Not long ago, at a place near you, psychologists decided to perform an experiment with 10 monkeys. They put the 10 monkeys in a room, with a chair in the center of the room. Suspended from the ceiling above the chair, was a banana.
When a monkey would see the banana, he would climb up on the chair to reach it. The psychologists would then spray all the monkeys with cold water from a fire hose. This exercise was repeated every time a monkey climbed on the chair.
Soon the monkeys became conditioned to this, and when any monkey climbed up on the chair, the others would immediately pull him off to avoid the fire hose. Once the monkeys were thus conditioned, the fire hose was no longer used.
They started replacing the 10 original monkeys with a new monkey, one at a time. The new monkey would see the banana, try to get it, but immediately the other 9 monkeys would pull him off the chair.
Eventually, all the original 10 monkeys were replaced with new monkeys. None of these new monkeys had ever been doused with the fire hose. However, whenever a new monkey came in and tried to reach the banana, the other nine had been conditioned to pull the monkey down and prevent him from getting the banana.
They didn’t know why, they just knew the rule was that no new monkey was allowed to reach the banana.
And that, to an unnerving degree, describes my new workplace. I’ll be glad when this economy turns around.
