Do you all know that bit from Office Space about “The Mondays”?
(Here’s a link for those of you who have never seen the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AB9zPfXqQQ.)
I’ve been thinking of that scene a lot today.
To be clear, I have a neutral opinion on Mondays. For that matter, I don’t hold grudges against any arbitrarily-named days of the week. Still, I can’t help but feel like the chimps have been grappling with a case of “The Mondays” for a few days now. This morning began with more of the chimpanzee drama that J.B. recently described in Friday’s blog post: Grooming. Although everyone seemed to be contributing to the chaos in one way or another, Terry remained at the center of the maelstrom which continued to churn up the social waters throughout the day.
To paraphrase one of J.B.’s passages: chimps simply cannot keep going “full throttle” for long before someone calms down and starts putting the pieces back together again. In today’s case, the chimps eventually stopped screaming long enough to catch their breath. Within minutes, they had begun to groom each other in a collective act of reconciliation that lasted for quite some time. Chimps may have physical altercations more frequently than free-living humans do, but their ability to put that animosity behind them and quickly reach a bipartisan solution makes up for it.
I didn’t manage to record much of the action with a camera, but I did take some photos during the peaceful moments between the storms.
love all your posts and love thechimps
Cy looks like he wasn’t quiiiiite over it yet, Anthony. Did you take his stapler?
they can look soooooooooooooooo innocent………..
Sweet photos. And everything appears as it should with everyone peacefully hanging about as if conflicts are a part of our imagination.
Could you possibly make a few videos of each group going full throttle then winding down to the part where someone has the sense to calm down, start putting the pieces together again, and quickly reach a bipartisan solution. Then please send videos off to Congress. Democracy will flourish if we follow the instinctive wisdom of our primate cousins.
Maybe if one of them wears a red tie…
Cy really is a very big guy, isn’t he? And he looks not so happy in the first picture.
Wonderful photos. Since I began learning about chimp behavior and reading this blog a few years ago, I’ve been looking at my fellow human co-workers through a different lens. Although we don’t do loud displays to assert our dominance, we are masters of passive-aggressive behavior. It’s been so interesting to step outside of the fray and be an objective reporter of what’s happening, and I owe that to you
Also, “Office Space” is a totally underappreciated masterpiece of filmmaking.