Awards

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Awards of any kind are a dignity-shredding affair, even when your auditors can count envelopes, but just what is going through the mind of an investment banker, recruitment consultant, lawyer or compliance professional who allows himself to hold, be nominated for, win, modestly disclose on LinkedIn, or congratulate anyone else who should so modestly disclose, an “industry award” is hard to fathom.

These “awards” have long been doled out at gala events convened by tedious industry magazines to reward their most persistent advertisers—credulous businesses who can’t get much else out of the spend (well: does anyone really read Carbon Trading Magazine? What for? The horoscopes?)

It is true that in those cases, sheepishly returning to your desk with a stonking hangover and an embarrassing plastic figurine is the price of a free night out on the razzle with your buddies. But latterly these austere publications have been joined by obscure “networking platforms” and hitherto unheard-of “trade associations” in declaring arbitrary, meaningless and frankly outrageous awards to individuals whom you would think the simple pleasure of excelling at their calling, or failing that, being richly paid for it, ought to be reward enough.

But what is this you say? There might be deeper neuroses at work, nibbling away at our frail securities, dripping whispered poisons in our ear — that, unless we recognise each other periodically, the crushing enormity of reality might visit us — that what we do every day has null utility in the grander scheme of life? That we are wasting ourselves; deteriorating; decaying; wearing away—frittering our fragile psyches on a cosmic hamster wheel?

How cynical.

Seemingly there are insecurities that only a gong for “Environmental Finance Personality of the Year” (you couldn’t make such a thing up: it really exists); “Business Development Professional of the Year” (there are hundreds of these) or “In-house Litigation Department of the year” (what does it say about an organisation that lionises its own capacity to conduct litigation?) can redress.

O! To have existential doubts that can be so simply quashed!

If such an award, “judged” anonymously, without reference to published criteria, from amongst nominees whose main merit appears to be employment by a prolific advertiser of the sponsor’s product — if a personal tribute as feeble as that can assuage your deep insecurities; if that is all it takes to put you back on a level keel — your psychological health is rude indeed.

Right?

See also

• LinkedIn
• Boredom heat death
• Entropy