Dirty, disgusting, filthy, lice-ridden boids.

The average pigeon can carry about 40 grams during flight. Nobody really knows for sure which textbook on business administration first published that figure, but it has become the most commonly accepted value in widespread management practice today. This particular aluminum lawn chair weighs just shy of 1.1 kilograms, so approximately thirty pigeons should be able to carry it effectively along with the tethers and harnesses.

To the practical-minded, an immediate alarm bell may be sounding: A pigeon can only carry so much weight for so long before becoming tired and requiring rest. An exhausted pigeon cannot even lift itself, and instead must be carried by some ten or so other pigeons. Those pigeons, in turn, will eventually grow tired and require the support of yet more pigeons. As it takes too long for the typical member of the group to fully recuperate, the system cannot work without an ever-growing population of pigeons contributing to the effort.

As it turns out, this is not an issue at all. Thanks to a constant undercurrent of pigeon turnover, combined with the continual application of performance reviews and the occasional reduction in pigeon force, management processes tend to keep most of the birds flapping most of the time. A constant stream of fresh pigeons enters through the candidate pipeline, while low performers are managed out before becoming too much of a drag on their peers.

The flock hitched to the aluminum lawn chair is rather small compared to most. Others, like the ones tethered to the Hibachi grill, have hundreds of pigeons. A few groups, like the one holding the fully-loaded Winnebago fifty feet off the ground, employ hundreds of thousands of pigeons. From a distance that one looks less like a workforce of recognizably discrete members and more like a slowly writhing mass of iridescent purple goo. We will henceforth refer to each of these disorganized avian assemblages as an Organization.

Almost every one of these Organizations is currently airborne. The handful that are not are usually very small and very newly formed. One nearby instance consists of three young and quite naive pigeons tethered to a titanium-finish iPhone Pro. They are flapping like mad trying to lift the device off the ground. Hovering above them, a small flock of venture capital pigeons clad in Patagonia sweater vests cheers them on. From time to time, a glance at their Richard Mille wristwatches as they decide whether to cut these pigeons loose and strap the phone to another crop of fresh-faced go-getters.

Within a single Organization, most pigeons pull in a direction that could charitably be called “horizontal.” The issue, of course, is that multiple pigeons can (and do) fly in opposing directions, canceling out most movement overall. This is actually not a problem, as we will see shortly. The most important component of these birds’ collective contribution is the “not down” part—they might not be getting anywhere, but they’re not falling either.

There is, in fact, enough margin available to support the weight of a few unproductive teammates: the junior pigeons who are not yet strong enough to carry their own weight, the dummies who repeatedly become entangled in the tether, the tired burnouts who are too exhausted to do anything but get yanked along for a little while. Some truly malicious pigeons may try to pull straight down, but fortunately their efforts tend to pale in comparison to the garden-variety dead weight of incompetence and apathy that overshadows them.

From any single pigeon’s perspective, it’s not usually possible to see the lawn chair or whatever the hell they all got tethered to for the remainder of Q1. They can’t really tell where they are or where they are going. They can’t find the sky or the ground, nor would they recognize any landmarks they saw down there. All they can do is pace themselves, flap, pull, quietly endure the degrading slap of oily wing feathers against their faces, and try to appreciate the fact that—for some reason—this dubiously useful activity is rewarded with a recurring direct deposit into their bank accounts.

The remarkable thing about this undulating blob of avian misery—sorry, the Organization—is how every pigeon’s force vector is pretty much perfectly canceled out by every other pigeon. The Organization does not generally rise, fall, or accelerate in any particular direction. All observable movement is generally insignificant and random. The constant flapping is sufficient to oppose the pull of gravity, but none of the pigeons seem particularly eager to expend the additional energy needed to rise any higher. Even if the willpower was there, there is no practical way to coordinate such a large cohort of irritated and slightly disillusioned birds in any meaningful way.

Strictly speaking, there is no need for this affront to God and country—sorry, the Organization—to rise any higher than it already has. The single measure of success here is the Organization’s share price, and the only thing that absolutely must be done to protect the share price is “not crash.” The senior leadership pigeons have essentially no idea how this thing stays aloft day after day, nor can they really comprehend that most of the externally measurable movement is due to the wind. They will happily take credit for both phenomena and proclaim that everything is going according to their grand pigeon vision. Much like an infant jerking the plastic steering wheel in a grocery store shopping cart, they truly believe that this situation is completely under their expert control. And much like the infant, senior leadership provides an inexhaustible supply of shrieking and shitting-on-everything.

As part of the aforementioned shitting, the pigeons that were unlucky enough to be pulling from whichever side ended up being the windward side may be viewed as underperformers and have their tethers severed. This can be devastating, because membership in an Organization is a very important thing to some pigeons’ identities. For some reason, modern-day pigeon society views being tethered to outdoor furniture as one of the only noble and respectable endeavors to devote one’s life to. Untethered pigeons are naturally suspicious things, perhaps even failures in this world. What kind of disreputable bird mites have made them so… untetherable? Hopefully it is not contagious, as the Organization-sponsored pigeon health plan specifically does not cover bird mites.

But back to the aluminum lawn chair. If you were to ask any pigeon in the Organization what the purpose of the lawn chair is, or even if there is an occupant or some other payload riding on it, they might not be able to give you a cogent answer. It’s possible most of the pigeons have never actually seen the lawn chair; it is only alluded to during the monthly all-wings meetings where the chief executive pigeon rattles off vague nothings that confuse everybody about whether the lawn chair is a metaphor for something or not.

Surprisingly though, in the center of all the commotion, there are a small number of pigeons who seem to remember exactly which way they are pointing. They know which way is straight up, and with beaks poised in that direction they catch the occasional glimpse of clear sky. These birds pull up with all their energy, aiming directly toward the zenith, providing more direct benefit to the whole accursed enterprise—sorry, the Organization—than almost every other pigeon present. They are driven by a desire to rise above the flying feathers and scratching toe claws towards something better, and as a side effect of this ambition they lift every other bird up with them. These pigeons don’t even care where they end up, so long as that place has freer skies.

These are the pigeons that, if released from their tethers, would fly high and far. They would soon learn exactly what their goal has always been, and while they would not be individually capable of carrying something so heavy as the illustrious lawn chair, they would nonetheless be able to carry some small fragment of tangible value to a destination faster than the unjustifiably cruel coffle of birds tied to the shabbiest piece of blight presently stuck in the HOA president’s craw—sorry, the Organization—would ever be able to. Strap an envelope to their leg and point them at the target, and they’ll handle the rest. That approach has worked fine for thousands of years.

But we can’t have that now. If individual pigeons were permitted to perform useful tasks on their own, then why did we spend all that time tying 3,000 pigeons to the 15-foot trampoline? That would be a stupid thing to have done if there wasn’t a very good reason for it. Don’t make us feel stupid.

To go fast, go alone.
To go far, go together.
To go purposefully, have some idea where the hell you’re going.

Also, it’s possible to milk a pigeon. I couldn’t find a better place to fit that fact in.