I Believe You Have My Stapler

yack0 writes "After three years of demand and countless calls, emails and letters, you can finally buy a Red Swingline Stapler. Hooray! As noted in this wall street journal article and confirmed by this page at the Swingline Stapler web site you can now pick up a Red Swingline stapler for merely twice the price of a plain black stapler. However, a colleague of mine says that the online order form is reading around $16 for his right now. Now all the cubicle dwelling prairie dogs can get one step closer to burning down the building." The red stapler has become some sort of cult icon at this point.

Comments

Liquid TV--the birth of Milton

[PDG]

Actually, Milton and the epic of the stapler didn't originate in 'Office Space' but rather Judge's cartoon short from MTV's Liquid Television progam.

The skit basically showed Lumbherg and Milton having their classic confrontation about the stapler, moving his office down to the basement, and what not.

Judge made 'Office Space' from this skit.

Re:Why Milton and Dilbert succeed

[Skyshadow]

Amen.

I was one of three westerners in a Chinese office (as in, moved-from-Beijing-a-year-before) for just short of a year, and the place burned me out faster and more completely than I thought possible.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, ever put in less than a twelve hour day, six or seven days a week. Even when there was no deadline, you were expected to be there. What was really happening was that nobody was really *working* that much, they'd just all adapted their lives around work -- they'd take long lunches and dinners, play at least an hour of ping-pong a day, have their kids would come visit at night, etc.

As an native American (although only a fraction Native American) with (IMO) a pretty solid work ethic, I looked terrible if I left "early" or said I couldn't come in on a Sunday for whatever reason. My boss called me on it one time, and I pointed out that I *always* met my deadlines and that I applied myself at work more than any of my coworkers. From his reaction, it was clear that wasn't the point -- I wasn't showing the proper dedication, defined strictly as spending time at work.

Anyhow, I got laid off last year after I told them I was going home to the midwest for Christmas (during a time with no pressing deadlines and using the company's posted holidays and a weekend). It took me five months to find another decent job, but not for one second did I wish I still worked there.

Roman History

[ronfar]

In Ancient Rome, educated Greeks would often sell themselves into slavery to wealthy Romans. However, the thing to remember that these slaves were planning to earn their freedom. They weren't planning to stay slaves forever. If the slave managed to earn his (and I mean his) freedom in this case, he would not only be a free man but a Roman citizen and a client of his former owner. This comparison to the H1-B system is not hyperbolie.

It beat the conditions they had at home in Greece, but it really was slavery.

Unfortunately, Americans, being very provincial, tend to think only in terms of American style slavery, in which manumission was rare and unexpected. (Oh, and no one was really sure what to do with free slaves, except repatriate them to Africa.)

For more information on Roman style slavery, try reading the Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCullough.

The real problem with comparing things to the H1-B system is that there isn't anything exactly like the H1-B system. It somewhat resembles both indentured servitude and Roman style slavery.

American style slavery was really more like feudalism, almost no hope of freedom or every raising your social status.

Of course, it is difficult to compare the H1-B system to anything else, since it is a modern invention with its own rules and peculiarities. However, to dismiss a comparison with slavery, especially non-American slavery simply reflects a lack of knowledge of the history of the ancient world.