This month, the world celebrates the bicentenary of Charles Dickens, one of the greatest writers of all time. Many of us have grown up with his novels—Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol and A Tale of Two Cities. We easily recognize his colourful gallery of characters, as they walk the grimy streets and workhouses of Victorian England. What is, however, not well known is that the characters created by Charles Dickens are not dead and gone. They live in our modern-day offices, where we meet them daily. We pay an irreverent tribute to the great master by casting a quick look at the Dickensian cast that inhabits the cubicles next to ours.
Oliver Twist
Probably the best-known character in all of Dickens’ stories, this young orphan boy famously “asks for more”, a pitiful request for more soup which is treated with derision and scorn by Mr Bumble, the pompous master of the orphanage. We are all Oliver Twists of the modern office era (well, at least most of us are). We constantly desire and ask for more—more salary, more perks, more international travel, more manpower, more budgets. Our senior management plays its role of Mr Bumble to the hilt. There are often many twists to this recurring tale, though the ending is similar in most cases: We find ourselves in the soup with little response to our requests, and we continue to bumble around.
The Artful Dodger
The Artful Dodger introducing Oliver Twist to Fagin and the other boy pickpockets
Oliver Twist’s friend, the Artful Dodger, is famous for “never getting caught”, for always dodging upholders of the law. We recognize very well the Artful Dodgers of our offices. They never seem to complete their work or meet their targets, yet they get to take it easy, plan and secure plenty of time off, have a glib response to all queries, and of course never get caught by their bosses. We may detest them, but mostly we admire their skills of evasion and their Teflon-coated tongues. Of course, the one secret we would all love to be in on is why our bosses fall for them.
Wilkins Micawber
The Dickensian crew: Wilkins Micawber
This memorable character from
David Copperfield is constantly in debt, yet he is the eternal optimist, hoping that “something will turn up” to resolve all his problems. In Mr Micawber’s own words: “I have no doubt I shall, please heaven, begin to be beforehand with the world, and to live in a perfectly new manner, if—in short, if anything turns up.” We know many colleagues in office who share this philosophy. They live in the constant hope that something or someone will turn up tomorrow to help them meet their deadlines, achieve their targets or delight their departmental heads—all of which appears totally impossible at the moment. With this fond Micawberian hope in their heart, and entirely unable to cope with the present, they promptly leave early for the day.
Ebenezer Scrooge
Ebenezer Scrooge in white
Scrooge is featured in
A Christmas Carol as a cold-hearted, greedy person who is a miser too. He despises all things that give people happiness. He speaks in a grating voice, and treats his employees shabbily. It is unfortunate that many corporate bosses of today have chosen him as a role model. Like Scrooge, they are consumed by earning lots of profits for their enterprises. As they walk the path of Scrooge, they scrutinize our expense statements with electron microscopes and they cut our budgets for a million reasons. Most sadly they serve second-rate liquor at corporate get-togethers which give us very bad hangovers.
Mr Pickwick
Mr Pickwick
He is the lead character of
The Pickwick Papers, and he pursues research into the quaint and curious phenomena of life. This takes him into several interesting and unpredictable adventures. Blessed are the Pickwicks in our offices. They pursue research into the curious phenomena of other people’s lives, and then they tell us all about their juicy findings. They lovingly tend to our office grapevines, and they believe (as we do too) that cubicle gossip about quaint and scandalous stuff is the ultimate chicken soup for the corporate soul. They break the monotony of our working days, so may their tribe increase.
Joe, the Fat Boy
Joe is a minor companion and attendant of Mr Pickwick. He is fat, he consumes great quantities of food, and he can fall asleep at any time of day. We are not interested in his obesity, but his infinite capacity for sleep. We wonder how some executives in our offices can manage to sleep through virtually every meeting or conference, and wake up just in time for the concluding snacks. They sleep when seated upright, often with both eyes wide open. They pretend that they hear, but suddenly, as you are winding up a long presentation, they say—“What was that you just said ? I missed the point, so can you repeat everything once more, if you don’t mind?” We know exactly how you feel at that moment.
Mr Jaggers
This prominent London lawyer appears in the pages of Great Expectations. Mr Jaggers is an important man, and privy to dirty business. One of his distinguishing features is that his hands always smell of carbolic soap, because he keeps washing them obsessively. This he does to rid himself of the taint of the clients that he interacts with. Several executives in our offices pick up this habit quite naturally. They are always busy washing their hands off several matters. Sometimes, they disown their own work and they always know just whom to blame for various failures. Of course, they quickly wash their hands off projects which are going downhill.
Harish Bhat is chief operating officer—watches and accessories, Titan Industries Ltd. His cubicle philosophy is simple: Achieving targets and deadlines is necessary, but it is equally important to have a Dickens of a time.
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