Monkey Business

I'm currently the Digital Editor at "We Make Images, But Only Because We Can Sell Them For Money" Photo Company. My job title is a bit of a misnomer. I don't actually choose, or "edit" any photos. I'm also not digital, except for my cybernetic right arm. What I do do is retouch photos, adjust images, and problem shoot our digital workflow from my two computers. This means I spend a lot of time on said electronic machine, though most of that is reading Doonesbury cartoons, instant messaging, writing electronic mail messages, and cyber stalking the San Diego Zoo panda bears via a nifty webcam.

Like everything in our field, and especially our business, the digital workflow is constantly changing and evolving. A lot of my job duties are being passed along to a different department, which is less specially skilled at getting digital with it than I. It was during a recent discussion on how to best transition that my boss let his true feelings slip out. I mentioned my concerns that people who had never used Photoshop before might struggle at first resizing and flattening images or converting from 16-bit to 8-bit mode, all of which require 3 mouse clicks at the most. My boss said it'd be easy to write a quick guide on how to do these complicated tasks. Then, apparently growing frustrated with his lack of cookies for the day, he lashed out and said "let's be honest, a monkey could do this."

I strive for honesty and felt I needed to prove him wrong. What better way than to bring in an actual monkey and sit him at my desk for the day? What's that boss? The monkey's flinging poop at you? Hmm, that doesn't sound like an understanding of photoshop. He's eating a banana and not doing work? Yea, that does sort of sound like me too actually. You can't get the monkey to stop picking lice out of your hair? No, that doesn't sound like he's troubleshooting the digital workflow and notifying photographers of errors. It also sounds like you should wash your hair more often.

Even without this experiment, I think people by now should know not to say "a monkey could do that job." Where does this high regard for the working skills of monkeys come from anyway? If monkeys were such good workers, why do they have an almost 100% unemployment rate? In addition, the entire primate economy is based on bananas. Doesn't sound too profitable nor economically enlightened to me.

So please, next time you feel the need to disparage someone's job by letting them know a simian could do it, stop and think first. Monkeys. They're just not humans.