Just ... Thinkin'

A week or so ago, I was listening to the news when there was a brief interview with a man from the Fraser Institute. As always, the Fraser Institute was described as a "Conservative think tank". And as always, this description got me ... well, thinking.

I don't know much about the Fraser Institute, or for that matter the Rand Corporation, which is an American think tank. They don't seem to produce much of anything - I mean, you can't buy Fraser Institute peanut butter or Rand jockey shorts or anything. From what I can see, all that comes out of these think tanks are ... well, thoughts. So what you have are people who are paid to go in, sit at a desk, and think.

I want this job.

I wonder how you get a job at a think tank? You never see ads in the help wanted section under "Thinkers". "Wanted: deep thinker. Must have own tools. Nobody in baseball cap need apply."

How would you be paid? I guess it would be salary. Or maybe piece work. At the end of the day, you could turn in a list of everything you thought about and the foreman - or would that be foreheadman? - would calculate what you earned. It would be a real bummer to find out the guy in the office next to you got paid more for the same amount of work, just because he had a higher IQ.

Do people who work in a think tank punch in at the beginning of the day? I used to alway think about the day ahead when I was driving in to work in the morning. If someone at the Fraser Institute thinks before they get to work, do they get overtime?

I wonder what it's like wandering the halls at the Fraser Institute? It must be very quiet. It would have to be, or you couldn't hear yourself ... well, you know. I bet it's an open office area. You could walk around and peek over those little cloth covered dividers and see all these people sitting at their desks with really constipated looks on their faces, just ... thinking away to beat the band.

Or maybe not. I have a friend who has mastered the art of goofing off. She'll pick up some random memo on her desk, walk briskly from one end of the building to the other, with a look on her face like a flight attendant on the way to tell the captain the right engine is in flames. Then she'll retrace her steps, sit back down and throw the memo back onto the pile. She says she can kill up to a half hour this way. Everybody thinks she's really busy.

It would be much easier to goof off if you worked in a place where all you had to do was think. I mean, who would know? I guess if you had a long term problem, it might come up at performance appraisal time: "I'm sorry, Jenkins, but you just haven't been thinking hard enough." But on any given day, there would be no way of knowing who was earning their dough.

I don't have the solution to any of these problems, but it's not for lack of trying. I've been thinking about them a lot on my spare time, for free. My dream is that one day I'll be just thinking away when I'll get spotted by a scout for the Fraser Institute who will sign me to a big contract.

Ah, who am I kidding? I'm not the think tank type. After an hour or so of heavy thinking, my brain starts to hurt.

Or maybe my baseball cap is too tight. There. That's better.

Comments

[Glasseyerod]

On the subject of doing nothing at work. Nobody does it better than Wally from the 'Dilbert' comic strip. He puts more effort into not working than some people put into working. Your friend might find this helpful when carrying around her memo.

[Glasseyerod]

"this" would be January 5th's Dilbert strip.