You Know You’re a Business Anthropologist If… (Funny)

You know you’re a business anthropologist if…

  1. You ask at least 500 follow-up questions when your supervisor gives you a project to really understand the full context. 
  2. You have a prepared spiel about how what you studied was different than digging up Mayan artifacts (unless that happened to be what you did).
  3. You constantly ask people how they feel when completing a task or what they think of the process.
  4. You try to reimagine and redesign any object or process that your organization will let you get your hands on.  
  5. You have critiqued every organization that has hired you.
  6. You have the strangest knick-knacks on your desk from around the world.
  7. You take triple the notes anyone else does in a meeting, recording in detail what everyone’s statements and body postures.
  8. In regular conversation, you interrogate your colleagues like you’re leading an interview.
  9. You frequent your company’s “watercooler spots” – informal places to gather to hang out. This is where the real work happens.
  10. You rage against top-down procedures and formal hierarchy every time you encounter it.
  11. You have resolved to never use PowerPoint for your presentations.
  12. Any time you hear a French word, your mind immediately goes to the French theorist with the most similar sounding name.

I intend this as a fun little exercise thinking about the quirks and idiosyncrasies of working as an anthropologist in the business world. 

Photo Credit: Toa Heftiba at https://unsplash.com/photos/FV3GConVSss

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