Your correspondent dislikes walking into a room—usually somebody’s office—decorated with motivational posters. You know them. Lovely pictures with some syrupy words about success, or greatness, or achievement, or—motivation.
The motivational poster industry probably has been around forever; I think I have read of some motivational sayings painted on the walls at Pompeii. But they’ve become noticeably popular in the last two decades or so. We will leave it to various “ologists” to study what has changed about us to warrant such treacle.
There always was this feeling that anybody who really needed one of these saccharine decorations must have been short of self-esteem—or working for bosses who think a treacly poster can be a transformative influence on the employee.
I know several apparently well-adjusted folks who have these things on their offices. As far as I know they do not spend any time every day meditating on them and pondering the significance of the message. They seem to be perfectly normal people who do their work competently every day. I’ve known some of them long enough to know that the poster in their office has not changed the high-quality work they have always done anyway.
All of this is why my newsroom work station, for several years, sported a calendar from Despair.com (https://despair.com/collections/demotivators) that countered the hard-hitting soupy sayings on walls elsewhere in the building. Every couple of months there was a new mini-poster taped under my name thingie.
Now, understand that news people have a tendency to be kind of anti-establishment, independent, unruly, and untidy souls who have an inborn pride in being to some degree as manageable as a wheelbarrow full of frogs. Or cats. Or Beagle pups. We are only slightly more manageable than a wheelbarrow full of canaries.
But my work area used to be decorated with beautiful pictures such as one showing several hands hoisting a trophy with the big word, “Winning” beneath and the ensuing paragraph: “Because nothing says, ‘You’re a loser’ more than owning a motivational poster about being a winner.”
There are several others—enough that I did not have time to acquire them all.
One that some legislator with a sense of humor might want to hang in the outer office where visitors can see it. If features a lovely early evening sunset-illuminated Nation’s Capitol and its reflection in a mall pool. It says “Government,” and beneath it are the words, “If you think the problems we create are bad, just wait until you see our solutions.”
Apparently there is an alternate contemplation: “They may seem inefficient and feckless at times, but your Representatives in Washington just want what’s best for you assuming you’re a major corporation. Otherwise, you’re pretty mush screwed.”
Another poster shows a stack of newspapers with the big word “Media,” followed by, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies right to our faces.”
And there’s one labled “Conspiracy” that says, “Never attribute to stupidity that which can easily be explained by a pathological blood lust for control.”
Or one showing hands raised in high fives and labeled, “Teams,” with the note, “Together we can do the work of one.”
And of course the poster reading “Motivation,” which advises, “If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon.”
I’m waiting for the poster that says “Treacle.” The accompanying line should be a pip.
