Appearing to do nothing threatens workplace social order

Evidence

In 2008, employees at an office for the accounting firm Deloitte were troubled by the behavior of a new recruit. In the midst of a bustling work environment, she didn’t seem to be doing anything except sitting at an empty desk and staring into space. Whenever someone would ask what she was doing, she would reply that she was “doing thought work” or “working on [her] thesis.” Then there was the day that she spent riding the elevators up and down repeatedly. When a coworker saw this and asked if she was “thinking again,” she replied: “It helps to see things from a different perspective.” The employees became uneasy. Urgent inter-office emails were sent. … It turned out that the staff had unwittingly taken part in a performance piece called The Trainee. The silent employee was Pilvi Takala, a Finnish artist who is known for videos in which she quietly threatens social norms with simple actions. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 239

Categorization

• CANDY: A perfect bizarre but true elevator story about the artist who rode elevators at Deloitte doing ‘thought work’.
• SHARE: Send to a workplace-absurdity person or anyone working on attention/work culture who’ll love the Pilvi Takala anecdote.