Edible – The Tommy Blank Column

Why the Environment is the Biggest Threat to Employment. Kind of.

That got your attention didn’t it. This, Sloucherites is, by any nature of the word, far-fetched. But allow me to enlighten.

If you’ve ever worked in an office, particularly a big organisation or the public sector, you’ll be familiar with the breed of employee I’m about to depict. She’s 52, a few years off retirement yet but happily coasting along until then. She dreams of the day that the Bucks Fizz will flow, and Poirot boxsets will be thrown into tweed shopping trolleys with more gusto than The English Defense League exiting the knockout round of a spelling bee. She’s married, with kids, who’ve moved away or gone to University. Her husband is a good bloke but nothing special, he’ll watch any sport on the telly whether it be the Champions League final or the fly-fishing qualifiers. She’s not particularly good at anything, except making herself look busy, and convincing others that what she does (whatever that might be) is of paramount importance to the company. She buys her televisions and laptops from Atkinsons in the same shopping basket as her hosiery and non-stick woks.

And when the photocopiers go, she’ll be completely fucked.

I’ve seen them at it. It’s a trick I mastered aged about 11 when it was time to clear the dinner table after a family meal. Dad washing up, and my brother drying, I soon clocked that I could walk around the kitchen moving cutlery, chairs and pots from one place to another until all of the hard work was completed, without actually having done anything.

These old birds put the pro in procrastination, and I’m on to them.

They’re not all women of course, and they’re not all 52. But it’s a fairly accurate generalisation, and by my estimation, when environmental sanctions come to town and the sacred grey carcass of Canon Laser Copymasters, resembling 16th Century Galleon war ships, are wheeled out of the emergency exit into the unsympathetic arms of a removal van, there’s going to be tears. Because seemingly, all these people do is make copies. And then file them into folders. And then file the folders. And then make a brew.

I have genuinely had conversations with the line managers of these people, who in the public sector are in their hundreds (local councils etc), where they have admitted to not having a clue what these people are paid for, and while they have spent the last 27 years in the job, it’s easier for everyone to just wait until they retire. Or die.

But as the coals burn (and the wind turbines spin) under the big green eco engine, there’s a call that must be heeded to stop bloody printing things. It starts with a friendly tagline at the end of an email signature that politely requests that readers do not print their messages. It ends with replacing corrugated filing cupboards with terabyte hard drives. The entire country runs on email, and its only a matter of time before the same people who brought you the cycle to work scheme and car sharing wage war on the hectares of forest being felled for the sake of giving these curious pale coveters of the lever arch ring binder something to do.

With the emergence of technology such as Apple’s time machine (which automatically saves progress and settings to an external hard drive, allowing you to return to a document or project exactly how it was on this day last year, despite any changes you might have made since) and the environmental shit-storm going hell for leather at the doors of companies sporting a plethora of staff, the clock is ticking. The corporate big-wigs will soon recognise that they can save some money as well as appease the tree huggers, and at that point heads will roll.

And I say bring it on. Call in the cast of Office Space and unleash hell on these bulky, grey obsolete subsidiaries. And then get rid of their precious photocopiers too.