Feet Off the Desk, Mr. President!

I remember quite a few years ago, when I was working as a superintendent for an independent builder, I sat down in my field office chair and placed my feet, boots and all, on top of my old wooden, retread of a desk, and I commenced to make my morning phone calls.  The desk wasn't expensive, even when it was new. And you could tell that it had seen action in many construction offices over the years.  So there I was, feet up on the desk, phone in hand, when my immediate boss came in.  That he was not happy is an understatement.  I'd not been spoken to like that for as long as I could say, told how I was disrespectful of the company owner's property.  He told me how it made me look lazy, how I probably was lazy, and how I needed to show the company's owner more respect than to be found in such an lackadaisical pose while supposedly working.

I was pretty stunned.  I really couldn't believe this guy.  I was doing my job, making calls, scheduling the work.  I was doing all those things that I was hired to do...or was I?  No, I was not.  Although my boss thoroughly offended my every sensibility, he was exactly right.  I WAS disrespectful.  No one has the right to come to work for another, be paid by the other, and disrespect the other's possessions.

So with that memory somewhere in my dim recesses, today I see this photo

Now according to Wikipedia, that the desk Mr. Obama uses as a footstool is one given to the American people by

Queen Victoria during the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 and was built from the timbers of the British Arctic Exploration ship Resolute. Many presidents since Hayes have used the desk at various locations in the White House, but it was Jackie Kennedy who first brought the desk into the Oval Office in 1961 for President John F. Kennedy. It was removed from the White House for only one time, and this was after the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, when President Johnson allowed the desk to go on a traveling exhibition with the Kennedy Presidential Library. After this it was on display in the Smithsonian Institute. President Jimmy Carter brought the desk back to the Oval Office, where President Ronald Reagan, President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, and now President Barack Obama have used it in this, its most famous location.

Regardless of the value of the desk, the principle is the same.  And the response from the boss ought to be the same too, "Mr. President, get your feet off of that desk.  You look lazy, probably are lazy, and you need to show some respect for the property owned by your boss, in this case, the American people."