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It was a fine spring day at the open air farmers market. People were buying plants for their gardens and produce for their tables. It was a laid back and relaxed atmosphere and folks seemed friendly and pleasant. As we walked back to our car, I noticed a bright red BMW parked next to us. Its license plate read ALLABTME. "There," I remarked, "is a perfectly fine car wasted on a jerk."
I don't know why that egocentric license plate bothered me, but it did. They call them vanity plates and some are cute or funny and mostly harmless. Others remind one of how vanity got its bad name. I recently ran across a term I hadn't seen before, the "look-at-me generation." I'm not sure at what ages that particular generation starts or ends, but members can be spotted pretty easily.
I'm reminded of an airport encounter I had last year on the way to the Sir Speedy and PIP Printing convention in Denver. I had just cleared security and was sitting on a long bench putting my shoes back on. At the end of the bench was a young woman of perhaps 22, having a conversation on her cell phone. She sounded petulant and bored with the conversation and finally said: "Well, I called you because I thought you would entertain me. Obviously, you're not!" She ended the call and sat there pouting. Apparently, to her it was "all about me."
As I recall, Narcissus was a character in Greek mythology who was so taken with his own image that he gazed at it until he died. Modern psychologists note that, "Narcissists tend to the notion that one is worthy of great admiration and esteem, regardless of his or her accomplishments." Now, full blown narcissists are the stuff of psychology, but this idea of wanting to be honored and rewarded just for existing is pretty common. It is encountered quite often in the workplace.
Human resources folks such as QP columnist Debra Thompson are well aware of this type of person and their potential effect on the workplace. So are printers who have to manage employees who may have more self esteem than gumption. I'm not assigning this shortcoming to any particular age group, however. As songwriter Todd Snyder remarked, some folks just want "the most they can possibly get for the least they can possibly do."
I guess we'll always have such "look-at-me" folks around. With printers always looking for new profit centers, maybe this can be taken advantage of. State prisons pretty much have the license plate market tied up, but what about t-shirts—those cloth billboards announcing the wearer's opinions on just about any topic.
Love: "I am one bad relationship away from owning 30 cats." Work: "Spell check can't fix stupid." Philosophy: "What if the hokey pokey really is what it's all about?" Morals: "I'm ashamed of what I did for a Klondike bar." Evil: "Come to the dark side…we bake cookies." Technology: "I keep hitting the escape button but I'm still here." Enthusiasm: "Whatever."
Just a thought.
author: by Bob Hall