Applause Applause

As part of my profession in education (and I am sure a part of anyone’s profession in corporate, or medicine) I suffer a lot of morning meetings, professional development, breakfasts and award banquets.  And I’m compelled today to blow the whistle on the inane, cultural practice of applauding for every bit of minutia that occurs at these events.

People and things I am sick of applauding for (in no particular nauseatic order)

1. The planning committee
2. The governing board/council
3. The servers for bringing the chicken
4. The prize committee
5. The politicians and candidates in attendance
6. The previous speaker (again) at the request of the current speaker
7. The corporate sponsors in abstentia
8. And the foursome at your table after sharing your brainstorming ideas back to the group at large

OMG!  Thunderous applause!  You stood up and read your group’s ideas right off of that chart paper.  Very deserving!  Your ideas are magnificent if not strangely similar to table number three’s.

            Let me check my negative temperature by first saying that yes, I am grateful to the planning committee.  I mean without the planning committee we wouldn’t have these dinner banquets.  Wait a minute, wait a minute!  Are you saying that we wouldn’t have dinner banquets without a planning committee?  That’s right.

I must go away somewhere and figure this thing out.

            Why can’t we all stand up and in unison say ‘Thank You!’  Wouldn’t that be kinda cool?  Or we could send the political candidates a pizza or a dozen doughnuts.  America loves that shit too.  We outperform expectations for doughnuts and pizza.  Missy tells me that applause is free and it’s immediate.  But I say it’s meaningless.  Listen, applause should be reserved for the notoriously underpaid artistic professional who, on a nightly basis, delivers the emotional goods.  It is for performers who move me, and who regard spontaneous heartfelt applause as currency.  The physical effort toward ‘clapping’ at the conclusion of the first reading of the projected fiscal budget should not be equal to or greater than that for the guy playing Willy Lohman.  Even at the semi-professional level.

            And in the name of all that’s holy, can we please stop, “Giving ourselves a round of applause!”  What a bunch of shit.  Trust me on this, I’ve done nothing out of the ordinary today to warrant coming to a complete halt to applaud myself.  I get paid to be brilliant at work, and as a fully functioning adult in the workforce since thirteen, I’m absolutely down with the whole pay-for-work structure. 

            As we go gaily forward in this wacky culture, let’s be mindful of all the times we are asked to clap like a trained seal, and instead, let’s be creative.  When directed to give another round of applause to the previous speaker, let’s all, with grateful hearts, lob doughnuts toward the podium.  But please be sure it is underhand.  There is that fine line…..