Georges Perec: The Art and Craft of Approaching Your Head of Department to Submit a Request for a Raise

to see mr x he will have to be in his office if he is not then you would await his return in the corridor and if he were to be a long time coming you would go see ms wye and if ms wye were also not at her desk you would circumperambulate the various departments which taken together constitute the whole or part of the organisation which toys with you then you would go back to see mr x if he were still not there you would await him in the corridor or else go to see ms wye on condition not only that she be there but that she also happened to be in a good mood otherwise you would circumperambulate the various departments which taken together constitute the whole or part of the organisation of which you are an employee then you would go back to see mr x and if he were not in you would pace up and down in the corridor while waiting for him and if he were to be a long time coming you would go have a chinwag with ms wye until you espied mr x coming in or back to his office the simplicity of this conditional loop permitting us to imagine the hypothetical situation which is not really exceptional though relatively infrequent in which mr x is in his office at the moment you go to see him thus relieving you from waiting in the corridor from assessing whether or not ms wye is in her office from making the always unreliable judgement of ms wye’s disposition and from circumperambulating the various departments which taken together constitute the whole or part of the organisation of which you are an exploitee so mr x is in his office and since mr x is your line manager you knock before entering then await his response obviously if there is no response you have no choice but to begin all over again so we shall go so far as to grant in our noble desire to keep things simple — for we must do our best to keep things simple — that by exceptional good fortune when you knock mr x who was indeed in his office really did raise his eyes and that definitely means that he heard you but does not mean at all that he wishes to see you right away in fact the wide range of signs and therefore of communicative intentions that can accompany his response may be divided into three main groups that call for three strategic responses on your part first by moving his head two or three times on the horizontal plane from right to left and left to right or else by a dagger-like glance that speaks volumes about his unwillingness to co-operate or by violently blurting out a verbal string he may indicate that he has no intention whatsoever of seeing you now or soon or ever but you are right to reckon this an unnecessarily pessimistic and frankly destructive hypothesis so we will not pursue it any further on the other hand it would be far too optimistic nay dim-witted to think that your head of department will by moving his bonce in the vertical plane up and down and down and up or else by issuing the most gracious smile will i repeat ask you to come in straight away in fact this hypothesis is so implausible so contradicted by quotidian reality that we shall reckon it being as impossible as the prior hypothesis and that obviously takes us to the third consisting of a message in articulate speech concocted for your exclusive use by your head of department serving to put things off by granting you the status of visitor at some unspecified and more or less distant future point in time let me put his cards on the table your head of department cannot or does not want to see you straight away but he has nothing against hearing what you have to say and he requests you most politely to be so kind as to accept an appointment to see him at 2:30 pm seeing as it is 9:30 am right now as i speak obviously you are not going to wait for the clock to strike the half of three in the corridor or in ms wye’s office or in a circumperambulation of the various departments which taken together constitute the whole or part of the organisation of which you are an employee so you go back to your desk and reflect that it is indeed the case that your oh so magnanimous head of department has told you to come back at 2:30 pm you know that your head of department is a man of his word otherwise he would not be your line manager you know that he certainly does not use words lightly but you are sufficiently accustomed to the diciness of life not to mention the rubicons of existence to know full well that in the firm that pays your rent and bacon it sometimes doesn’t take much for a line manager’s mood to change despite his also being the nicest man in the world and that a given proposition uttered at half past nine may not be worth a penny come two-thirty if only because in the intervening lapse of time will arise the always crucial episode of lunch a ceremony whose more or less satisfactory outcome always has a more or less unfortunate impact on your interlocutor’s inclinations thus you have every reason to glean what information you can on the staff cafeteria menu and to keep an eye on the dietary behaviour of your line manager during his midday meal several circumstances may obtain each of which requires an appropriate response from you so let us suppose that today is friday it’s one or t’other either the cafeteria is serving an egg dish or it is serving a fish dish let us suppose the cafeteria is serving fish it’s one or t’other either your line manager swallows a fish bone or your line manager does not swallow a fish bone let us suppose that your head of department who is also your line manager does swallow a fish bone in this case do not commit the almost fatal mistake of turning up at your head of department’s office at 2:30 pm but wait until tomorrow which is not very practical as the day after friday is saturday and the office is closed on saturdays but this is a tricky issue we plan to cope with later on so we shall assume to keep things simple — for we must do our best to keep things simple — that your head of department likes eggs and we will posit that the problem of distinguishing between degrees of offness in eggs has been solved now let us also suppose that it is not friday there are many reasons why that is preferable the cafeteria is less likely to be serving fish or eggs and your head of department is less likely to swallow a fish bone or to get food poisoning from rotten eggs moreover if your head of department makes an appointment for the next day that next day cannot be a saturday which makes your task much easier but all the same do not make the mistake of believing that if it is not a friday the lunch problem can be set aside in fact we could easily be in lent in which case it’s one or t’other either there was a fish dish for lunch or there was an egg dish for lunch if there had been fish either your head of department swallowed a fish bone or your head of department did not swallow a fish bone if he did not choke wait quietly until the afternoon if he did swallow a fish bone keep as calm as you can while waiting

for the day after or even better wait until the end of lent we will not entertain the nonetheless quite plausible eventuality given your state of extreme agitation that you swallowed a fish bone that’s something you would have to deal with on your own the best solution is to eat a piece of soft white bread it’s a traditional remedy but it’s proved invaluable over time just ask your head of department let us rather assume that eggs were on the menu it’s one or t’other either the eggs were off or the eggs were not off if they were not off then the red spots you can see on the face of your head of department must have another cause perhaps measles but if they were in such a state of maturity (the eggs, i mean) as to give grounds to fear that all who had the weakness to consume them are now suffering an onset of food poisoning and if your head of department was one among such wait at least until the next day unless it is really bad in which case you have to wait either until the end of lent or for your head of department to get over it completely which could take a few days or weeks or months or until his successor has been appointed with which successor you proceed in exactly the same way as with his predecessor unless of course it turns out to be you hallelujah who is chosen to take the place of your dearly beloved head of department (deceased) and in this case the issue of a raise will be far less acute and you will wait for a few weeks months years before going to see your head of department or the chief executive of the firm of which you are an employee to make your desiderata quite clear do the art and craft of approaching a head of department or a chief executive to talk about an increase in your pecuniary emoluments have any relationship to the art and craft of approaching a line manager with the same objective that is a serious question that we can neither solve nor even realistically discuss in the light of the limited data currently available to us so we shall assume to keep things simple — for we must do our best to keep things simple — either that it is not a friday or a day in lent or that we are involved with a firm deeply committed to the secular ideal or that the cafeteria served filleted sole or fresh-laid eggs which all comes down to the plain-vanilla advice that we are giving you not to go and see your line manager on a friday or in lent so the lunch issue now being dealt with or so it seems does not arise you have no further qualms about the availability of your line manager unless of course it is monday if it is monday wait for tuesday you would have to be really stupid to go to see your line manager on a monday to talk about a raise as idiotic as going to see him on a friday afternoon or any afternoon in lent laying yourself open to having to deal with ticklish issues when face to face with an individual who instead of listening to you is wondering all the while whether the eggs he has just consumed really were fresh or if he had eaten enough soft white bread to ward off the potentially dire consequences of his having most unfortunately ingested a fish bone to sum up and between you and me it is never very wise to approach a line manager at a time when his gastric functions are likely to overshadow the professional and managerial capacities associated with his hierarchical rank it is far better to go see him in the morning but what the hell he himself told you to come and see him at 2:30 pm you have to take life as it comes so now it is 2:30 pm and you go to see mr x it’s one or t’other either mr x is at his desk or mr x is not at his desk now you’re going to say that since he told you to turn up at 2:30 pm he really ought to be in his office at 2:30 pm yeah yeah but that would be forgetting the twisted and sometimes even scoundrelly souls of hierarchical superiors mr x in order to impress upon you that he is your line manager may well tell you to come at half past two that is well within his rights and some would say his duties what are you going to do do not despair leave it to steep a while longer since mr x told you he would see you at 2:30 he will definitely be back soon so you should walk up and down in the corridor waiting for him to come and if he takes a while longer you will go and have a chinwag with ms wye on condition of course that ms wye is at her desk if ms wye is not at her desk you will circumperambulate the various departments which taken together constitute the whole or part of the organisation of which you are an employee or let’s say an