Be Expert with the Gentleman’s Tools

Xenia Onatopp: “You don’t need the gun, Commander.

”James Bond (Pierce Brosnan): “Well, that depends on your definition of safe sex.” –James Bond, “GoldenEye” (1995)

Batman has his belt. Superman doesn’t need a thing, aside from his costume. James Bond has his gadgets developed in a secret lab and given to him by Q. A man in the workplace has his tools.

A man’s tools, gadgets, and toys are his accoutrements of success. They fill the pages of GQ, Forbes’ Life, Car and Driver, Field & Stream, and Popular Mechanics. They can be status symbols—the hip watch, the cufflinks, the smart apps, the sports car—or they can be aesthetic garnishes on his interesting life. They are best when they are useful and honest expressions of who he is.

In the modern American workplace a man’s tools can exhibit thoughtfulness, care, tact, and sophistication. They can save him from calamity and make him the hero of the moment.

The most jarring example I’ve ever seen of this was when a mouse fell out of a ceiling panel onto the Park Avenue desk of a magazine publisher. There was a scream. People were running. A young man who was an executive assistant was screeching, “Mouse, mouse,” in a very high-pitched tone as he hopped on the balls of his feet and as his hands, bent and flopping at the wrists, beat like wings.

An intern from Kentucky calmly walked over to see what the fuss was all about, looked in the publisher’s office, and saw a mouse running around on the top of a cluttered desk.

The intern, who would one day be Field & Stream’s hunting editor, pulled out a pocketknife and in one quick motion dispatched the confused rodent. He put the bloody thing in an envelope, sealed it, and dropped it in the trash. The assistant stopped screaming and begged him to please take the bloody thing somewhere, anywhere else, even though it was sealed in an envelope. The intern from Kentucky picked the envelope out of the small trashcan and tossed it in a receptacle out in the lobby. He then went nonchalantly back to his desk and started to work.

He was a rare man in Manhattan still carrying a pocketknife.

Once was a man would have a liter and a fancy cigarette case so he could offer a smoke to a lady. He would also have a handkerchief to wipe away a tear or a smudge of makeup. Those accoutrements have also mostly faded away with the old-school gentleman.

Still, now we are all Inspector Gadget. The smartphone is the do-it-all gadget that gives us the time, a camera for all events, mapping software to guide us to the restaurant, an app for everything, and even a flashlight if the power goes out—oh and yes, a phone to call and text with.

Knowing your phone is now a manly thing, though being obsessed with looking at it is hardly manly. A real man shines when the electricity goes out. He must be prepared when cellphones go dead. Such is when his tools and skills are suddenly everything.