklisted from employment at any venue that would place me within farting distance of other human beings. While I haven't entirely fallen into freelance disrepair -
I equate pants, and the donning thereof, with dignity - it's been a lonely, if professionally satisfying and hyperproductive, last decade.
All that's to say: I have no idea what today's office
looks, acts or smells like. For all I know, the office atmosphere could be in the midst of a practical and political renaissance, one in which room temperature is forever fixed at 70 degrees and
workers refrain from interpreting Stu from personnel's shyness as iron-clad evidence of imminent layoffs. So please, view my comments on Jive's office-obliteration clip through that lens of blithe ignorance. I know not of what I speak. I'm an
innocent.
The folks in the video, however, are jaded. They work in a faceless capacity at Faceless Corp., a maker of products so frivolous and dispensable that identifying them would only
serve to render us comatose. So when their fax machines (??) start jamming and their filing cabinets start overflowing and their computers start blue-screen-of-death-ing, they lose their crap. In a
rampage that will surely attract the attention of John Q. Law, they trash the office benign-white-person-style, toppling cubicle walls and upending piles of paperwork.
Once they're done, they
hop on the elevator and lend their annihilatory flair to a contiguous floor. As the initial crew of destruction grows fivefold, the tone shifts, from frustration to anarchic, white-collar joy.
Motivational posters, some embossed with the images of adorable baby kittens who have hurt exactly no one, are not spared.
Thank heavens for the presence of the big boss man - who, after
viewing the carnage from his Venetian-blind-shielded corner office, heads into the fray. After his sort-of-imposing-if-you-fear-middle-aged-men-in-tailored-suits presence silences the office, he
seizes a sledgehammer and, after a dramatic pause, wreaks some havoc of his own. Finally, four of the original mutineers pull minimalist desks together in the middle of the room, where they work on
their minimalist laptops without having to endure the administrative and practical tyranny of pens and paper. A message appears on screen ("liberate the office the day you give them Jive"), and that's
that.
Despite its obvious turn - it telegraphs the dickens out of Mr. Imposing Boss' decision to partake in the destruction - I find the clip entertaining enough. Really, you can never go too
wrong with blowing stuff up. But I did have one question after watching it a third time: What or who is a Jive?
Is it some kind of laptop/paper shredder hybrid? Is it a genetically modified
superpencil that captures data as it writes and beams it up into the cloud? I have no idea, other than what the clip tells me: That it will allow - nay, encourage - me to set fire to my office. A
detail of this kind would appear to matter.
I can't lie: I'm hurt. It sure would've been keen for the company to let me in on the secret from the get-go, or at least treat me to a big reveal
at the end of the clip. While further research reveals that Jive is "the world's most advanced social business platform" and one packed with "all the latest tools for
collaboration and communication," I shouldn't have to figure this out on my own, or arrive at this conclusion via covert means.
So throw another one onto the pile of online videos that prize
entertainment over information. It's getting kinda high and unwieldy.