Many people hate clutter. A
disorganized room drives them nuts. But there’s another side to the story. One
person’s clutter can be another person’s comfort.
Take, for instance, the office I’ve
set up in the basement of our home. I love it when stacks of newspapers,
magazines, and books are piled all around the room. Sure it can be a bit
hazardous — a magazine on top of carpeting is as slippery as a banana peel — but
it relaxes me to know all kinds of exciting reading material is within arm’s
reach no matter where I sit down. (Or no matter where I fall down after
slipping on a magazine. “Wow, here’s a TIME Magazine from 1975! I’ll read about
that new music sensation Bruce Springsteen while I wait for the ambulance to
arrive.”)
However, another member of the household,
who shall remain nameless, constantly says to me, “You’re so messy! I don’t
know why I married you!”
This unidentified person can’t stand
clutter, and believes that books always should be on book shelves — even while
being read. Also, any magazine or newspaper that has been in the house for more
than 24 hours has overstayed its welcome and should be sent out to the blue recycle
bin.
But I really don’t want to pick on
this particular person, even though the chances this person will recognize him
or herself in this column are zero because of the deft manner in which I’ve
masked his or her identity. What I want to discuss is the issue of
discrimination.
In our intolerant, prejudiced society,
it is a sad fact that sloppy people are thought to be lazy and morally
substandard — as if the urge to take out the trash automatically makes a person
virtuous. Let’s not forget that Charles Manson liked to organize his file
folders and Jeffrey Dahmer had neat handwriting. Being tidy did not exactly put
those two fellows into the Character Hall of Fame.
On the other hand, St. Francis of
Assisi always threw his robe on the floor instead of in the hamper and Mother
Teresa often misplaced her bowling shoes. Being sloppy did not hinder their
saintly lives.
Discrimination against those of us who
are neatness-impaired is most prevalent in the corporate workplace. About 20
years ago I saw someone get promoted for no other reason than his office was clean.
When the Big Boss wanted to see a copy of the previous year’s Sales Forecast
Report, this guy immediately pulled it from an immaculate file cabinet. I
could’ve found a copy of the same report in my office — if I had been given a
30 minute head start and a snow shovel. Plus, I actually wrote the report, so I
could’ve explained what the report said, despite some of the pages on my copy
being stained with pizza sauce.
By the way, this was back in the
mid-90s, before everything got computerized and people still used paper copies
of important documents. Nowadays, of course, everyone works in a “paperless
office,” and all crucial data is stored on “servers” in the “cloud.” But
whenever people can’t quite figure out how to make the data display correctly
on an iPad, they send the file to the printer for a paper copy anyway, but
accidentally print out 46 copies. This explains why a modern “paperless office”
kills ten times more trees than an office in the olden days.
Just thinking about this unfair
discrimination against sloppy people gets me upset. I need to read something
relaxing. I’m sure there’s a good book or magazine article in one of the piles by
my desk. Now where did I put my snow shovel?
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