The Color of Status

The office tends to be a very hierarchical place. I use the term “office” loosely, as in “place where you go each day so they’ll give you your paycheck”, as opposed to the “place where they arrange desks in cubicles in order to maximize efficiency by minimizing privacy”. Anyhow, any established workplace has a definite hierarchy; whether or not they choose to admit to it is another matter.

The job I had for ten years as a paralegal was in a “loosely tiered” office. Everybody came to work in jeans, nobody got titles, and every last one of us punched a time clock. It didn’t matter. You still knew who the big boss was, you still knew who was over you in the pecking order, and you sure as hell knew whom you could peck on in turn. The only difference that the communal-hug approach to office management made was to make it a little more difficult to figure out the corporate politics when you first started working there.

The job I have now has far more rigidly structured management. Management has spent hours figuring out the executive tree, and much is made out of where each of us little birdies gets to roost in it. Reorganization of the tree occurs more frequently than one would think feasible for a viable little company like ours, and much infighting occurs as to who gets to sit on what branch.

It is easy to identify where each individual fits in, simply by looking at them. For the sake of argument here, let’s say that we use color coding, with each employee assigned a hat of appropriate color to his or her station in the organization. For the sake of further argument, let’s stipulate that the green hats are Management and the white hats are the Little Worker Bees. There’s probably a couple of other colors out there as well, like the techno-geek blue hats and the yellow junior management lackey hats, but to keep the story simple we’ll stick to white and green for today’s example. Keeping this in mind, here is today’s story:

When I was hired I was handed a white hat. In the years that have elapsed since I have worked here, several of my green-hatted coworkers have inquired of the Big Boss why I didn’t have a green hat like them. The answer was that I was a Professional, and Professionals got white hats.

Well, it rankled a bit, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t live with. Overall, I’m happy with the company I work for, and they certainly stood by me in times of great need. I tried to convince myself that it was just a status thing, and it should be beneath me to lose any sleep over the color hat I was issued. And so things stood until a week ago, when my department reorganized.

As a result of the reorganization, someone in a Management position found herself in a new, non-managerial position. This person was told to trade in her green hat for a white hat. Ego was damaged, and in the process of what turned out to be a fruitless negotiation to retain her green hat the newly minted White Hat demanded to know why she had to give up her green hat. She was told that she no longer had anyone reporting to her, and so was no longer entitled to the green hat.

The employee then demanded to know why several others in the department had green hats, if they also had no one reporting to them. Pushed into a corner, the Big Boss was forced to rescind green hat status from two other employees, who were not affected by the reorganization but who did not have anyone directly reporting to their office. So instead of one damaged ego, he now had three damaged egos to deal with.

Consistency in hattedness had not yet been fully addressed. There were those in the department who had people reporting to them but had white hats. Consistency dictated that these people be assigned new headwear as part of what I’ve come to regard as the “White Hat Mollification Process”. And that’s where I got sucked into this whole charade.

Being offered a green hat in this fashion pissed me off.

1 – Being given a green hat the same day that others had lost theirs was slapping salt into their wounds. None of us (save one lone malcontent) had had their jobs changed in any way, yet we were suddenly informed that our visible status had changed. I imagine that seeing their old green hats immediately handed over to others particularly hurt those demoted without demotion. For my part, it was aggravating that the status I’d been given upon hiring was being re-assigned in as capricious a fashion as it was originally assigned.

2 – Being given the green hat left me, in turn, with the very awkward situation. I could expect people outside the department to offer me congratulations on my “promotion”. This, in turn, would force me to explain that there’d been no promotion, just a change in heart over the color of my hat. I distinctly do not like having to explain things that I don’t particularly understand myself.

3 – This is the big one. I resent being offered this green hat simply because some pissant idiot in my department decided to complain about being changed to a white hat. When the Little Boss tried to stick up for me and get me a green hat in years past, her requests were always brushed aside. The Big Boss decided back then that, for whatever reason, I didn’t deserve a green hat. Now some malcontent coworker, aggrieved that she’s lost her little status symbol, forces the Big Boss’s hand, and gets him to do something grudgingly that he wouldn’t have willingly done when he got the chance. Not only is it not an honor to get this hat, it’s an indication that the whole management status thing is directed by passing whims. Yeah, the Big Boss will give me the green, but based his failure to do so when the Little Boss inquired about it, he’s doing it grudgingly, and only to shut a pain-in-the-ass up. There’s no honor in accepting this particular reward; in fact, it’s not a reward at all.

Considering all this, I declined the green hat when it was offered (an option that was given before I was offered the hat, I hasten to add). I cited the first two reasons, but figured it was impolitic to offer up the third reason. Interestingly enough, the only other person in the department who was offered a hat upgrade also chose to turn it down. Neither of us had spoken to the other about this, and was unaware of each other’s decision until the following day.

All of that leads me to speculate somewhat idly about the signs of status and the power these signs wield over us. The above story is simply adults fighting in the sandbox over who gets the red shovel and who gets the blue one. I’ve seen how hard the white-hatted worker bees work to earn their daily bread (or daily honey, if you insist on my metaphors being consistent, which they seldom are). If there’s any honor around here, it should be to be identified with those employees. And yet it isn’t enough to be seen doing an honest day’s work. We want at least the trappings of power, and we want those trappings to be visible. A Hum2, a five-bedroom house on a quarter acre lot, a corner office, reserved parking … you can fill your own personal favorite stupid status symbol here:

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All of these are as ridiculous as that lousy green hat that I thought I wanted for the last six years, and that I couldn’t find it in me to accept when it was finally offered. I have to wonder if I turned down the hat for the reasons listed above, or if it was just a thumb-my-nose sour grapes gesture, my chance to wield what little power I could call truly mine.

Green, the color of hats and envy. Interesting