The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work - Alain De Botton [15]
While the idea of answering psychological yearnings with dough might seem daunting, Laurence explained that in the hands of an experienced branding expert, decisions about width, shape, coating, packaging and name can furnish a biscuit with a personality as subtly and appropriately nuanced as that of a protagonist in a great novel.
Early on, it became evident to Laurence that his biscuit would need to be round rather than square, given the associations drawn in almost all cultures between the circle and feminity and wholeness. It was similarly imperative that it contain small pieces of raisin and whole chocolate chips to convey an impression of kindly indulgence – though because it was not outright decadence which was being evoked, no cream would be involved.
Laurence spent a further half a year working with colleagues on dilemmas of packaging, eventually resolving that a mere nine biscuits should be settled into a black plastic tray encased in a glossy twenty-four-centimetre-long cardboard box. Laurence now initiated a debate about what to call the biscuits. Extensive consideration was given to Reflections, Retreats, Delights and, in a direct allusion to the biscuit’s founding concept, My Times – before the right name came to Laurence in what could kindly be described as a flash of inspiration.
It was time for attention to be paid to the choice of fonts. The designers’ initial layout had had the word Moments running in a romantic Edwardian script across the box, but there were concerns among some executives that this belied the product’s projected function as a pleasant supplement to real life rather than a means of escape from it – an issue addressed by a last-minute change in the m and s to a more vertical orientation, as befitted a snack which respected the realities of life even as it offered temporary relief from them.
4.
It is perhaps because many of us know what it is to spend an afternoon baking biscuits that there is something striking about encountering a company which relies on the labour of five thousand fulltime employees to execute the task.
Manoeuvres which one might briefly have carried out on one’s own in the kitchen (readying an oven, mixing dough, writing a label) had at United Biscuits been isolated, codified and expanded to occupy entire working lives. Although all employment at the company was ultimately predicated on the sale of confectionery and salted snacks, a high percentage of the staff were, professionally speaking, many times removed from contact with anything one might eat. They were managing the forklift truck fleet in the warehouse or poring over the eighty or so words written along the sides of a typical packet of salted nuts. Some had attained extraordinary expertise in the collection and analysis of sales data from supermarkets, while others daily investigated how to ensure a minimum of friction between wafers during transit.
Along with such specialisation came a raft of esoteric job titles: Packaging Technologist, Branding Executive, Learning Centre Manager, Strategic Projects Evaluator. Careers ploughed along deep and dedicated furrows: a start at Hula Hoops might be followed by promotion to Ridged Tortillas, a sideways shift to Baked Mini Cheddars, a management role at McVitie’s Fruitsters and a swan-song post at Ginger Nuts.
The unremitting division of labour resulted in admirable levels of productivity. The company’s success appeared to bear out the principles of efficiency laid down at the turn of the twentieth century by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who theorised that a society would grow wealthy to the extent that its members forfeited general knowledge in favour of fostering individual ability in narrowly constricted fields. In an ideal Paretan economy, jobs would be ever more finely subdivided to allow for the accumulation of complex skills, which would then be traded among workers. It would be in everyone’s best interest that doctors not waste time learning how to fix