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Keith Knight: Highs and lows of the year

ZEN AND THE ART OF EMPLOYEE MAINTENANCE | PAGE 1, 2, 3
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From the temp rumor mill -- we don't do memos -- comes word that some might have found the new way of being. Zen, they say, can help us temps. The being's in the being. I imagine the inevitable Time article, something about Zen and the Art of Employee Maintenance, but I am also curious. Throughout California and even America, Zen priests are taking their show on the road and into the office. They publish books, organize corporate retreats and lead workshops at such high-stress venues as Mountain View (Calif.) City Hall and Apple Computers. Zen is offering the possibility of being in even the most tedious moments.

It's noon now and I'd rather be being. I get into research mode and make some long-distance calls on the company dime -- if I'm going to work for the man now and then, the least I can do is run up his phone bill. For the next half hour, abbots, sitters and meditation center receptionists spread the good word to me. They anticipate my little skepticisms. If the politicians and geeks of City Hall and Apple seem unlikely candidates for enlightenment, I'm told, think again. Zen, in its various incarnations, makes room for everyone everywhere. Even temps? I ask, glazing over the now-familiar photos tacked in front of me: a dog, a man on a beach, two women laughing in cocktail dresses. Even temps, they say.

Someone hands me a memo now. Five hundred copies, she says, lightly, and I take a break from daydreaming. Five hundred. I wonder about my sense of scale; is this job unhealthy? The copy machine jams, of course, and my question is forgotten. I straighten a tray, extract some chewed paper, restart the job, add paper when it runs out, watch it finish. Where is the Zen?

Back at my desk, I learn it's all over cyberspace. I shuffle around the Internet. Most of a temp's work amounts to shuffling around anyway. I learn that Gerry Shishin Wick Sensei, director of software development at Merriam-Webster, wants me to change. In his essay "Zen in the Workplace: Approaches to Mindful Management," Shishin Sensei urges members of the work force to "see everybody as the Buddha," "hear everything as the dharma" and "reveal every place as nirvana." I sort of look and listen for a moment, then distribute faxes until 1:30.

By 2, a hasty lonely temp lunch over and forgotten, I'm filing again. Numerical ordering leaves little brain space for thought. I no longer wonder whether they do this on purpose; considering corporate conspiracy is only one degree less boring than temping itself. Where is the Zen? I ask, then remember I already asked that.

N E X T_ P A G E .|. What your liberal arts education never prepared you for