A HUMP in training - Cheating at putt putt - Victoria 1988
HUMP graduation - London - 1992Welcome to a new series on Wednesday called HUMP (Hugely Unimportant Midlevel Professional) Day. There should be no shortage of qualified candidates and we kick it off with one of the biggest HUMPs I know. Myself.
Key to being a HUMP is a gigantic sense of self importance despite the fact you could disappear from the face of the earth and no one would ever know - much less care. This navel gazing period of life, usually in one's mid 30s, follows some equally unimportant corporation making you Vice President (along with hundreds of others) and sending you to London with a big fat expense account which is happily abused.
A favorite acquisition with company plastic is the Hermes tie. The HUMP prefers to wear his tie with the Hermes logo'ed narrow end flapping about for all to see. Much like "Show & Tell" of unbuttoned cuffs on MTM in Mexico suit jackets.
The HUMP returns to the states and speaks with a slight questioning lilt at the end of each sentence while telling stories of odd jackets, double cuffs, lifts, holidays, westkits and getting a leg over. Add to this the HUMP struggle to find packets of Silk Cuts & digestive biscuits, loose Lapsang Souchong, A4 notebooks and proper pork pies.
Unless the HUMP is jerked out of this dangerous affliction of arrogance and entitlement by either (1)repeated failures or (2)loved ones, the result can lead to chairmanship of an international company, a bad perm and a desire to, "get one's life back" after taking a king size crap in the Gulf of Mexico.
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11 comments:
Oh, PRICELESS! I can't wait for future installments.
A question. Where do Brit HUMPs go to train? NYC?
ML
mlanesepic.blogspot.com
M Lane- Brits train in India where they yell at people who can't speak English. It's been a very long tradition.
This is fantastic--so glad that I was pink-slipped from my HUMP days. Now then, bloodys, anyone?
"You'll die in that corner office, a midlevel exec with a little bit of hair who women go home with out of pity."
-Don Draper to Pete Campbell - Mad Men, Season 1, Episode 1: "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"
Hilarious! Can't wait to see more humps. Love the bad perm comment.
M Lane - it's either NY or HK for the Brits. You ever heard of FILTH?
haha.
hilarious.
Sounds as if you had a wonderful experience. My precise prescription, if I actually typed it here, would most certainly land me in the slammer courtesy of the FBI. But, fuck them. Shoot to kill ol' chum.
I never became a vice president and I don't think I was a HUMP for very long, but when I lived in London for my 2nd year in law school, I did develop a pack-a-day habit for Hob Nob digestives.
Great pics. You can look useless in both shorts and jacket.
After England, if one does a second foreign HUMP tour in Japan, for example, one can actually find digestive biscuits, loose Lapsang Souchong, A4 everything (along with A3, B5, B3, etc.), and meat pies, curry pies. Silk Cut? I don't think there're available, but Dunhill everything (even pipe tobacco ) is - along with Cuban cigars. Very funny piece. Cheers.
With a few deviations you nailed it tintin......but is it an "affliction" when it's an affliction a very large number of people would love to suffer from.....sure the international professional/executive class has a few tics but then so do most other social groups and I know which class I want to be in.......don't mess your own nest? (and btw show and tell is not restricted to Mexican suits in my experience)
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