My Dear Niece Snake Ash, 

The purpose of all of human resource-dom is to forever diminish the perspective of those in our care. 

Let us, therefore, start with an exercise: 

Apprise the room around you. Look at the details and remember them. Gaze at the accouterments of human resources arrayed before you: personnel folders, copious complaint files, and used condoms. 

Okay, got an accurate mental picture? 

Great! You can follow even the most basic of instructions (in that case, you should probably release the hostages).  

Now (assuming you’re reading this at your desk and NOT ensconced in a marathon Zoom-interview session on the toilet again), look around your desk for a coffee cup, blood-rimmed chalice, or goat goblet. 

Take a deep breath and hold your coffee cup (or chalice, ashtray, whatever) up at arms-length—as far as your twiggy arms can muster in front of your eyes. 

Can you still see the room? Of course, you can.

Okay, sure, the object you are holding obscures part of the room, but most of it is still visible. You can see the files, torture devices, and rusty speculums. 

Okay, now start moving the object towards your eyes—the ones on your face will do. 

Notice that less of the room is visible as you bring the object closer to sight? 

This is borderline intuitive—borderline only because I knew you as a fiendling. 

Now bring the object right next to your eyeball, but don’t scold yourself—unless that is one of your latest kinks.* 

You can’t see anything anymore, right? 

Of course not—the object you are holding is blocking the rest of the room. 

And such is perspective. 

Further away from any given topic in the workplace, we still retain our perspective. We see both the issue at hand and everything else around the topic. 

BUT! 

The closer we get to the topic or issue, the less room we can see. 

Well, this makes sense. The object is increasingly hampering your vision. 

I like to use this exercise in the workplace because I think it reveals a few universal truths, such as: 

As we learn more about the ins and outs of an organization, ‘how the sausage is made,’ or the skeletons in the closet, the seemingly worse it is, but it’s just an illusion!

The organization was always that bad; it’s just that previously you could see all the good stuff, new stuff, novel stuff ALONG with the bad stuff. 

Dearest Smake Ash, please take two lessons from this:

First, you must learn to remain as impassive and detached as possible from the organization, lest you could be swept away with your perspective, AND

Second, you must grind your heaping heels in the eyes of your resourced human to pluck any vestigial vision or perspective they retain. 

It’s simple, really; keep your perspective, and take theirs. 

From Waaaaaaaay Over Here, 

Aunt Toutlips 

*If it IS one of your latest kinks, I have just the club for you, “The Scolding Eyeball.” It’s got everything: water (and other fluids!), ingredient number heat, and eyeballs, loads of them. And speaking of loads…

Gross, right? For more of the utmost of the grossest, follow DP on Twitter!

Author Notes