【英语生活】用达达主义对付职场白痴

Dadaism has arrived in the office. The movement, which was big around the time of the first world war and ridiculed the meaninglessness of modern life, is perfectly suited to the workplace. The pomposity, the pretence, the downright idiocy: all are gagging for the Dada treatment.

The current master of business Dada is David Thorne, an Australian designer and blogger who cites his chief interest as reciting prime numbers backwards.

He first became famous about a year ago when he tried to pay a chiropractor's bill with a drawing of a spider and published the e-mail exchange on his website www.27bslash6.com. If you haven't seen it you really ought to look. The joke is in the gap between the normal idiocy of business communication and the abnormal idiocy of the spider.

It is very funny indeed in a good, clean way.

Thorne's most recent exchange, which has been whipping bloggers into a frenzy in the past couple of weeks, is also funny – although it is neither good nor clean.

It starts when a web designer approaches Thorne asking him to design a logo and pie charts on spec for a project on business-to-business networking. Thorne replies with a pie chart entitled: “David's enthusiasm for doing free work for ‘S' ” – labelling the segments “none”, “the tiniest bit” and “hardly any”. This produces an angry, sarcastic reply, to which Thorne submits a logo that “represents not only the peer-to-peer networking project you are currently working on, but working with you in general”. The logo at first looks like an eagle but as you look you see one man is performing a lewd act on another.

‘S' gets angrier and angrier. He writes: Do not ever e-mail me again, to which Thorne delivers the knockout blow: “Ok. Good luck with your project. If you need anything, let me know.” The reply is unprintable.

I learnt three things from this exchange. Artists like to get paid. Pie charts are really very silly things. And being savagely, brutally rude to someone who you feel deserves it is as bracing as a roll in the snow.

There is a further Dada dimension to the story: it lies in a foggy internet zone between truth and fiction. There appears to be a real man with the same name on Twitter who is by turns pretending to get the joke, denying everything and slagging off Thorne.

If this man does exist, is this a case of cyber-bullying that we should worry about? Or has Thorne simply made up the whole thing? He has a fine pedigree in such invention. A letter from McDonald's telling staff in Australian drive-throughs to omit some of the items customers had paid for, signed by “Robert Trugabe”, caused a stir recently and turned out to be his brilliant handiwork.

But whether true or fiction, I don't care. I value the pie chart exchange both as a work of art and as an interesting management exercise.

Managers spend their lives trying to defuse anger, though often manage to stoke it inadvertently. Thorne's exchange is shocking because it does the reverse: it picks on an angry person and calmly goads him into being a great deal angrier.

I come across a lot of angry people in the course of my work. Many of them read the Financial Times and seem to take exception to anodyne things written by me. Last Thursday, a Joseph Waring from Hong Kong contacted me to say my last column was pathetic and I was ridiculous. It ended: BTW: the entire office here thinks your haircut is a bit youthful for you.

Just as I was trying to think of a suitably inflammatory reply, I opened a message from a retired lawyer called Stephen Gold.

“Are you paid to be . . . useless and patronising?” he enquired in a furiously sarcastic e-mail that was so long it must have taken half the day to tap out on his BlackBerry.

In the interests of art, I sucked my pen for a bit and composed the most sickly, patronising reply I could muster and finished with the three most inflammatory words in the English language: Hope that helps.

I pressed send, sat back and waited. An hour later the reply came. But instead of being incandescent, Mr Gold was more civil than before. Thanks for taking the time to reply, he wrote politely.

As a work of art, my effort was a failure. But it told me three more things. 1. Most people don't answer messages at all. 2. Irony in an e-mail is always a mistake. 3. Being funny is hard; successful Dada is harder still.

达达主义已来到了办公室。该项运动在一战前后曾盛极一时，对现代生活的毫无意义进行嘲讽，可谓与职场深相契合。夸耀、伪装、彻头彻尾的白痴行径：所有这些都是达达主义插科打诨的对象。

大卫•索恩(David Thorne)是当前商界达达主义领袖，他是一位澳大利亚设计师兼博主，声称自己最感兴趣的是倒背质数。

大约一年前，他第一次为人所知。当时，他试图用一幅蜘蛛图支付按摩医师的账单，并把自己与那位医师之间的往来邮件发布在了他的网站www.27bslash6.com上。如果你还没有看过，真该去看一下。其好笑之处，在于商业交流中的正常白痴行为与使用蜘蛛图这一非正常白痴行为之间的差距。

这些邮件确实非常有趣，而且方式恰当而干净。

索恩最新的电子邮件交流同样有趣，在过去两周内，它已经令许多博主抓狂——不过这次交流既不恰当，也不干净。

事情的起因是，一位网络设计师接洽索恩，请他为一个企业对企业(B2B)网络项目设计标识和饼状图，但不保证会付费。索恩给他回复了一个饼状图，题为“大卫为‘S'免费效劳的热情”，并将饼状图各分块分别标上了“什么都没有”、“极小的一点”以及“几乎没有”。这使得‘S'给了一个气愤、讽刺的回复，而索恩又接着回复了一个标识，称它“不仅代表你目前正在做的对等网络项目，而且对你基本也适用”。那个标识乍一看上去像一只鹰，但再仔细看，你会看到一个男人正在猥亵另一个男人。

‘S'越来越生气。他写道：永远别再给我发邮件。索恩则重磅出击：“好的。祝你的项目好运。如果你需要什么帮助，请告诉我。”‘S'随后的回复肮脏得无法刊载。

我从这次交流中懂得了三点。艺术家不喜欢免费为别人做事。饼状图的确是很愚蠢的事情。此外，对你认为应该得到无礼对待的人表现出极大的粗鲁，就像在雪中打滚一样令人神清气爽。

这个故事还有更进一步的达达元素：它介于真实与虚拟之间模糊的互联网地带。Twitter上似乎有一个同名同姓的真人，这个人轮番假装讲笑话、否认一切，并诋毁索恩。

如果这位男士真的存在，这是否就是我们应该担忧的网络欺凌(cyber-bullying)案件？抑或，就是索恩一手编造了整件事情？他在这类发明创造上可有着良好的记录。来自麦当劳(McDonald's)的一封信最近引起了轰动，并最终被证明是索恩的杰作。这封信的署名是罗伯特•特鲁格伯(Robert Trugabe)，内容是要求麦当劳澳大利亚得来速餐厅的员工故意漏掉一些顾客掏过钱的东西。

但到底是真是假，我并不关心。我认为有关饼图的邮件交流既是一件艺术作品，同时也是一种有趣的管理手段。

管理者一辈子都在忙着压制怒火，但结果往往却一不留神火上浇油。索恩的邮件沟通令人震惊，因为他的效果恰恰相反：他作弄一个生气的人，若无其事地让他变得越来越愤怒。

我在工作过程中遇到过许多生气的人。他们当中有许多人阅读英国《金融时报》，且似乎对我写的消遣类文章感到不满。上周四，来自香港的约瑟夫•韦林(Joseph Waring)与我联系，说我上一个专栏的水平低得可怜，而且我十分可笑。邮件是这样结束的：顺便说一下，我们整个办公室的人都认为，对于你而言，这个发型有点年轻了。

正当我努力思忖着一个恰到好处的让人上火的回复时，我打开了一位名叫斯蒂芬•戈尔德(Stephen Gold)的退休律师的邮件。

“公司雇你就是要你……毫无用处和摆出那副高高在上的样子的吗？”他在一封极尽讽刺之能事的邮件中如此问道。这封邮件如此之长，想必他肯定花了半天的时间，不停地敲打自己的黑莓。

出与对艺术的兴趣，我轻吮了一下钢笔，编排出了我能够想到的最令人作呕且高高在上的回复，结尾处用了英语中三个最具煽动性的词：希望这能帮到你。

我摁了一下发送，稍事休息并等待回复。一个小时后，我收到了回复。但与之前的激动相比，戈尔德这次变得比原来有礼貌了。“谢谢你花时间回复我的邮件”，他客气地写道。

作为一件艺术作品而言，我的努力是失败的。但它又让我懂得了三点。第一，大部分人根本不回邮件；第二，在电子邮件中使用讽刺的语言永远是错误的。第三，风趣很不容易；而做一位成功的达达派更难。

译者/董琴