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How to respond to the Two Bobs

How to respond to the Two Bobs

Last updated on: August 4, 2013 at 11:26 pm by Fred Clark

How to respond to the Two Bobs 2013-08-04T23:26:38-04:00 Fred Clark

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I'm seeking advice today about an ethical dilemma being posed this week to me and to thousands of others who work for America's largest newspaper chain.

We're being asked to "track our time" minute-by-minute.

You may be familiar with this task — the nadir of 20th-century corporate management techniques — due to its indelible portrayal in Mike Judge's classic comedy Office Space. In that movie the Two Bobs — corporate consultants portrayed by John C. McGinley and Paul Wilson — are charged with coordinating "downsizing" at a company so far gone that its supervisors have no idea what tasks are being performed by the people they supervise, and no ability to determine whether those tasks are being performed well or poorly, or even how to tell the difference. When management is that incompetent and out-of-touch, it isn't even capable of laying off workers without delegating that task to the workers themselves. For such managers, even layoffs require the assistance and participation of the very workers they are attempting to declare redundant. And so they bring in the Two Bobs to oversee having every employee track their time, minute-by-minute, in the hopes that this will help to clarify which employees to keep and which to kick to the curb.

My ethical dilemma isn't directly about the dismaying recognition that my own job security is now in the hands of people who seem to think that Office Space was intended as a management guidebook. Nor is my dilemma about the personal unpleasantness and the unnecessary distraction of being asked to evaluate myself as a candidate for future layoffs. That's all annoying and insulting, but it's part of the bargain one agrees to as a corporate coprophage. When the hurry gurdy man turns the crank, you dance like a good monkey. That's the deal.

My dilemma also isn't primarily concerned with the related, and terribly important, question of what this all means for America's prospects as a democracy. The founders believed that a healthy free press was an irreplaceably vital and necessary component of a functioning democracy. The Constitution they wrote is premised, in part, on this belief. I happen to think they were right about that, and thus worry what it means for our system of government of, by and for the people that hundreds of newspapers are now being run by real-life versions of the Two Bobs and Lumbergh.

The core of my ethical dilemma here, rather is this: I am being asked to participate in, and to facilitate, harm to others.

This "track your time" assignment is designed to facilitate layoffs. It is designed, in other words, to harm two groups of people I am obliged not to harm: My co-workers and our readers.

Now, it's important not to overdramatize this. "Track your time" isn't in the same league as "inform on your neighbors to the secret police." But it does belong to the same general category of participating in harm toward others in the hopes of reducing potential harm to oneself. And while the Two Bobs aren't going to disappear anyone or have them locked away in a gulag to be tortured, they are planning to lay people off. The harm of that is real, tangible and substantial. Lives and livelihoods will be turned upside-down. Families will lose their homes. Marriages will be strained to the breaking point. That is the program and I am being asked to get with the program. I am being asked to cooperate with this.

Well, not asked, but told. Ordered, actually, to cooperate with this.

That would seem to be the sort of immoral order one is obliged to disobey.

If a co-worker cashed her paycheck and I then stole that money from her, I would be guilty of breaking the law. I could be sent to prison for that, and the punishment would be just and legitimate. But if, instead, I help to facilitate the elimination of her job, ensuring that she no longer is permitted to earn another paycheck, then I would not be considered guilty of anything illegal. But I don't see how the two aren't more or less the same ethically. Helping to facilitate her layoff may be worse, actually, since it involves depriving her of more than just the one paycheck.

Assisting in such deprivation is wrong. It's a sin. And quite apart from the moral and ethical considerations, it's not something I want to be involved with or something I want to be capable of being involved with. I prefer not to.

But unlike in Melville's Bartleby — the story of Milton Waddams' literary predecessor — "I prefer not to" is not an option in corporate America. My workplace, like that of most publicly traded large companies, is not structured to permit the possibility of meaningful disobedience to an immoral and destructive order. "Track your time and participate in the layoffs of your peers," we are told, and "No" is not listed in the menu of available responses. We can respond, "How high?" or "Thank you, sir, may I have another," or "Yum, just like chocolate," but we don't have any way of saying, "No, that's morally reprehensible, a short-sighted and foolish business decision that destroys our credibility with readers, violates the standards of our profession and harms people."

But someone needs to find some way of saying exactly that. The Two Bobs need to be told "No." The presumption underlying this entire process is that no one will choose to do that, or that no one will be able to figure out a way to do that.

The tens of thousands of employees in the nation's largest newspaper chain, it is assumed, will appreciate that they are now competitors in a game of musical chairs. "Track your time," means be prepared to shoulder others aside to claim for yourself one of the remaining seats when the music stops. It means that one must no longer view one's co-workers as co-workers. One must no longer view them as members of one's own team, but as competitors — as the enemy. "Track your time" means you are no longer working with a team of co-workers to perform a shared task, but that you are now working against those former teammates for the sole task of keeping your job.

I do not believe that the task of producing a newspaper can be accomplished by a group of people set against each other in that way. I do not believe that any workplace can function like that. Glengarry Glen Ross wasn't intended to be a management guidebook either.

Anyway, as I said at the beginning, I'm writing all this because I'm asking for advice. I'm not really sure what to do with regard to this assignment to "track my time." I have an idea of what I ought to do, but that doesn't seem compatible with what I'm actually able to do. What I'd like would be some way of responding effectively — not just of setting myself apart from the bad system so that I can congratulate myself for being apart from it, but of actually challenging the system itself in some meaningful way. (I'd also like to be able to continue paying my mortgage, so the Johnny Paycheck option isn't really on the table for me at this time.)

What I'm leaning toward doing is inserting some boilerplate qualifications following each hour or half-hour of my time-tracking chart. Something like:

My first obligation is to serve our readers by providing them the news in a timely, accurate, accessible and informative manner. This is also the first obligation of all of my co-workers and of everyone up and down the chain who reads this. Therefore, any attempt to utilize this information for purposes that will undermine my or our capability of serving our readers in the manner that they deserve is illegitimate and a failure of the first order. If you're attempting to utilize this information in a way that will reduce our ability to serve our readers to the best of our ability, then you're doing it wrong. Put this down and step away from the newspaper before you do any more damage.

Please also note that no one who reads this has my permission, tacit or explicit, to utilize any of the information recorded here as ammunition, evidence or supposed justification for the elimination of anyone's job. If that is your intention in reading this, then it seems clear you're neither a capable manager nor a very nice person and thus you, in particular, do not have my permission to use this information to do harm to my co-workers or to the readers they and I (and you) are supposed to be here to serve.

That needs work, obviously, but I think it's enough to suggest the gist of what I'm going for. I'm not sure what exactly that might accomplish, but it's true and therefore seems worth saying whether or not it can or will accomplish anything in particular.

And but so anyway, any suggestions?

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