Posted on 12/26/2001 11:14:25 AM PST by aculeus
Who Moved My Cheese? By Spencer Johnson. Putnam. $19.95. 94 pages.
"Who Moved My Cheese?" by Spencer Johnson has sold some 5 million copies since it was published in September 1998 and has been on best-seller lists for nearly two years. What in the name of self-help is that all about?
This 94-page book (with big type, wide margins and illustrations) features four characters in a maze: two mice named Sniff and Scurry and two mice-size people named Hem and Haw. All four of the principals put on their little running shoes and their tiny jogging suits every morning and head for Cheese Station C, where they gorge on Gorgonzola, feast on feta, cheddar, whatever.
"They had no idea where the Cheese came from, or who put it there," the story goes. "They just assumed it would be there. . . . The littlepeople felt happy and successful, and thought they were now secure."
One day -- you might have guessed this from the title -- some unseen force takes away the cheese.
Sniff and Scurry, being street rodents at heart, adjust immediately and instinctively. They sniff the air and scurry off in a new direction, quickly finding mounds and mounds of even better cheese.
Hem and Haw, being people -- albeit very small ones -- initially refuse to believe that anybody would move their cheese for no reason, so they keep going back to the same spot in the maze. Only when the situation becomes dire do the cranky littlepeople change their pattern and strike out in a new direction.
Subtitled "An A-Mazing Way to Deal With Change in Your Work and in Your Life," the book is a parable about success and coping with change. Cheese serves as a metaphor for whatever you desire -- a good job, a good relationship, good grades.
It is a word-of-mouse publishing phenomenon by any standard. Managers buy it in bulk, teachers work it into curriculums and preachers have begun building sermons around it.
Glenda Blum Minkin, marketing and communications director for the city of Atlanta, loved this book so much she bought 20 copies and gave them as gifts to every person in her department.
"It's just delicious," Minkin says. "It's a challenge to every person as an individual, saying you can't blame anybody else for your own failure. You're in control of your destiny."
"Who Moved My Cheese?" was written for "busy adults who need to find simple solutions that work," but this book could be understood by a fairly average 7-year-old. The nuggets -- nay, wedges -- of insight go something like this:
"Having Cheese Makes You Happy." (Metaphor-free translation: Success is good.)
"Smell the Cheese Often So You Know When It Is Getting Old." (Anticipate change.)
"It Is Safer To Search in the Maze Than Remain in a Cheeseless Situation." (Don't fear change.)
"Move With the Cheese." (Change.)
The book has been printed in 11 other languages (All together now: Chi si e preso il mio formaggio?) and has spawned at least three parodies: two predictably called "Who Cut the Cheese?" and a Japanese version called "What Happened to My Butter?" (or more literally, "Where Did the Butter Melt Away To?").
But, honestly, did 5 million people really not know that "having cheese makes you happy"?
In another economic time, this book may have moved quickly to the sale bins. But nowadays a lot of perfectly reasonable people want to believe not only that they can adapt to whatever changes the workplace throws at them, but also that it will be simple and fun.
Uneasy people want easy answers in short books with cute titles.
The book is not without its critics, of course. On amazon.com, for every reader who found it "profound" and "refreshing," there's one who dismissed it as "mindless drivel" and "borderline insulting."
There is something inherently troubling about a book that encourages people to emulate mice as they navigate a maze, isn't there? And is it really such a bad idea to ask why changes are happening before you put on your little running shoes and dash off to find new cheese? Asking questions isn't automatically whining, and it doesn't always signify a lack of spiritual growth.
And anyway, wouldn't a more palatable goal be getting out of the maze altogether?
The author of "Who Moved My Cheese?" is no stranger to monster sales figures or to the best-seller lists: Spencer Johnson has written nearly a dozen business self-help books, most notably "The One Minute Manager." He churns out "Cheese" products from his home in Hawaii.
At www.whomovedmycheese.com, you can find a veritable cheese tray of goodies, including -- for the low, low price of $995 -- the multimedia "Cheese Experience," a half-day corporate learning program. (If you don't want to make that much of an investment, "Who Moved My Cheese?" coffee mugs are available for $9.95.)
Johnson declined to comment about the ripening "Cheese," but his converted are eager and articulate.
Dennis Bayne, a manager at IBM and a lay minister at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta, has plumbed the soul of "Cheese" and found a whole spiritual side to the tiny tome.
"A 'small' cast of mice and men living in a maze in search of cheese is a perfect analogy to our daily search for cheese in this maze called life," Bayne says. "Every day we are searching for people, places and things to make us happy. We're happy when we find our cheese and disillusioned when we lose it. We're in a never-ending cycle of finding, losing, searching, then finding all over again."
Bayne first heard of the book at work a year ago, but it took him a while to wake up and smell the Limburger.
"I immediately dismissed it because it sounded so cheesy," he admits.
Eventually he relented, read the book and realized its potential to be "an instrument of light for those lost in the corridors" of life's maze.
Now he is one of 5 million shining the light and spreading the "Cheese."
Signed scurry
I thought the proposed title was "Whom did the Moose Bite?"!
Further, where does this thread reside on the "Moose-Cheese Continuum?"
Whoa!
Profound stuff!!!
Do Unitarians get these kind of revelations every day?
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