A couple weeks ago in history we learned about some guy whose name escapes me. I do remember that he was a reformer of some sort, and he would dress up every day and wait in his study for visitors to come talk to him about his wonderful ideas. They never came, but he never stopped dressing up and hoping that maybe someone would finally come. He sat in his study, alone, just waiting and hoping that this would be the day.
He also came up with an idea for workers. They would have little cubes by their workplaces, and when they were happy they would turn the cube to yellow, and when they were sad they would turn the cube to whatever the sad color was. This way the supervisor could look out over the mass of workers, and by the colors could see whether this would be a happy, productive, awesome day, or a terrible, glum, unproductive day.
Well, today in history, whilst taking an oral quiz, I got bored in between questions, and decided to make my very own happy-sad cube! But new and improved! For one thing, it has 6 emotions, all with different colors attached. Also, each color is labeled with the corresponding emotion, and also with a little smiley face (or angry face or sad face or excited face, etc) to illustrate what this emotion is. And, as long as I was making improvements, I gave it power to travel through space and time. And it can call people on the phone. And can find the cure for cancer. OK not really. And hey, as long as we're talking about its shortcomings, can't forget the most important one. Instead of being a cube, it's actually completely flat, and merely drawn on paper. I feel like such a failure!
But! I have a plan. A wonderful plan. I'm going to make little foam Mood Cubes, and I'll sell them on the black market! And the purple market! And even the orange market! Anyways, these really will be cubes, and everyone will buy them and I'll get rich. Until then, I'll be dressed up in Sunday best, waiting in the study for possible investors to come a'visitin'
That's the saddest story I've ever heard. People are so cruel!
ReplyDeleteBut, mood cubes wouldn't work because then people would get fired for being in a bad mood, and then they'd be in an even worse mood.
Seriously. That story makes me want to cry. Did he ever have a happy ending?
ReplyDeleteI know! Isn't it the worst?! I started crying when I read it in the book one day, late at night.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about his happy ending. I really hope he got one though!
Kristina - it is management we're talking about. They don't do more complicated than two options.
ReplyDeletewell, maybe angsty teenagers will buy them, so they can proclaim their angst to the world!
ReplyDeleteThey already do that. It's called being emo.
ReplyDeletewell, shoot down all my ideas, why don't ya
ReplyDeletethe reformer was Robert Owen. He also came up with ideas for utopian societies where a really specific number of people (I can't remember exactly what) would live in parallelogram shaped societies, and workers would get rewards for good work and such
ReplyDeleteremember how some weirdo kid gave Ms Nick a colour reference sheet and set his rubix cube on his desk and fiddled with for the next few weeks?
ReplyDelete