Spiked

Sipping our drinks.

Your philosophers definitely look like they’re having fun, Lea says.

They like to drink –

Oh, we all like to drink.

I didn’t know you were allowed to serve alcohol on campus anymore. I didn’t know you could even have gatherings of this kind, of this number. You must have filled out a lot of forms.

You can rely on Organisational Management for all that. Organisational Management practically designed the forms. Organisational Management are form experts.

Didn’t you used to be called Business Studies?

We rebranded. Organisational Management was the hot new thing a few years back. Maybe we’ll have to rebrand ourselves again, soon. As Leadership Studies.

Who are the big names in Organisational Management? Who’s, like, the Organisational Manager’s Organisational Manager? Who do Organisational Managers talk about with reverence?

Now you’re taking the piss. Just because your subject’s ancient and prestigious and totally useless.

It depends upon your notion of use.

You would say that.  Philosophy’s proud of its uselessness. That’s what I’ve noticed.

Which is why Philosophy has become a kind of scapegoat. Why we’ve been made to bear all the sins of the humanities – uselessness, irrelevance and so on – and sent into the Organisational Management wilderness.

Is that what's happened?

Sure. Because we're the most useless humanities subject them of all. In their pointlessness. In their lack of applicability to anything mercantile. Let alone anything organisational. Let alone anything managerial.

Which is why we need you, clearly. 

Well, I’ll tell you something useless. There are going to be very … surprising things happening tonight.

Here? At the party?

I spiked the punch.

You did?

I told you: the latest thing in Organisational Management is non Organisational Management. I think there’s room for a little bit of chaos.

So my drink’s spiked?

And mine. And everyone’s.

Spiked with what?

Our artist in residence helped me out. She’s an expert on hallucigens. Can you feel it hitting?

No.

You will, philosopher. I told you I was a madwoman, didn’t I?