We hear a great deal these days about "status" and "status symbols". There is a hoary old joke in the business world concerning the granting of a washroom key to the young man who reaches a certain level of the upper echelon of "the organization". Certain clothing styles are said to mark the young man who has "arrived" and of course once you've made it, you wouldn't be caught dead in anything but a Coupe de Ville. This business can get pretty ridiculous, as witnessed in a story to come out of an ad agency in New York last month. It seems a junior executive was promoted to the middle executive level, but the decorators inadvertently installed wall-to-wall carpeting in his new office. Now a MIDDLE level executive simply does NOT rate wall-to-wall carpeting in his office. That bit of status stuff is strictly for TOP LEVEL executives. What did the head office do? They called back the decorating firm and had them clip a foot margin off the carpet, all the way around the office, and this restored the organizational equilibrium. Stop the world, good neighbor, I want to get off.
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