Memo Re: Writing Memos

Have you ever stopped to notice how beautiful some of the words used in everyday work can be? There is a kind of folk art there.

I had reason recently to look at some of the terminology used around an oil rig. Fine strong words like swamper, monkeyboard, mud, doghouse, block and tackle, sour gas, wildcat, cathead, pits, kelly spinner, mousehole, rathole, slips. It almost forms itself into poetry. You can almost feel the Alberta breeze in your face.

It is not just the oil industry; every workplace seems to have its own fine terms. The language of the sea is especially well-known. But I do not think this kind of folk poetry is even limited to outdoor jobs; I once put together a poem largely for the sake of playing with common office words which seem to me to have a lovely rhythm to them. Here it is, as originally published years ago in Riverrun:

Memo Re: Writing Memos


Demands on my time are monied and various;
Budgets are burgeoning, time lines are tight;
We shall see, we shall see, we shall see, we shall see;
Why can I no longer sleep in the night?

Tossing in bed with the clock ticking noisily
Tied up in spreadsheets I stare 'till first light
Asking for answers of some absent analyst--
Why can I no longer sleep in the night?

Now and again in accounts of the company,
Figures will jig and will not tally right,
The horror of ink fixing dry yet not balancing;
Why can I no longer sleep in the night?

I hear it at times in the din of the stock exchange;
Some lonely warrior, hoarse from the fight,
Hoping and fearing that someone will hear him cry
Why can I no longer sleep in the night?

God only knows what's the final Gantt diagram;
Critical paths always fade out to white;
Building our high-rise investments in Babylon;
Sleeping through days, and waking through nights.

They lied when they said they were schooling for leadership;
Lied when they said we could win in the fight;
Lied when they promised the whole world would satisfy;
I hope to Jehovah they don't sleep at night.

The one place where you do not get this sort of beauty, it seems to me, is wherever the actual words matter: in sales, in media, in advertising, in government, in law. There, the words instead tend to be irritating: I hate the singular “pant,” the verb “to sauce,” and other such marketing terms. Quite the reverse of usual work vocabulary, which is playful and gratuitously creative, these words are calculating and put on airs. They are pharisaic.