The artifact featured in this post today arrived in the mail a few days ago. It was sent to me by an ex-coworker and still-friend from my Corporate America Cubicle Dweller days. And it is an object that brings me enormous pride, this “Coveted Mullet Award.”
The story behind this ridiculous thing?
It begins in a small spot of space tucked inside an inner hallway of a Cubicle Farm. Like all office pantries, the walls are painted either putty or gray, it smells like whatever that last person heated up in the microwave, and more than two people in the space feels like a crowd. It’s the last place you’d call “inspiring.” But it’s where my planets align. And the catalyst for change is the coffee.
For some reason, the free coffee in other pantries in other office locations is lovely, while our free brand tastes like dirt steeped in an old sweat sock. We comment on it just about every day as we brew pot after pot, hoping that somehow today will be different, that the firm will recognize us Jersey folks as worthy of the good stuff, and that one day, good stuff will arrive. It never does. But something better arrives: An idea.
My Cubicle Neighbor and I chat about this insufferable situation, and we decide on a viable solution: buying a bag of the good stuff, making it for ourselves and for the folks we’re closest to, and somehow figuring out how to keep the other 100 people on the floor from getting to it first.
We agree. We plot with the crew. We get the good stuff. And we’re off to the daily morning races.
In a blink, the ritual is set. My neighbor is brewing that special pot every morning, and from the moment her ass is up and headed to the pantry, I am emailing roughly 30 people who gladly contribute to this critical effort.
“The pot’s on, kids. You have 5 minutes.”
And then, in another blink, I am expanding on those emails, shamelessly taking advantage of the opportunity for a reading audience. I am a glutton for the banter, the inside jokes, the glorious reciprocity of it all.
The simple greetings becomes a string a Godfather quotes, TV and music trivia, daily commute reports. I encourage the collective to “Maharishi” better markets, kinder weather, peace in turbulent times. I applaud them fiercely for the epic journey they conquer, the endless string of tolls and turnstiles they overcome just to make it to the rest of us every single workday. I make each of them my Muse, using their responses as fodder for future messages, creating “family” names for each of them as the inspiration arrives. And it always does.
Paulie walks into the office with a different shoe on each foot, having gotten dressed in the darkness of winter mornings in New Jersey. He becomes “Paulie Two Shoes.”
Norene takes a fall while delivering soup to her mom downstairs, breaking the wall with her foot, but spilling not a single drop of soup. She becomes “Sully the Toe.”
Bob swaggers across my desk in a stylish, deep orange button-down shirt that no one else can carry. He becomes “Punkin Powell.” (Months later, when he arrives at the office in a gorgeous, deep purple shirt, he becomes “The Artist Formerly Known as Punkin’.)
On and on it goes. And one day, months into this madness, after a few days away from work, the single quietest among us, the one I wondered if I was annoying, stops at my desk and asks me, “Where you been, Moose?”
I am beside myself. He likes the messages. My heart sings. And I become “Moose.”
At its peak, the daily distribution, now known as “The Coffee List” (or TCL), grew nicely past our immediate circle. As non-coffee drinkers learned of it, as people in other sites found out about it, they asked to be included. I hope that at the very least, even for those who didn’t entirely understand the New York/New Jersey vibe of it, the message was a two-minute hit of morning levity. For me, it became a potent source of joy, something worth traveling toward during those long morning rides along that grayest stretch of Tony Soprano Turnpike. I relished nothing more at that front-row desk than the time I spent listening to people, laughing with people, and then creating those morning musings.
Oh, and “The Coveted Mullet?” This was the award for correctly answering weekly TCL trivia questions. I wanted the award to be something non-monetary. Sustainable. Ridiculous. And well, mission accomplished there. This hideous thing, originally “The Kramer,” was passed around from desk to desk throughout the floor for the duration of TCL. No one outside of those messages understood it. Some recipients were asked, ever-so-delicately, “Um, is that your…boyfriend?” (More fodder for the messages…)
I’ve said it a hundred times. I worked my ass off for the firm over the span of two decades. I took on roles and projects that revealed my strengths to me, served my professional growth, and challenged me well beyond my limits. I even generated some small accolades or awards here and there. But I don’t remember what they were. Because if you ask me what I’m most proud of in those 21 years, it would be The Coffee List. Full stop.
When I left the company, I made sure that every one of them knew that they had made my days better. Easier. That that small thing every day had mattered deeply to me. And, to my heart’s joy, they expressed that they felt the same way.
I think about TCL often these days. I sit with the heart that carries nostalgia for it, but I also recognize other things that live beside it. Things like creativity, connection, and belonging. I acknowledge and respect all of these ingredients as necessary parts of the mix that make me human. And I know it would serve me best to find a way to add those ingredients back into my everyday life. I just don’t know how yet.
I don’t know what a new TCL would look or sound like. What it would be called. What shape it would take. But as it always does with me, it begins with words on a blank page and the hope that someone is reading.
Shout out my TCL OG, like Mochathia (thank you for sending me the frame, mama), Paulie Two Shoes, Sully The Toe, Cleats Schoen, Paulie Two Socks, Jason The Lip, Punkin Powell, Finn, Mike Mony-Mony, Shakes Cirillo, Capitán Zapatos, Vinny Two Peas, Jules, and so many others on the cast and crew of our special production of Workday Life.
And in the spirit of TCL, WELL DONE on your arrival to this particular Monday! May you find a way to nurture your own ideas, and may they grow to nurture you back in ways that you never thought possible.
S
Light of Day Coaching LLC 