Mangaweyat: Monkey Suit

“Be yourself and do your best”, I believe that the previous comment has been one of the foundations of any motivational speaker and all the “feel good” movies starring Adam Sandler; unfortunately I’m beginning to discover that this is not real, and that lying and deception are the keys to success.

What makes these awful qualities complete is the right wardrobe, and what better attire to use in deception than the “Monkey Suit”.

According to urban slang a monkey suit is “a uniform that one wears to work every day”. Well, when you think about it, you live in a concrete jungle with tall buildings and you’re climbing these buildings and swinging from office to office to get those bananas at the end of the month wearing nothing else but a Monkey Suit.

Now that I have helped you visualize that in your head, let me explain to you why i’m discussing this in the first place.

Nobody can deny that suits look good, and they can turn heads in meetings and sometimes seal some deals, but the glorified status that the suits has taken in comparison to the employee’s actual work is completely off balance.

Society today perceives a person on the way they look and showing up early as a sign of discipline (Trained Monkey) and further down the list your actual work begins to count; Well, not that far but it’s nowhere near the top.

If anyone is familiar with the show “Suits”, there is a character who is a drug dealer but wears a 2000$ suit so that no one would ever suspect that he is actually a sleazy human being. It’s amazing what this monkey suit can do to people.

Now comes the hard question: Budgeting the bananas you get at the end of the month to buy new suits and still have some left to make yourself a nice banana milkshake at the end of the day that you can enjoy? Can I just buy a monkey and leave the suit? It would be cheaper and a heck of a lot funnier.

Finally, we need to review our priorities in life and begin to digest that it is the man or woman that makes the suit not the other way around. And what better way to end this than with a quote from William Arnot a Scottish preacher and theological writer in the 1800s, “If honor be your clothing, the suit will last a lifetime; but if clothing be your honor, it will soon be worn threadbare.”