Professional Joke (Consulting)

“Top Management”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  RW

Barnard, VT

November 3, 2020

Informant Data:

RW was born in Atlanta, Georgia on June 23, 2000. His father is of German descent, and his mother is Indian – she grew up in India before immigrating to the United States as a graduate college student. They both continue to strongly identify with and to practice their respective cultural backgrounds. RW himself identifies with both cultures, frequently visiting German and India, practicing rituals of both cultures at home, and speaking both languages. RW has one sister who is a senior in high school and whose interests involve Democratic political volunteer work. He is currently a senior at Dartmouth College studying Economics and German. He has spent the past few years studying, traveling, and working various short-term jobs. Next year, he plans on working in consulting at McKinsey & Company as a full-time associate consultant.

Contextual Data:

Cultural Context: McKinsey & Co. is often considered one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the nation, and it pulls its associates from some of the most elite educational institutions and family backgrounds. Their employees also receive extremely high salaries. Because consulting, and McKinsey specifically, is thus considered so elite, it draws its clientele from some of the biggest, richest, and most socially prominent companies and corporations. McKinsey associates then act as advisors over such companies, assuming an inherent position of authority over their clients by providing advice on how to better run their businesses.

Social Context: RW interned at McKinsey & Co. as an associate consultant in Atlanta, GA for 3 months during the summer of 2020. Consistent with the mission of McKinsey, RW’s duties included working as part of a team to advise companies on how they can more effectively run and capitalize on their business. In the instance of this joke, RW and his team were brought in to advise a “silly middle management issue.” RW and his team felt that the problem was obvious to anyone outside the company, but everyone within it had been too strongly indoctrinated that they could no longer see the issue clearly. This joke first occurred when RW and his team got off a phone call with the company’s CFO.  RW’s colleague made this joke, and it was then subsequently repeated by other members of the team when they would get off the phone with the company’s leadership, feeling that the leadership couldn’t see an obvious problem clearly.  (*Note: Client names are confidential and therefore don’t appear here.)

Item:

“This is the executive management system for one of the most successful companies in history?!”

Collector’s Notes:

• This joke employs a great deal of sarcasm. It capitalizes on the elite status of McKinsey consultants to remark, in feigned surprise, on how incompetent they feel some of the leaders of corporate America can be.

Tags:

• Verbal folklore
• Jokes
• Referential humor
• Consulting

Delphine Jrolf

Dartmouth College

RUSS 13

Fall 2020