when putting tape where your walls *would* be just isn't enough

I really like the 37 signals folks. They're smart, practical and entrepreneurial, and they passionately believe in both utility and good design.

But as much as I want to climb on board with this interview with co-founder Jason Fried, and as much as the situation he describes is recognizable, I can't help but think that his solution doesn't apply quite as broadly as he seems to think:

What happens is, is that you show up at work and you sit down and you don’t just immediately begin working, like you have to roll into work. You have to sort of get into a zone, just like you don’t just go to sleep, like you lay down and you go to sleep. You go to work too. But then you know, 45 minutes in, there’s a meeting. And so, now you don’t have a work day anymore, you have like this work moment that was only 45 minutes. And it’s not really 45 minutes, it’s more like 20 minutes, because it takes some time to get into it and then you’ve got to get out of it and you’ve got to go to a meeting.

Then when the meeting’s over, you’re probably pissed off anyway because it was a waste of time and then the meeting’s over and you don’t just go right back to work again, you got to kind of slowly get back into work. And then there’s a conference call, and then someone calls your name, “Hey, come a check this out. Come over here.” And like before you know it, it’s 4:00 and you’ve got nothing done today. And this is what’s happening all over corporate America right now.

They believe that passive communciation (via for example Campfire) allows users to opt in to interruption when they're ready to be interrupted. And since their philosophy is that there are no real emergencies in business, waiting a couple of hours for an answer is okay. And I can buy that...

Except at an ad agency.

Because deadlines are tight and the brief (which in itself never gets as much attention as it deserves) is late and client meetings come way too fast and if you have to wait all afternoon for that brief or image or whatever to come in you're going to be pulling an all-nighter to get the job done for tomorrow morning and there's never enough time to really polish what you're doing anyway.

That's an average day.

If you wait respectfully to get what you need it's not going to get done, meaning a pissed-off client, meaning you're out of a job. You have to speak up, remind, be noisy – in other words, interrupt. There isn't a creative I know who's any good who doesn't think that the work they're doing at this moment is more important than everyone else's work. Even in a very collaborative shop like ours, you've got to take ownership of your work like this, and push for the resources and timing you want.

I just can't see his vision working at an agency, or in any industry where people don't work relatively independently most of their days. (37 signals also has many employees that work remotely full time.)

Look, I end up doing a lot of my work after five, either in the office or at home, and I'm well aware that I'm not the only one; I also have an anarchist streak that likes their "don't manage me" attitude. I wish Fried's philosophy would work across the board. But as many of the commenters on the video say, like it or not there are just some real essentials that come out of human contact. (Scroll down to John Nolt's comment about a third the way down the page for a good perspective.)

Besides, my reluctance to look or act like Les Nessman outweighs any danger of improving my efficiency.

"I'll join you two ladies later... into one big lady."

Back when radio actually mattered to pretty much everyone, and you could at least pretend that deejays were allowed to not mindlessly play the same corporate-generated list of 45s hour after hour, there was a show on CBS called WKRP in Cincinnati. And I think it ruined me for any work other than advertising.

The show was about a bottom feeder AM station in a no-longer large market. New program director Andy Travis is hired to "turn things around." What he finds are a breathtakingly incompetent general manager whose mother owns the station, a sales manager who's a used car salesman's worst nightmare, a news director whose version of Eyewitness Weather is to look out the window and witness the weather, a shell of a morning man fired from L.A.'s hottest morning show a decade before for saying "booger" on air, and a receptionist who is the station's highest paid employee.

Travis' first act is to change the format. In a moment, washed-up Johnny Caravella transforms himself into Dr. Johnny Fever as he grabs the mike and, feeling blood pumping through his heart for the first time in ages, plays honest to god rock and roll music over the airwaves.

Hilarity ensues. Or rather, ensued. For four amazing years, until CBS cancelled it after playing shuffleboard with its schedule and being amazed that viewers could no longer find it. Witness these lines, signifiers of gold:

As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly. We're the scum of the earth. This tape is where my walls would be. Ch-eye ch-eye rodrigweez. Speed kills, Del. I don't think God likes trailer parks. In the spirit of Christmas, we went out and killed a tree for you. Red wigglers, the Cadillac of worms – we're hooked! I love you and I want you to be a golf pro. Look what I'm doing with teenage boys! Herb, I was once a man. Mrs. Carlson, I think you're full of crud.

And the title of this post, which has to be as old as vaudeville (or, I'm sure in some sort of Latin equivalent, Plautus) but still.

Anyway, WKRP portrayed a wonderfully chaotic but subtly ordered workplace. Huge leeway was granted to the deejays, and they took it all and way, way more. Huge leeway was granted to station management, and they muddled through things in ways far worse than anyone could possibly foresee. Somehow Andy, Jennifer the receptionist (who evolved into the very opposite of a dumb blonde) and Bailey the producer kept things from falling apart, while being human and understanding. Outward forms of obedience and compliance were barely paid lipservice, and were usually viciously mocked – as was anything that impaired the deejays' or station's ability to make a unique connection with the audience. The point of everything was to communicate. Um, is my reason for this post showing?

I loved WKRP.

Problem was, as I discovered over the next several years, was that most workplaces don't operate on anything like those principles. Unhappy employment experiences ensue.

So once I finally fell into an agency, you can imagine my slowly dissolving disbelief at finding a place that, although imperfect, actually shared at least some of those anarchic values. A place that understood that everyone on its payroll will not be the same. A place where making a unique connection with the audience is what really matters.